Brew Your Own Beer!

A couple of months back we went on a wander in Bermondsey to sample all the breweries and taprooms of the Beer Mile and while in one – Mash Paddle, we noticed one side of the bar is lined with tanks, vats and all the equipment to make small batch home brews. So we enquired and a seed of a plan was planted in our minds. We left and continued the trek, finally forgetting our own names let alone the possibilities of making our own beer, until a couple of weeks back…

On that fateful, alcohol induced Saturday we got talking to the owner of Mash Paddle, Nick. We told of a plan to make our own beer that had formed when we used to drink in the Brewdog in Angel (sadly no longer there) and his reaction was much the same as everyone else’s when we said what we wanted to make…

And we left it there. Then we started to think about the possibility of actually making the beer and doing it in Bermondsey, we enquired and reminded him of our idea and got an eager response from the Beer Master. The idea was starting to bloom, a date was set and Nick got on to trying out recipes for the first Climbing Moss Beer – A Chocolate Mint Red Ale.

So why that brew? Well Chocolate and Mint begin with C and M as in Climbing & Moss and a weird coincidence the initials of Chocolate And Mint Red Ale spell CAMRA also the Campaign for Real Ale Acronym!

But we digress…

On a cold, extremely wet Tuesday in the middle of November we headed ‘down souf’ once more to get brewing. We were welcomed into the empty bar and immediately set to task filling the tanks and heating water in the Mash Basket and adding the malt including some chocolate malt for the flavour to the water, then stirring the mixture with the brewery’s name sake, the Mash Paddle.

While the Mash started to heat up we got a bit of the history of Mash Paddle, hearing Nick’s visions of the future of the Brand. We got to know a little of his history – how the once Corporate Funds Manager quickly got bored of the 9-5, how his colleagues were happy to tow the company line, while all he wanted was to be his own boss and make beer! So he went back to school, learnt more about business and then applied it to beer making, opening the Taproom early last year and adding another stop on the infamous Beer Mile. Now he is trying to promote and encourage people to come along and make their own brews, finding new and inventive concoctions to make in the former railway arch.

With the water at 100˚ we started the add more water to give us the amount of liquid required for our beer. Adding 15Litres of water to the Sparge as it is called and gave it another stir. Then we waited, thankfully there was beer and a form of Shuttle Board to entertain us while the liquid bubbled away, until it was time to add the Hops.

Specifically A Citra Hop and some Irish Moss (appropriately picked for us), carefully and precisely weighed out and added to the boiling brew.

The smell at this point wasn’t very pleasant and it really got in the back of our throats and seemed to live there for the next few days. Then just five minutes before the end we added the Mint, just enough time for the strong flavours to add to the potion.

There is a lot of hanging around between stages, but it’s still a lot quicker than you’d expect, in total less than 4 hours from the start to sealing it in the vat to stew for a couple of weeks.

A tester was taken to sample and to mark the sugar levels before the fermentation began and to give us a little taste, although what we tasted may have been a little minty, but it wasn’t nice and we feared it would end up a disaster! Finally before the end of our day the important yeast had to be added and we left our concoction brewing in a steel barrel in the back of the Taproom and headed home, to return in two weeks…

On an extra cold Tuesday a couple of weeks later we returned to the arch to discover Nick had already separated the waste yeast from our brew and we set about transferring our Red Ale to a barrel and add a bit more sugar before giving it a good churning, one last time, before he taught us how to fill cans with the beer.

A funky pressured device called a Blitchmann Beer Gun pumps CO2 and then the beer into shiny, new cans and a machine that we mistook for an espresso machine presses the top of the cans on, sealing the liquid inside.

Then all that was needed was the label, made by us the week before on Canva, spread around the tin can and Voila! The finished article the first brew of the Climbing Moss Micro Brewery!! We had a taste of course, we mean… well we had to, didn’t we? we couldn’t make it and not make sure it was good enough. A sample can that hadn’t been capped was sacrificed and we supped the concoction!

The rest of the cans have to sit for a couple of weeks to condition and Carbonate, but all seems good, the taste is honestly pretty good, strangely we had different experiences of the taste, Bob found the mint strong enough without being over powering, Ash, found it subtle, but Nick the manager was blown away by the full flavours, claiming it to be like drinking an After Eight, weird how we all found it so different!

But that is our experience of brewing our own beer and we have to say it was fun and a lot easier than we ever thought it would be and highly recommend you give it a go yourselves at Mash Paddle!

We have of course documented the experience on Youtube too and you can watch that here and we will make an update next week when we finally get to sample the finished product, so look out for that on social Media.