Our first brew day was a huge success. An emotional, exhausting, but ultimately rewarding day at Tin Head Brewery where we are contract brewing. Was it everything we expected? Yes and No. We have had the privilege of spending time with some amazing and talented people at breweries such as Adnams, Elusive and Green Jack, but nothing quite prepares you for your first brew.

The day started with an early alarm and, in hindsight, should have included limbering up ready for a day of physically demanding labour. After a strong coffee, with the hot liquor tank already at strike temperature, we were ripping open sacks of malt ready to mash in. An hour in, we began a slow but steady transfer into the kettle, and I had my first experience of making a professional brewer’s judgement call – when to stop the transfer – aiming for maximum sugar extraction without any nasty tannins.

With the benefit of some expert advice, and a heavy dose of number crunching, I had settled on the timings and quantities of hop additions – this was the biggest challenge for me stepping up from homebrewing to commercial scale brewing.

Mashing out was… everything I knew it would be – shattering, though oddly satisfying. Totally put my hands up – I had help! I think Neil wanted to make sure that we had finished mashing out before the boil was done in the kettle. We were very relieved when the gravity readings told us that we had hit all of our targets.

The colour – looks AMAZING – everything we were expecting from a robust Red IPA. Our little brew is now fermenting in Tank 3 where the yeast is doing the hard work to turn the sugary wort into a tasty tank of Bolster’s Blood.

We would like to thank Neil and Nick at Tin Head for use of their facilities, and expert knowledge, at this stage of our brewery development. You guys rock!

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