It’s been a hectic few months, the launch of Moor Beer Cans along with the ‘Candemonium’ launch weekend formed a massive step forward for us, and it would seem that the amount of time, effort and lets be honest Money invested in doing things the right way has paid off as people seem to be delighted with the end result.
The journey began two years ago with the acceptance that we needed a 330ml offer to sit alongside our 660ml Bombers. This was before everyone and their dog was throwing any beer they could get their hands on into a can, and we started from the position that we had to have the best quality possible, and that cans couldn’t be as good as bottles…. Well because they just aren’t, are they?
America was already putting great beers in cans, so we were able to make comparative tests between the same beers in bottles or in cans, and we soon came to a startling conclusion. Far from the low rent ‘metallic’ taste we had thought we might find, we found ultra fresh hop flavours – even in imported beers – and beer that didn’t suffer from the oxidation and light flaws that so many beers do in bottles. Modern cans are very well designed to ensure that the product never comes in contact with the metal, if you can taste metal then you are drinking a product produced on an inferior line that has damaged the liner of the can whilst seaming the lid, or you imagined it……
Plan formed, we knew two things, that we needed the best canning line we could find, and that unlike the vast majority of brewers who condition in tank, we wanted the secondary fermentation to take place in the can, 100% of it. We didn’t know any beer that was completely can conditioned at the time, even though some did partially condition in can, but if you want Modern Real Ale as we do it in our Casks and Kegs, then you have to condition in the container regardless.
Next time you are in the Supermarket look in the bottom of the ‘bottle conditioned’ Ales, you’ll see an amount of yeast sediment in the bottom of the bottle, along with some exhortation on the labels to ‘stand upright and pour carefully’. OK, but the whole point of a can is that its portable, you can crack one at home, on the beach, out camping, so that traditional ‘bottle conditioning’ thing wasn’t going to work. So we spent a lot of time working on yeast dosing, so we knew how little yeast we could get away with whilst still getting a brilliantly conditioned beer……..Hopefully we’ve aced it and you hadn’t even noticed the yeast in the can, apart from the added flavour and great conditioning.
The next painful truth is that even thought we doubled the size of the brewery when we moved last year, we still aren’t making enough beer to keep every one of our customers happy, so now you have that can in your hand we are already busy planning another extension of brewery capacity, along with some new faces. Pedro, Jemma and Mick have joined us recently and there will be more new additions early in 2016 I’d expect.
Beer wise, we brewed with the guys from Brewdog bar in Bristol for their Collaboration-Fest event that will be happening toward the end of October, the hop harvest came in and so we brewed Envy again, our green hop beer, and Justin Hawke is out in Madrid this week putting in a shift brewing with one of the up and coming Spanish Craft Brewers after confirming a future collaboration with one of Italy’s longest established modern brewers last week. Those of you in the USA might have caught the beer we did with Blue Jacket Brewery in Washington DC, our first Sour, sadly not available in the UK, and yes we might even get JJJ in this year as well.
Those events aside, we’ll soon be putting this year’s vintage of Fusion into bottles (yes, the Bomber is better for Fusion and some other beers, precisely for the reason it’s inferior for hoppy beers, they need that little bit of micro-oxidation to age the beer) and a completely new barrel aged beer that has been sitting in some Scotch Whiskey barrels for a while now…….
Finally, keep an eye on the events page, because after a fantastic Bristol Beer Week 2015 we have a lot more good stuff coming up at the Brewery Tap.