thatch ale

There has been much brewing activity here this weekend — and I am very excited to report that the latest breakfast-themed dark ale involves the last minute addition of. . . a cup of yorkshire tea! (milk free, of course). Anyway, here by request, is the recipe for last week’s brew — the tried and tested hoppy delight that is Tom’s Thatch Ale.

Thatch Ale

Ingredients:
Yeast: Thames Valley Wyeast 1275

Malt:
2.6 kg maris otter
1.5 kg lager malt
500g malted wheat
120g pale crystal malt
28g black patent malt

Hops:
Bittering: 32g hallertau / northern brewer hops (8.5% alpha acid)
Flavour: 28g Perle hops (8.2% alpha acid)
Aroma: 24g perle hops, 9g elderflowers, 9g mount hood hops (4.4 % alpha acid)
Dry hop: 12g perle, 9g elderflowers, 9g mount hood

Instructions:
Smack Wyeast starter pack, leave overnight.
Make starter:
Combine 1 litre water, 120g extra light dry malt extract + handful of mount hood hops.
Boil for 5 mins and strain into sterile bottle.
Leave to cool to 21°C. Add yeast from smack pack. Leave for 48-72 hours
Time to brew:
Heat 10 litres water to 77°C and add to malt (excluding black malt) in mash tun. The mash should stabilise at 66-67°C, add more hot/cold water to adjust temp as necessary.
Mash for 45 minutes, adding black malt in the last 5 minutes. Sparge slowly into brew pot with 15 to 17 litres of water at 78°C to a final volume of approximately 5 gallons. Gravity at run off = 1021.
Return wort to the boil. Add bittering hops (32g Hallertau / northern brewer). Boil for 45 minutes. Add flavour hops (28g perle) and boil for further 15 mins. Add aroma hops (24g perle, 9g elderflowers, 9 g mount hood) and boil for 2 more minutes.
Strain hot wort into sterile fermenter and cool to approximately 21°C.
Meanwhile prepare ingredients for dry hopping:
Take one of Kate’s old stockings, and fill with 12g perle, 9g elderflowers, 9g mount hood. Tie at both ends and steam for 3 minutes. Drop into cooled wort and pitch yeast starter. Taken original gravity reading (OG = 1038).
Ferment at 19 – 21°C for six days.
Rack into secondary container removing yeast sediment and dry hops. Leave in secondary until yeast drops out (5-14 days). Bottle when ready.

Enjoy!

we made beer

. . with yeast . . .

. . . malt . . .

. . . water . . .

. . . hops . . .

and, um . . . one of my old stockings.

The stocking is good for dry-hopping. This particular recipe of Tom’s is one of my all-time favourites — just as delicious as the original that inspired it. I’ll let you know how the brew tastes in a few weeks time.

fruitful

Felix is here. It has been a fruit-full weekend. Yesterday morning there was knitting to be done and treats to be found at the farmer’s market.

And then we made the most of a sunny afternoon and had a great walk along the Clyde from New Lanark. The lush woodland around the falls is utterly glorious at this time of year.

Along the river bank we discovered masses of bilberries (or blackhearts if you are Thomas Hardy) at just the right stage of ripeness. We also found beautiful ripening hips and sloes, which I took note of for later autumn months. We gathered up the berries, wrapped them in Felix’s handkerchief, and took them home where they joined raspberries from our allotment, and currants and gooseberries from the farmer’s market in a giant soft fruit crumble. We cooked this up and ate it with some gusto.

The best drink to accompany such magnificent summer fruitfulness is, of course, a glass of Tom’s home-brewed raspberry and elderflower mead, which we bottled up a year ago. It is tasting mighty fine.

slainte!

mead magic

Last summer, when we were walking on Jura, we buried some home-brewed mead above the gulf of corryvreckan. Yesterday we retraced our steps, and returned to find it.

I heart Jura.

Seven miles and a very enjoyable walk later, we climbed up a cliffside on the remote and empty north-west of the island and wondered if we would be able to find our bottle. Last August, we had dug a hole near the heather line, covered up the mead, and placed a large stone to mark the spot. Since then, the heather appeared to have receded, and other visitors had added other stones to ours.

The site now resembled a small burial cairn — which I suppose is exactly what it was. Underneath the stones was a bare patch of ground, and what seemed to be solid peat. Tom began to dig. Was the mead still there?

Of course it was!

It is hard to convey just how excited we were to see this bottle again. It had spent three seasons in the ground of Carraig Mhór, above the swirling, whirling, myth-infused waters of Corryvreckan. Our mead had lain there, quietly wintering with with Cailleach Bheur above the whirlpool in which Orwell had almost drowned. As a friend of ours said after a few in the bar of the Jura hotel on Saturday night, “that bottle is bigger than both of you.”

It tasted damn fine, anyway.

I can also confirm that the returning foot miles seemed to pass by rather quickly in a sort of warm, meady fug. Which was good, since we were walking into a headwind. Slainte!

seeing the light in a station bar*

(Newcastle Central)

Tom and I were talking about station bars the other day and discovered that as teenagers, living many miles apart in Stretford and Rochdale, we both liked to hang around the one at Manchester Victoria. This had, before it fell victim to nailed-down chairs and the homogenising effects of Travellers Fayre (shudder), a marvellous, atmospheric and (to our teenage selves) immensely exotic interior: all stucco, coloured glass, and plush upholstery. (I’ve not been there for quite some time, so have no idea of its more recent fate). Anyway, our conversation turned on how station bars form a particular genre of British pub: how they are purportedly spaces of transition, of waiting, and therefore never a destination in themselves. But then we changed our minds and decided, that precisely because of their liminal status (being the place you go to before you get to where you were going; neither one place or another) station bars really are distinct destinations: in-between spaces, half-way places, purgatories of refreshment.

(Halfway hoose)

It then occurred to me that, largely because of my own transitional existence between two cities, I am a regular in two great examples of the genre: The Centurion in Newcastle Central and The Halfway House, just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Waverley. Both serve a good range of ales (always a bonus); both are superlative station bars, and they both celebrate their particular in-between-ness in very different ways. The Centurion does so in a manner entirely in keeping with its surroundings in the grand Victorian sweep of John Dobson’s Newcastle Central station.

(The bar at The Centurion)

The bar pumps, which happily dispense a swift half of Rivet Catcher or Old Kiln Ale to me after a long day’s teaching, nestle behind glorious late nineteenth-century columns decorated in this stately and very excessive manner. Some of the tiles are exuberantly suggestive of fin-de-siecle train travel along the East Coast mainline: of steam, sunrise, and the view crossing the Tweed near Berwick:

The Centurion sits in what was, in the 1890s, the station’s first-class lounge. But, by the 1960s, it was frequented not by well-heeled passengers but disgruntled prisoners, after it was transformed into holding cells for the British Transport Police. British Rail then apparently did their best to destroy the tiles with a bucketload of paint, before the interior was finally restored to its former glory in 2000. Now The Centurion’s fabulous interior and fine ales can once again be enjoyed by travellers through the station, as well as all the good folk of the toon, (including a well-known group of knitters).

(Dear man who also likes The Centurion’s interior: thankyou for being in my picture)

The Centurion’s real showpiece has to be this mural which displays for North-bound travellers their promised destination: all dappled braes and rocky shores, green and gold and . . . rhododendrons. After looking at it many times, I think the landscape must be meant to suggest a view across Loch Lomond from the East shore (which of course became a popular tourist destination in the 1800s, largely because of train travel). It’s such a luridly late-Victorian highland fantasy, and I absolutely love it.

The interior of The Halfway House (HWH) also celebrates trains and transition, but in a rather different way.

While The Centurion is the epitome of opulence, with its high ceilings, elaborate decor, and luxurious surroundings, the Halfway House is all about being snug. This is the smallest and cosiest pub in Edinburgh. Within seconds of your train arriving, you can step out of Waverley Station, walk a few steps up Fleshmarket Close, and be in the welcoming interior of the HWH, enjoying a very reasonably priced lunch of hot stovies or cullen skink, and (oh joy of joys) a well-kept pint of Bitter and Twisted.

(HWH bar)

The pub is stuffed with railway paraphernalia, chief among which are posters and postcards celebrating the destinations one might reach on the old LNER.

Though the HWH is meant to be a stop-off point, a waiting room, a resting place between places, I am most fond of it because for me it is my final destination (and not purgatorial at all). I frequently meet Tom in there for a pint at the end of the working week, and I look forward to that pint immensely. Cheers.

Where are your favourite station bars?

*apologies to Nick Drake

York Craft Tour

(Felix in Duttons).

I am busy. I do not find long working days particularly good for either body or soul. During periods of insane activity, one must always find a little time to spend in the restorative presence of friends, and it was great to meet up with Felix the other day. We spent a lovely, crafty few hours in York, highlights of which included a cake shaped like a cauliflower, and these amazing tea-cup buttons that Felix found in Duttons (of course).

(very Felix buttons)

After this, and my earlier button pilgrimage with Ysolda, I thought it might be a good idea to produce a map, linking together my favourite York crafty locations. You can click each map-marker to see my notes on each location, or click on ‘larger map’ to zoom in and see the full thing in much more detail.

View Larger Map

Each marker takes you to one of eleven craft hotspots. In no particular order, they are:
1. Duttons (for Buttons)
2. Betty’s (tea. baked goods. confectionery.)
3. Viking Loom (embroidery, quilting, beading)
4. Sheepish (best place for yarn)
5. The Japanese Shop
6. York Beer and Wine (and cheese and cider) shop
7. Priestley’s Vintage Clothing
8. Quilter’s Guild Museum
9. York Castle Museum
10. York Brewery
11. Monk Bar Chocolatiers

(Betty’s. Yorkshire delicacies indeed).

This list is entirely personal, and a bit idiosyncratic. For example, I like ‘Sheepish’ for Yarn, and the ‘Viking Loom’ for embroidery supplies, and I prefer both to ‘Craft Basics’ on Gillygate. On my list you will find beer and cheese, wool and cakes, the finest local produce and ingredients, and (perhaps incongruously) some lovely stuff from Japan. There are also two brilliant museums: the York Castle Museum (chock full of fabulous textiles and intriguing domestic objects), and the museum and archive of the UK Quilter’s Guild (now happily housed in their new home in St Anthony’s Hall). Check their websites for opening times and listings of current exhibitions.

(Ysolda by the River Ouse).

One of the best things about York is how compact and pedestrian-friendly it is. All of the craft hot spots on my list are within or near the city centre, and all are in in easy walking distance from each other. Walking around York is aided by two of the city’s unique geographic / architectural features: its rivers and its walls. The city is bisected by the rivers Foss and Ouse, the latter of which is lined by a lovely Georgian path known (then and now) as the “New Walk“. As well as being a genuine pleasure in itself, a quick walk along the “New Walk” takes you to the haven of refreshment that is the York Beer and Wine shop. A York organisation has produced this great guided tour of the New Walk, which I strongly recommend reading. (I used to live in the first location on this tour many moons ago when I was a student. Ahem.)

(The New Walk in 1756)

The Romans built the original walls around the city they named Eboracum. These defensive walls have been rebuilt several times since over the centuries, and today you can walk almost the whole way round the city centre along well-maintained wall paths which, according to York City Council, are tramped on by around a million people a year. Several of my craft hotspots are near to the bars (or gates) which form the stopping-off and getting-on points for wall-walkers. These include Monk Bar Chocolatiers (located, unsurpsingly, by Monk Bar) and The Viking Loom (close to Bootham Bar).

(Felix walks along the city walls toward Bootham Bar).

As I said, this list is entirely personal, but if any of you Yorkshire folk feel I’ve missed a really vital craft hot spot, do tell me, and I can make additions (or amendments) to the map. Hope you enjoy it! Thankyou!

(tree of knowledge on the doorway of York Minster).

meadwinter

(dawn on mead mountain)

To say this was the most exciting Christmas morning I’ve had since I was around six years old is no exaggeration. We arose at first light and walked all the way across Edinburgh — to ascend Mead Mountain. The streets were quiet, the air was still, and the whole city felt hushed with anticipation. After reaching the summit, we located where we had buried our treat with no problems, and Tom began to dig. There was a brief worried moment when we wondered whether the mead would actually still be there but then, as Tom dug just a little deeper, we uncovered the lovely bottle, still safe in the ground. BINGO!

We cleaned that baby up and then . . .

. . . it was time to taste it!

Slainte!

This picture cannot suggest to you just how bloody good the mead is. This is the first time we’d tasted it, and we were both seriously impressed. This stuff is not sweet or syrupy or any of the things you imagine mead to be. It is dry, fizzy, and fragrant. Containing raspberries, ginger, and lemongrass, it tastes like a sort of light botanical champagne! We really, really enjoyed it.

Now, you’d think things couldn’t get much better than a belly full of home-brewed mead and a heart full of seasonal good cheer — but then they did!

The Mule recently bought Tom some floating balloon-lanterns for his birthday. It being an unusually still and mild morning, we decided to fire one up. We lit the wick, the thing expanded rapidly and then it went . . .
UP . . .

Up . . .

. . . and away!

It was a truly beautiful sight to see our wee balloon floating gracefully high above the city.

For a while, we thought it might make it all the way across to Fife!

(crappy digital zoom)

But then we saw that the flame had gone out, and the balloon started to descend somewhere over Leith. Perhaps it was trying to get home. So we followed it back on foot, to see if we could find it. We didn’t, unfortunately, but as these balloons are flimsy, and biodegradable tissue paper things, I don’t feel too bad about it.
Thanks for the lanterns, Mule!

I’m going to take a break now until after the New Year, and I wanted to thank all of you who have stopped by during 2008. I always enjoy your comments, and have been blown away by the debates, exchanges and, in some instances, friendships, that have arisen from conversations here. I also particularly want to thank those of you who sent us messages of support after Belle’s death and Tom’s accident — it really meant a lot to us. Seasonal joy to you all. And a very happy new year.

not a hoot

Well, it turns out I am really rather ill. So ill that I am unable to do much of anything at all, and certainly not travel down to The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate which I’ve been looking forward to for months. This is incredibly galling. But I am focusing on getting well. And on the good things that are happening here.

Tom made a pale ale — the first brewing he’s been able to do since he injured his hand. There shall be beer for Christmas!

And then there is this. What is it? Well, it is what restored my knitting mojo; shall soon be worn by me; and is a veritable beacon of foolish happiness in the glum fog of sickness. It is closely related to — and inspired by — Liz’s and Mandy’s projects, and is graced by sixteen of my very favourite beasties which, depending on your range of reference you may associate with Minerva, with Harry Potter, or with Sheffield Wednesday FC. Soon, all shall be revealed. Hoot hoot.

drone

Today, a small batch of strawberry and elderflower mead and a rather larger one of Belgian tripel beer were ready for bottling. Usually, my involvement with the brewing process is marginal, and limited to two activities: 1) sticking caps on bottles and 2) happily imbibing the end result. But as the resident brewmaster general can’t use his hands, I had to do everything today. I was under very strict instructions.

The turban is apparently a necessity. Hair must be covered up. And, it turns out, I am a thoroughly non-sterile sort of person. Lots of me had to be sterilised. Several hours of washing things followed: arms, funnels, tubs, jugs, tubes. And bottles. Lots and lots of bottles. Then there was some boiling, a bit of pouring, some measuring, and lots more pouring. I discovered beer is quite heavy when you have to lug it about in large quantities. And Tom discovered what we both probably knew already: that I could never get a job in his laboratory.

I did aim for precision and accuracy at all stages, but I fear I am too constitutionally messy to ever be a great brewer. While, in the craft activities that I enjoy, mess is very often the raw material of my creativity, in brewing, the only thing that mess is likely to produce is bacteria. And bad beer. And exploding beer bottles.

Still, I had fun (apart from the endless bottle washing. I defy anyone to enjoy that) . And, as you see here, I was very proud of my successfully bottled mead . . .

. . .and the strong Belgian beer in its wee bottles. This is my favourite bottle. Before it was used for our beer it contained Old Tom: Strong Ale.

Cheers!

whisky and women

Bunnahabhain. Monday morning.

I’m a woman that likes whisky. Now, I know I don’t need to explain this to you. I know that you may like whisky too. And I’m sure that if you do like it, if you have any sort of taste or enthusiasm for any type of usquebah, that you will probably have encountered at least one of these common assumptions about women and whisky.

1. You must be a masculine woman.
Because women don’t really like whisky, do they? The kind of woman who drinks whisky only does so as a pseudo-masculine conceit, doesn’t she? Some sort of attempt to get down with ver lads? A whisky-drinkin’ woman is laying desperate claim to a man’s balls, capability and ambition. Doesn’t Mrs Thatcher like to drink whisky? And Madonna too? Well, there you go then.

2. You would rather be drinking Baileys.
You are visiting a distillery and are automatically offered some hideous gloopy sweet concoction in lieu of the tasty dram that you came looking for. For, it is assumed by some makers and purveyors of the good stuff that, simply because you don’t have testicles, you would automatically rather be drinking something creamy or pastel coloured with a fookin umbrella stuck in inside it.

3. You prefer ‘feminine’ whisky.
Would you like a lowland malt, madam? I’m sure your delicate palate isn’t up to the bruising of a brutish Caol Ila. Surely you’d rather have a Bladnoch? A ladies dram?

(This lady would rather have a Bowmore.)

Given these persistent and hard-to-shake assumptions about women whisky drinkers, I was very interested to read this piece about the recent rise of women members of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. In the article, the SMWS celebrates the fact that it has managed to create the ‘right atmosphere’ for women. As one of them (ahem) I wouldn’t dispute this, but I wonder whether the SMWS might now, in a similar spirit of accommodation, turn its attention to the language of its panel’s tasting notes?
For example in the current list, cask 29.67 is described thus:

“In the unreduced taste the panel found scorched bacon, peanut brittle sprinkled with chimney soot and rubber in the nicest way — can you imagine it? Maybe Ursula Andress in a wetsuit. . . “

Now, I love reading the SMWS’s tasting notes, and they are not specifically at fault here. For you will find comparisons of whisky to women, ranging from the predictable to the bizarre, throughout most whisky ‘bibles’ and all over the review pages of Whisky Magazine. Here, for example, is one eminent whisky critic’s description of a 12 year old Rosebank:

“Relatively young, but beginning to weary nonetheless. Perhaps this tiredness is caused by worry about the future. A feminine whisky that has lost the first bloom of youth. Snatch a kiss while you can.”

This sleazy uncle stuff is fairly typical of the genre, but more surprising (to me at least) was this review of a 15 year old Glenmorangie which appeared a few days ago on the ScotchChix blog

“This older sister to Glenmorangie 10, the girl next door, is a bit of a wallflower. With her strawberry nose and vanilla palate, Glenmorangie 15 should be just as pleasing as her sibling. However, she simply doesn’t open up the way Glenmorangie 10 does, leaving this Scotch Chick just a tad disappointed.”

To me, that’s poorly written as well as being offensive. Aigugh!

Whisky is something that inherently evokes fascination and desire. It is a drink that is both complex and elusive. Because it is all of these things, one of the principal vocabularies used to describe it is that of sexual — and specificially heterosexual — possession. And while the culture of whisky production, sale, and consumption may be shifting to accomodate women, the vocabulary of whisky certainly hasn’t caught up yet. Its always demure or yielding this, coy or coquettish that. But whisky is not a woman. And such comparisons of whisky-to-woman act, I’m sure, as an impediment to many women’s enjoyment of a wee dram or two — reinforcing that persistent and eroneous stereotype of it being a man’s drink.

Bowmore at Bowmore.

But there are other whisky metaphors no less evocative, and certainly not as irritating as those afforded by gender. For example, this whisky seller has superb tasting notes that are redolent, idiosyncratic, and never resort to an offensive language of sexual desire (at least not that I’ve seen). For example, their website describes a Talisker 25 year old suggestively as “the love child of Brian Ferry and Eartha Kitt”. References to the Who’s great performances, Moon still at the drums, abound. These epithets may be obscure to some, but to me are far more powerful and compelling than any comparison to a leering whore or a perfumed great aunt (the latter being a favourite reference point of whisky critics for the output of closed Forres distillery, Dallas Dhu).

Anyway, as you may have gathered, one of the things I enjoy so much about Islay is the whisky. It was, in fact, an Ardbeg at the Port Charlotte Hotel that induced my own whisky epiphany some years ago. The taste of an Ardbeg 10 or a Bowmore 17 just says Islay to me, it speaks of gold and green and blue, of rocks and peat and salt water, in a manner more vivid and eloquent than any metaphor I or anyone else could dream up. And, after all this discussion about the language of whisky, I find that I really lack one to adequately capture the feel of Bowmore’s lochside warehouse, with the cool smell of the sea and the promise of its slowly aging casks. I just don’t have the words to describe it. But it is something very close to whisky heaven.

Bowmore. Last Sunday.

Slainte.