we have been
Brewing - No7
Racking - Independence
Bottling - Milk Stout
Delivering to (amongst many others) The Grand Pier (W-S-M)
Phoning London
Listening to The Specials
& considering how we can play brewery cricket
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
The Pop-Up Hotel
One of the great things about festivals are all the little things that come from them... such as our new found friendship with the Pop-Up Hotel and their new venture.
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
A woman walks into a pub...
On Tuesday 24th May at 7pm Bordeaux Quay will throw open its doors to thirsty Bristol females with some delicious tapas style dishes expertly matched to BBF brews by the UK’s leading female beer writer, Melissa Cole.
The stereotypical image of a real ale drinker as being male and northern is fortunately long gone. These days a cask ale devotee is just as likely to be female and, what’s more, science says she’s probably a better judge of the flavour and subtlety of a brew than the bloke propping up the bar beside her! 
So then, three cheers to Bristol Beer Factory for teaming up with one of the UK’s leading beer writers, Melissa Cole, and Bordeaux Quay to present an evening of fine beer & food.
Designed to appeal to newcomers to beer and seasoned drinkers alike all attendees are in for a real treat, with a chance to get to grips with the complexity of flavour in artisan beer, served alongside fine food, and in an all-female environment.
There will be at least six different beers to sample from Bristol Beer Factory’s broad range of craft beers. Melissa will host the event in true Beer Factory style; it will be an informal affair with lots of laughs and lots to learn, with the BBF team and Head Brewer Chris Kay on hand to share their beer experience and expertise.
Chris adds: “We have certainly noticed with our brewery tours that it is most often the women who are more sensitive to the subtleties of flavour in beer - perhaps this should come as no surprise as traditionally in England ale-wives were the main brewers of beer in the home!
“And this event isn’t about preaching, it’s about introducing the women of Bristol to just how good beer and food matching can be, by sampling the vast array of aromas and flavours in different beers from citrus to chocolate, coffee to banana, bread to passion fruit and so many more.”
Tickets to the event are £20 per person for a full evening of taste sensations with plenty of beer, food and banter. Available to purchase from the brewery, please call Andrew on 0117 9026317 or email sales@bristolbeerfactory.co.uk.
New Beers
Busy times ahead! 2 New beers available from 17th May, the first is Indian Ink which is being launched on Tuesday night at the Grain Barge. Indian Ink was the winning beer in this years Homebrew Competition, it is a 6.5% Black IPA, and the winning brewer Ali Kocho-Williams came to the brewery to brew it with us. It will be available in casks and bottles over the next couple of weeks, so get it whilst you can and join us and Ali at the Grain Barge on Tuesday to grab the first taste of it.
Our next new beer is called Independence a 4.6% American Pale Ale, continuously hopped for an hour to give a big full and rounded hop character. It is tasting great from the tank and we can't wait to see how the flavours settle down once it has had a period of dry-hopping with some aromatic Citra hops just to finish it off.After Southville Hops recent success at the SIBA South-West Beer Festival we have done a brew just for cask, it will be available from the 24th May. Those of you who love an American style IPA keep your eyes peeled for it.
On 24th May we are brewing a beer with Melissa Cole, before our Ladies Beer & Food Evening. The recipe is a closely guarded secret at this stage as Chris and Melissa work out the final details for it, but no doubt there will be some interesting twists to it... I can't wait to see what they concoct.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Beer Dinner at Flinty Red
Flinty Red, the restaurant run as a collaboration between the chefs Matthew Williamson and Claire Thomson and the wine merchants Dominic Harman and Rachel Higgens of Corks of Cotham, invited us to come and do a night of beer and food matching with them. An offer we couldn't resist.
Matt put together a fabulous menu using as many beer elements as you could dream of, using hops and malt in their 'raw' form and 'wort' (the beer before fermentation) as well as cooking with different beers.
A full house descended on the restaurant on a chilly Tuesday evening, to be welcomed by a Black Velvet, the classic Stout & sparkling wine cocktail first drunk to mourn Prince Albert in 1861. Bristol Stout is a classic Irish-style dry stout with lovely roasted flavours from its blend of 7 different malts. The light bubbles from the sparkling wine and the hint of roastiness were a lovely balance surprising a lot of people who wouldn't normally try such a drink.
After an introduction to the brewery and a description of how we use hops by Brett Ellis (the brewery hophead), the first course of cured trout was served. The Trout had been cured in 2 different ways, the first piece was hop-cured, using hops in the curing process and a little of our home-made Citra Hop Vodka to give a really citrus hop character to the trout. The second cure used a beer vinegar and both pale ale and crystal malts. The flavours in both cures worked particularly well with the trout - the hop-cure was my personal favourite. The trout was served with Acer, a 3.8% golden-orange ale with a noticeable citrus hop kick and full mouthfeel of ripe tangerines (not mouldy oranges!). It was a terrific partner to the trout, the citrus notes in the beer being a fine compliment to the fish and the bready malt backbone to the beer matching the malt-cured trout very nicely.
The second course was a classic beer-lovers dish of Mussels cooked in a wheat beer liquor. The wheat beer was our Bristol Hefe a German-style wheat beer, creamy and full-bodied, yet zippy and zesty from the wheat, but it is the yeast that is the real star of this beer giving incredible aromas and flavours of banana and bubble gum and a clove spiciness. A delicious refreshing style of beer that is a fantastic accompaniment to any fish, but particularly shellfish. The mussels were lovely and plump, a hint of the sea, onion and garlic and a balancing citrus acidity from the beer. To mop up all the lovely liquor Matt had made a beer bread or barm using Gold our strong golden ale with a biscuity backbone and citrus hops.
The first meaty course of the evening was probably my favourite pairing. Duck breast cured using crystal malt, chosen because of its sweetness. The duck was given a traditional salt and sugar cure with light spices and some vanilla, it was then packed in the crystal malt. Head brewer Chris Kay gave us an introduction to the different varieties of malt and how it is used in the brewing process as well as a description of this style of beer. The duck was incredible in both flavour and texture, deep, rich, sweet and salty meat served with some balancing celeriac. The beer we chose to go with it was Exhibition, a classic old fashioned style of Englich ale, strong and flavourful, the malty flavours pairing particularly well with the rich meat and the fruity esters from the yeast a delicious contrast. A great success of a beer and food match, and the memories from the duck have me salavating!
The next d
ish is a Belgian classic of Carbonade - essentially meat cooked in beer. Matt chose to do Ox Cheeks in our Ultimate Stout. Dark, rich beef cooked ever so slowly in a big strong stout, lots of really big flavours in this dish. The Ultimate Stout is our strongest beer so far at 7.7%, we brew it using a Belgian yeast that gives a lighter finish to this heavy beer, I think making it a more drinkable beer. The Ox Cheeks melted in the mouth and the stout gave the dish a great depth of flavour. A great main course.
Cheese followed, often thought of as wines bedfellow, but we have long-believed that beer and cheese can make some incredible pairings. Comte d'Estive an 18 month mountain aged French Gruyere style cheese, had an earthiness and caramel sweetness that was a fantastic partner
to our new Oak-aged No.7. The No.7 has a distinct toffee-malt flavour and aroma, but when aged in red wine oak barrels it takes on a few more layers of complexity with vanilla, wood and a slight vinous acidity all playing a part. It was a very good if slightly unspectacular partner to the cheese. The second cheese was a washed-rind Tallegio partnered with Acer. I initially planned to partner this with a Raspberry Hefe (our wheat beer aged on raspberries) but the beer was a bit to acidic and overpowered the cheese. Acer was just right though, light and citrussy, refreshing the mouth after each bite of the creamy cheese and with plenty of hop character to match up to the flavours in the rind.
The final pairing was Shropshire Blue and Milk Stout, one of our favourite of all beer and food partnerships. The Milk Stout is a perfect foil to blue cheese, the creaminess in the beer and cheese marry together and the blue in the cheese and roasty stout flavours in the beer work beautifully together. If you haven't tried it before or don't think you like stout I urge you to put Milk Stout and blue cheeses together.
A dark Chocolate and Stout Torte was up for dessert. The stout gave the cake an incredibly deep flavour and a lovely long bitter finish. It was paired with our Hazelnut Latte Stout, a version of our Milk Stout enriched with Java coffee and roasted hazelnuts. The coffee and nutty elements work fantastically in the beer with the sweet chocolate and creamy notes already there. The chocolate torte was accompanied by a beer ice-cream made using wort (unfermented beer), it was a very delicately flavoured ice-cream, an initial malty sweetness (think Maltesers) was then balanced with a slightly citrus hop aftertaste, all very subtle and not over-powering.
We finished the evening off with a cheeky Beer Float - Raspberry aged Stout with a little dollop of the beer ice-cream was the perfect way to finish a great evening.
Many thanks to Matt the Chef and Rachel and Becky for making us so welcome and producing some incredible food.
A few thoughts on Beer & Food Matching...
Beer has been the poor relative on the British dinner table for some time now, seen only as a social drink for the pub, lacking sophistication and ignored by restaurants.
Hopefully things are starting to change, as a Craft Beer revolution starts to slowly take hold and the spectrum of available beers increases, restaurants around the country are improving their beer lists and brewers and beer writers are desperate to spread the word.
Beer has an incredible number of different styles and flavours that can be carefully matched with the flavours in a meal to give a taste sensation that is greater than the sum of its parts. We often match our beers with the delicious cheese available from Trethowan’s Dairy, and have discovered some incredible pairings. With restaurants such as Flinty Red taking beer seriously and producing amazing food by cooking with beer and the raw ingredients from beer the future looks brighter for the nations favourite drink. Now hopefully we can inspire the public to find a place on their dinner table for a beer.
Our favourite pairings from our Flinty Red dinner.
- Crystal malt cured Duck breast paired with Exhibition - the malt gave the duck a lovely sweetness, and the depth of flavourt in the meat paired beautifully with the rich, dark fruity flavours of the beer.
- Raspberry Stout Ice-cream Float - Matt at Flinty Red made the most divine beer ice-cream that we couldn’t resist dropping into our special edition Raspberry Stout to make a fantastic after dinner dessert drink. A fun way to end a dinner party.
Flinty Red, the restaurant run as a collaboration between the chefs Matthew Williamson and Claire Thomson and the wine merchants Dominic Harman and Rachel Higgens of Corks of Cotham, invited us to come and do a night of beer and food matching with them. An offer we couldn't resist.
Matt put together a fabulous menu using as many beer elements as you could dream of, using hops and malt in their 'raw' form and 'wort' (the beer before fermentation) as well as cooking with different beers.
A full house descended on the restaurant on a chilly Tuesday evening, to be welcomed by a Black Velvet, the classic Stout & sparkling wine cocktail first drunk to mourn Prince Albert in 1861. Bristol Stout is a classic Irish-style dry stout with lovely roasted flavours from its blend of 7 different malts. The light bubbles from the sparkling wine and the hint of roastiness were a lovely balance surprising a lot of people who wouldn't normally try such a drink.
After an introduction to the brewery and a description of how we use hops by Brett Ellis (the brewery hophead), the first course of cured trout was served. The Trout had been cured in 2 different ways, the first piece was hop-cured, using hops in the curing process and a little of our home-made Citra Hop Vodka to give a really citrus hop character to the trout. The second cure used a beer vinegar and both pale ale and crystal malts. The flavours in both cures worked particularly well with the trout - the hop-cure was my personal favourite. The trout was served with Acer, a 3.8% golden-orange ale with a noticeable citrus hop kick and full mouthfeel of ripe tangerines (not mouldy oranges!). It was a terrific partner to the trout, the citrus notes in the beer being a fine compliment to the fish and the bready malt backbone to the beer matching the malt-cured trout very nicely.
The second course was a classic beer-lovers dish of Mussels cooked in a wheat beer liquor. The wheat beer was our Bristol Hefe a German-style wheat beer, creamy and full-bodied, yet zippy and zesty from the wheat, but it is the yeast that is the real star of this beer giving incredible aromas and flavours of banana and bubble gum and a clove spiciness. A delicious refreshing style of beer that is a fantastic accompaniment to any fish, but particularly shellfish. The mussels were lovely and plump, a hint of the sea, onion and garlic and a balancing citrus acidity from the beer. To mop up all the lovely liquor Matt had made a beer bread or barm using Gold our strong golden ale with a biscuity backbone and citrus hops.
The first meaty course of the evening was probably my favourite pairing. Duck breast cured using crystal malt, chosen because of its sweetness. The duck was given a traditional salt and sugar cure with light spices and some vanilla, it was then packed in the crystal malt. Head brewer Chris Kay gave us an introduction to the different varieties of malt and how it is used in the brewing process as well as a description of this style of beer. The duck was incredible in both flavour and texture, deep, rich, sweet and salty meat served with some balancing celeriac. The beer we chose to go with it was Exhibition, a classic old fashioned style of Englich ale, strong and flavourful, the malty flavours pairing particularly well with the rich meat and the fruity esters from the yeast a delicious contrast. A great success of a beer and food match, and the memories from the duck have me salavating!The next d
ish is a Belgian classic of Carbonade - essentially meat cooked in beer. Matt chose to do Ox Cheeks in our Ultimate Stout. Dark, rich beef cooked ever so slowly in a big strong stout, lots of really big flavours in this dish. The Ultimate Stout is our strongest beer so far at 7.7%, we brew it using a Belgian yeast that gives a lighter finish to this heavy beer, I think making it a more drinkable beer. The Ox Cheeks melted in the mouth and the stout gave the dish a great depth of flavour. A great main course.Cheese followed, often thought of as wines bedfellow, but we have long-believed that beer and cheese can make some incredible pairings. Comte d'Estive an 18 month mountain aged French Gruyere style cheese, had an earthiness and caramel sweetness that was a fantastic partner
to our new Oak-aged No.7. The No.7 has a distinct toffee-malt flavour and aroma, but when aged in red wine oak barrels it takes on a few more layers of complexity with vanilla, wood and a slight vinous acidity all playing a part. It was a very good if slightly unspectacular partner to the cheese. The second cheese was a washed-rind Tallegio partnered with Acer. I initially planned to partner this with a Raspberry Hefe (our wheat beer aged on raspberries) but the beer was a bit to acidic and overpowered the cheese. Acer was just right though, light and citrussy, refreshing the mouth after each bite of the creamy cheese and with plenty of hop character to match up to the flavours in the rind.The final pairing was Shropshire Blue and Milk Stout, one of our favourite of all beer and food partnerships. The Milk Stout is a perfect foil to blue cheese, the creaminess in the beer and cheese marry together and the blue in the cheese and roasty stout flavours in the beer work beautifully together. If you haven't tried it before or don't think you like stout I urge you to put Milk Stout and blue cheeses together.
A dark Chocolate and Stout Torte was up for dessert. The stout gave the cake an incredibly deep flavour and a lovely long bitter finish. It was paired with our Hazelnut Latte Stout, a version of our Milk Stout enriched with Java coffee and roasted hazelnuts. The coffee and nutty elements work fantastically in the beer with the sweet chocolate and creamy notes already there. The chocolate torte was accompanied by a beer ice-cream made using wort (unfermented beer), it was a very delicately flavoured ice-cream, an initial malty sweetness (think Maltesers) was then balanced with a slightly citrus hop aftertaste, all very subtle and not over-powering.
We finished the evening off with a cheeky Beer Float - Raspberry aged Stout with a little dollop of the beer ice-cream was the perfect way to finish a great evening.
Many thanks to Matt the Chef and Rachel and Becky for making us so welcome and producing some incredible food.
A few thoughts on Beer & Food Matching...
Beer has been the poor relative on the British dinner table for some time now, seen only as a social drink for the pub, lacking sophistication and ignored by restaurants.
Hopefully things are starting to change, as a Craft Beer revolution starts to slowly take hold and the spectrum of available beers increases, restaurants around the country are improving their beer lists and brewers and beer writers are desperate to spread the word.
Beer has an incredible number of different styles and flavours that can be carefully matched with the flavours in a meal to give a taste sensation that is greater than the sum of its parts. We often match our beers with the delicious cheese available from Trethowan’s Dairy, and have discovered some incredible pairings. With restaurants such as Flinty Red taking beer seriously and producing amazing food by cooking with beer and the raw ingredients from beer the future looks brighter for the nations favourite drink. Now hopefully we can inspire the public to find a place on their dinner table for a beer.
Our favourite pairings from our Flinty Red dinner.
- Crystal malt cured Duck breast paired with Exhibition - the malt gave the duck a lovely sweetness, and the depth of flavourt in the meat paired beautifully with the rich, dark fruity flavours of the beer.
- Raspberry Stout Ice-cream Float - Matt at Flinty Red made the most divine beer ice-cream that we couldn’t resist dropping into our special edition Raspberry Stout to make a fantastic after dinner dessert drink. A fun way to end a dinner party.
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