apprenticecheesecraftbeer

Adventures in Beer

I think this summer is worth a few words of reflection, at Boojum&Snark we had 2 brilliant festivals: The Other Half celebrating women in the brewing sector and IW Beer and Cheese, which we believe is the first time solely Isle of Wight Beer and Cheese has been celebrated in this way. We were overwhelmed by the response and thanks to you all that made a special effort to come and check them out.

Isle of Wight cheese and … beer 😊

Another first for us was our trip to the trade day of the Great British Beer Festival. Wow what a lot of beer, no wonder it’s on for 4 days. We, however, had 4 hours so bravely attempted to make our way around the halls with our glasses. In the Discovery Bar we bumped into our friend Kate Hyde from Hand Brew Co who was volunteering, taking people through the beers from Wild Beer Co from Shepton Mallet. Brett Ellis the founder was on the stand too and he took the time to talk to us about their experiments with bound thiols – unavailable flavour compounds – by playing around with yeast, stressing it to produce an enzyme that can release the bound thiols and also by putting hops into the mash. We tasted their Beer thiology brew and it was delicious and delicate, with white wine and melon notes. Brett was really nice spending time talking to our apprentice Harri Jones-Evans and has invited us to Shepton Mallet to visit their brewery.

This experience got us thinking and we have an experimental beer that has attempted to access these thiols, in the unitanks right now. 

If you would like to know more about thiols, you can read Wild’s article here – really fascinating.

Harri has also got his first beer in a tank, a blackberry and forest fruit Kölsch-style beer which is called Merry Berry. He wanted to create something that maybe would remind people of the dark fruits cider that is so popular and the crisp Kölsch-style was a good match in his eyes. It’s looking a gorgeous pink colour and full of flavour.  He used a top-fermenting ale yeast and Barbe Rouge hops.

Merry Berry before going into the fermenters

We are hosting IW CAMRA branch night on Wednesday 28th September from 6pm. The last one we had was fabulous and the return visit is long overdue. We’ll have a lineup of 5 of our beers and one guest for you on tap. Finding out what beer and cider we do have on tap is really easy with the Real Ale Finder  app, download it onto your phone, add us as a favourite and you’ll be the first to know what’s arrived and on tap. 

The friendship and support Goddards have shown us has been amazing and I’d just like to say thank you to Anthony, Bob and Xavier.

Julie Jones-Evans

We’re already planning our beer festival for 7,8,9th October and it will be a brewery-to-brewery festival,  hopefully, Goddards will be open at Branstone and the no 8 bus goes by us, Goddards and Wight Knuckle. We have entertainment laid on to close the festival on Sunday night with Sheshells, a brilliant all-female group of sea shanty singers, they brought the house down at Sandown Regatta a few weeks ago. We’ll also do our cheese boards with my homemade chutney.

Expect some great beer, both our own brews and some special guests. South Island Pale Ale (Brewed in the Bay)  will be on cask, it’s outstanding, our first beer has now grown up and Goddards are doing a great job of brewing it. The friendship and support Goddards have shown us has been amazing and I’d just like to say thank you to Anthony, Bob and Xavier. They also brought over to us for a visit the incredible Tim O’Rourke and we had a brilliant evening. Tim loved our set-up and very kindly gave a critique of our beer. With the Snark Pale Ale getting a silver/bronze from Tim, high praise. He’s also offered to help Harri through his training, really kind and supportive. Isn’t the brewery industry great!

Julie x