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We're proud to have featured again with This Morning, showcasing with the best advent calendars you can buy for Advent this year!
This week we launch the range of Salt Beer Factory beers on the site and what better way to introduce a new brewery to our beer hunters than to have a good 'ole fashioned interview with Nadir Zairi, Director of the Yorkshire based brewery in Saltaire.
There are signs that Non-Alcoholic beer is hitting the mainstream and is poised to hit the big time, but just how popular will it become? In this article I’ll look at some of the signs that show ‘NOLO’ (non or low alcoholic) beer is becoming a serious player in our industry, and how its development might progress in the UK.
After trying out our very own World Beers mixed case for a beer tasting party, Christie Day, Brand Expert at money-saving website Savoo shares her tips for hosting a top beer tasting night on a budget.
Ask someone down the pub for the reasons behind Britain’s recent Beer revival, and you’re guaranteed all sorts of different explanations. In 2017 the number of UK breweries passed the 2000 mark, which puts us well ahead of European neighbours. Most will have a reasonable argument for why, but you can bet your double-dry hopped DIPA that very few of them would mention Gordon Brown, ex-PM and former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The solution to water Why, 175 years ago, did the town of Plzen in what is now the Czech Republic birth a style – the pilsner – that would one day conquer the world? Why is Dublin’s world-famous beer so black? Did Arthur Guinness simply have a penchant for dark ales? What’s so special about Burton-on-Trent that “Burtonisation” is an actual brewing practice? The answer to all of the above is: water! By Mark James, Beer Hawk's homebrew buyer Beer is a solution of chemical compounds in water and without this indispensable life-giving liquid a lot more than brewing would cease to be. When we talk about the water of Dublin, Burton or Plze? in a brewing context however, we’re referring to the different profiles of dissolved minerals that make each location’s water unique. You may be surprised how many scientific advances were born of man’s
Why, 175 years ago, did the town of Plzen in what is now the Czech Republic birth a style – the pilsner – that would one day conquer the world? Why is Dublin’s world-famous beer so black? Did Arthur Guinness simply have a penchant for dark ales? What’s so special about Burton-on-Trent that “Burtonisation” is an actual brewing practice? The answer to all of the above is: water!
By Mark James, Beer Hawk's homebrew buyer
Beer is a solution of chemical compounds in water and without this indispensable life-giving liquid a lot more than brewing would cease to be.
When we talk about the water of Dublin, Burton or Plze? in a brewing context however, we’re referring to the different profiles of dissolved minerals that make each location’s water unique.
You may be surprised how many scientific advances were born of man’s
You may be surprised how many scientific advances were born of man’s desire to brew better beer; the pH scale that we use to measure acidity or alkalinity was invented by a Danish chemist at the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1909. The best beer is made when the mash’s pH is in the 5.2 – 5.6 range (slightly acidic), but most water sources are slightly alkaline.How then did brewers hit the pH sweet spot, particularly in days past when bottles of laboratory acids were not an option?
Happily nature provides a solution: malt is acidic, and the darker the roast, the more acidic the grain. In Dublin where the water has a high level of alkalinity, lots of dark malt brings the pH down to the ideal level and a classic dry stout is born.
At the other end of the spectrum, Plze?’s water is so soft and free of minerals that the lightest malts alone provide sufficient acidity to hit the desired mash pH. It was here therefore that on 5th October 1842, the Bavarian brewer Josef Groll presented a bottom-fermented beer with a paleness hitherto unseen, a ‘Pilsner’, and the rest as they say, is history.