Month: September 2016

National Cask Ale Week starts tomorrow and runs until October 2nd. The eagle eyed amongst you might spot that this is actually an 11 day long “week”, but when it’s in celebration of our beloved beer, who are we to argue?!

Cask beer is far and away the majority of our production here at Abbeydale (even though our keg offering continues to grow massively this year!) and we’re pretty darn proud of it too. With our hugely popular core range, alongside weekly specials ranging from pale and hoppy ales to fruity and roasty stouts, there’s always plenty of variety available and something to suit every palate. One of the aims of Cask Ale Week is to encourage more people to try real ale, and as autumn draws in we reckon there’s nothing finer than spending an evening in a cosy pub with a couple of pints.

You can find out more at caskaleweek.co.uk including details of upcoming events in your area.

Mine’s a Moonshine… Cheers!

Due to ever increasing demand, we’ve just taken delivery of two new brewery vessels! A 60BBL (brewers’ barrels) fermenter – this equates to a capacity of over 17,000 pints – and a 60BBL conditioning tank, increasing our brewhouse production by 25%. In drinking terms, that’s a potential of an extra 898,560 pints!!

These have been specially commissioned to enable us to increase production of our flagship beer, Moonshine, whilst freeing up precious space in our smaller vessels to allow us to continue experimenting with new beer styles and flavours.

It was a bit of a hair raising afternoon with our not-enormous access absolutely pushed to the limits, however we are pleased to report that both vessels are now settling in to their new homes. Now for the immensely satisfying job of peeling off the protective coating…!

The story of this beer, as all good stories do, began in a pub. Myself (Christie) and Josh from Blue Bee were drunkenly admiring the many qualities of the Sorachi Ace hop over a pint of Brass Castle’s ‘Life’s A Beach’. And we both thought that it would be fun to take a similar idea to the next level and make something boozier. So to Makro it was to clean out the shelves of pineapple and dessicated coconut. Two weeks later and after a very full mash tun we have crafted ‘Getting Caught In the Rain’, our Pina Colada IPA at a very healthy 6.9% ABV! To give you an insight into how tasty it will be, it contains a mere 25 kgs of pineapple, 25 kgs of lactose and 15 kgs of lovingly hand toasted desiccated coconut  (that took far too long, don’t try this at home). What sounds more appetising than pineapple, coconut and booze?! Available very soon in cask and KEY KEG (shock horror) via Blue Bee Brewery.

Peace and love,

Christie