Year: 2019

Those of you who’ve been following our progress for a while will already know that we’ve been hoping to expand, and have been bursting at the seams of our current premises for a good few years now. And back in December, we shared the news that we’ve finally got our mitts on some much needed extra space (7426 square feet of it, to be precise) which joins on to our existing home just off Abbeydale Road. And now that we can see an end to those chilly winter months, we’re ready to show it off by hosting our next beer festival!

Taking place over three sessions during the weekend of the 6^th April, we intend our third ever event to be held here (following on from 2017’s first Piss Up In The Brewery, and last year’s Funk Fest) to be the biggest yet, with music, food from Get Wurst (vegan and gluten free options will be available) and of course oodles of beer!

Our offering will include beers served from cask, keg and tank, including some one-off festival exclusives. We’ll be featuring not only Abbeydale beers but some from our brewery pals too.

Ticket holders will have the opportunity to go on brewery tours encompassing our new space and see how far we’ve come on our journey so far. But please do bear in mind it’s still a bit of a work in progress, and we hope you’ll continue to join us over the coming weeks, months and years, as our ambitious programme of expansion aimed at bringing you ever more and ever better beer continues. It’s you, the people who drink our beer, who have got us this far, and we’re so excited to warmly welcome you to share this space with us.

So come and join us on the 6th and 7th April for a real celebration and experience our sights, our sounds and our smells in the heart of the community we love so much. We can’t wait to see you there!

Visit bit.ly/pissupinthebrewery to get your tickets now!

You might have spotted that we have recently made a Funk Dungeon release available in can for the first time – the Mosaic edition of our Hop Bretta series. The majority of our beers created here at Abbeydale Brewery are fermented using our house saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strain, something we’re very proud of which forms a fundamental part of the character of most of our brews. However, the recent development of our own brettanomyces blend, as the Funk Dungeon project has grown, has allowed us to explore different fermentation techniques and experiment further. This new can is the result of one such experiment.

It’s not the first mixed fermentation beer we have packaged into can, with three of our collaboration beers brewed last year (Creeping Brett, Sage Advice & Laid To Rest, available as a six pack here) all having been primary fermented with the addition of our house Brett culture. However as it’s the first to be shown under our Funk Dungeon branding we thought now was a good time to give you a little more information regarding the extra steps and considerations we need to make to ensure when packaged into cans, the beer reaches you just as we intended.

For us the most important thing is time – it is imperative that we allow the beer enough time to secondary ferment as far as possible. As we have been using our house Brett culture for over a year now, we can be confident that the furthest it will take a beer is to a PG of 1003, which means there’s barely any sugar remaining and any that is still present cannot be nibbled up by our blend of yeasties and beasties. We therefore allow the beer to rest in tank, or in the case of Hop Bretta Mosaic specifically, in barrel (the barrels used were a mixture of second fill barrels, predominantly 500L ex-sherry casks) until it reaches this point, before moving it to our bright tank ready for packaging.

In addition to this whilst we play the waiting game, we also employ forced fermentation methods with small samples, including warming and agitating the beer, to further ensure that there are minimal residual sugars remaining which ensures the stability of the finished product. At the point at which this forcing method has no result (also in this case at a PG of 1003), we can be confident that the beer is ready to go into can.

Anyway, after all that, onto the beer itself! Our new Hop Bretta series is an occasional release of lower alcohol single hopped beers, fermented using our usual yeast, but finished in wood with our house Brett culture which gives a light funky (rather than sour) character. Our intention is that these beers will be very accessible and a great introduction to our Funk Dungeon range and to wild ales more generally. This Mosaic edition (4.6%) has a fresh and floral aroma and notes of grapefruit, balanced by a delicate earthy Brett character which gradually builds upon the palate. It’s out now in keg as well as in can (cans available via our online shop), so do keep your eyes peeled for it and be sure to let us know what you think!

Cheers,

Jim

Funk Dungeon Lead Brewer

1997. The country was gearing up for a monumental general election that would culminate in a landslide victory for Tony Blair’s Labour government and lead to the transformation of the UK and the world as we knew it.

2019. We’re in the midst of a political maelstrom, with our position on the world stage about to change in ways that we are yet to discover.

And through all this time, despite all of the changes we’ve seen, there’s been a deliciously boozy barley wine that has remained just the same…

First brewed on February 15^th, 1997, and returning next week in cask, keg, and for the first time ever IN CAN, please welcome back Last Rites!

Brewed using a carefully selected combination of pale malts and all American hops, Last Rites is at heart a fantastically strong barley wine with tons of flavour. Our wonderful brewery owner and beery mastermind Patrick Morton originally set out to create a high gravity beer which somehow managed to still be eminently drinkable. Last Rites is just that – it’s full of rich flavour to tease and satisfy the palate, an unusually smooth beer with tones of subtle caramel and a hint of roasted sugar which doesn’t overpower the full malt flavour base. The bitterness from the hops keeps the sweetness in check and allows the fuller spectrum of flavours to reach the palate without the cloying effect that is often found with high alcohol recipes. We use a similar hop combination to Moonshine – Willamette, Cascade and Chinook, and originally Last Rites was brewed from the first runnings of our beloved flagship pale ale. We’ve been dry hopping it since 1997 too, so this technique is nothing new – the hops for this have changed a little over the years, but the new batch has been lovingly packed full with Cascade and Mosaic for a zesty citrus burst that rounds out the malt character beautifully, leading to a robust and lingering finish.

Brews of Last Rites haven’t always gone to plan over the years, it’s a tricky beast to get right and is the true mettle test for our brewers! Until 2016 only Pat had achieved the perfect brew to get the beer into spec, but when we brought it back after a 6-year absence to help us celebrate our 20^th anniversary, brewer Jim (best known for his Funk Dungeon beers) was able to resurrect it successfully, with our Scott mastering it just before Christmas – despite it being even more difficult at this chilly time of year.

The key challenge is enabling the conversion of sugars to ensure a highly fermentable wort, allowing the beer to reach the desired 11.0% ABV. To achieve this, Last Rites is mashed in at a lower temperature (63 rather than 68 degrees C) and is fermented warm so as to not limit the yeast potential. We used US-05 yeast, which gets less stressed at higher alcohols and temperatures than our house culture. It took around three times as long to ferment than our beers usually do, requiring concentration, care and attention all the way through through the process… as Scott says, he became a beer nanny as well as a brewer. That’s my kind of babysitting.

Last Rites has already had a longer conditioning period before packaging than is usual for us, and it will continue to age well.

Long-time Last Rites fans might also spot the new look for our barley wine, as it’s been reimagined by our Brewers Emporium artist James Murphy to make sure it looks rite-fully (see what we did there?!) at home as a part of the Abbeydale family.

In short, in spite of its some-may-say fearsome alcohol content (11.0% ABV), Last Rites is a thoroughly delicious drink which has been brewed with every care for depth of flavour and true drinkability. It is brewed only infrequently and its drinking should therefore be treated with the respect becoming such a solemn undertaking.

Look out for Last Rites in cask, keg and can from Monday 28th January.

Cheers!

Laura (Office Manager and Last Rites superfan)