Retroroad Ride 2nd June - retrobeer build thread

When it comes to bike-build threads i just can't, to be perfectly honest, be bothered. I'm not inherently lazy I just want to shonk it together and get out on it. But to celebrate a load of old codgers cycling around Warwickshire and Leicestershire i have got my act together and am going to do a Retroride-retrobeer-build thread! The beer will be on sale at the brewery on the day of the ride and then at pubs around the country...ish.

See here for ride details -

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=187272

You need several ingredients to make beer, there are the usual suspects such as malted barley, water, hops and yeast etc... but the biggies that often go unmentioned are an idea, a touch of inspiration, hard sums, a desparate need to be accepted by your peers and a huge helping of perseverance!

First off...what do we want the beer to be like? Strength in ABV% ? Colour? Style of beer? Flavour profile...malty, biscuity, sweet, rich ?

Malted barley and other adjuncts (stuff you add) are what we use to give us the sugar needed to create alcohol and also manipulate the basic flavour profile. Our beer will be 4.1% ABV, will be somewhere between pale straw and light gold in colour and be crisp and clean with a tiny hiny of biscuity-ness. To do this the malt recipe will be 93% pale malt, 5% torrified wheat and 2% crystal malt....should be very yummy.

More coming soon

this is proper cool

Very much looking forward to tasting the results of this thread.

dont forget you need a overgrown skateboarding ,punk reject to make beer. but he is probably out on his brand new overgrown 29 er

matthew71":1i21sypb said:

dont forget you need a overgrown skateboarding ,punk reject to make beer. but he is probably out on his brand new overgrown 29 er

Click to expand...

how could i ever forget 'the big gay bear' :roll:

he will feature soon never fear...and yes he is down in Cheltenham this weekend on his vastly overpriced orange thing...ask him about the crud - catcher

grumpycommuter":nfzt9jh2 said:

matthew71":nfzt9jh2 said:

dont forget you need a overgrown skateboarding ,punk reject to make beer. but he is probably out on his brand new overgrown 29 er

Click to expand...

how could i ever forget 'the big gay bear' :roll:

he will feature soon never fear...and yes he is down in Cheltenham this weekend on his vastly overpriced orange thing...ask him about the crud - catcher

Click to expand...

is the vastly overpriced orange thing his bike or micra ? i was with him wednesday night on the new bike, he was mincing along,so he did not scratch it

matthew71":3op17r7k said:

grumpycommuter":3op17r7k said:

matthew71":3op17r7k said:

dont forget you need a overgrown skateboarding ,punk reject to make beer. but he is probably out on his brand new overgrown 29 er

Click to expand...

how could i ever forget 'the big gay bear' :roll:

he will feature soon never fear...and yes he is down in Cheltenham this weekend on his vastly overpriced orange thing...ask him about the crud - catcher

Click to expand...

is the vastly overpriced orange thing his bike or micra ? i was with him wednesday night on the new bike, he was mincing along,so he did not scratch it

Click to expand...

He spent all Thursday moaning that he was having to go to Halfords to buy 'potions and lotions' for his new steed. I stuck some ear defenders on in the end. I still can't believe his bike cost more than his micra but i still love him to bits !!!

Today I’ve worked out the weights of barley required for our recipe. Every batch of barley or adjunct comes with a spec sheet, upon which is the potential amount of sugar that we can extract from 1kg . This varies between each batch and each adjunct. This recipe is quite simple, made up of pale barley, wheat and crystal malt. The crystal will give us slightly less sugar than the barley and the wheat will give us slightly more, so i’ll use the barley as our base point for the calculation.

Each brewery will extract a different amount of sugar from their barley, dependant on their process and this can vary even between brewers. 100% extraction is only possible in laboratory conditions, whereas here we achieve somewhere between 92 – 94% efficiency. With this in mind, once the recipe is done we need to add a little barley more to get the sugar levels back up.

We bung all this into a calculation, wave our magic wand and ta-dah!! We have the weights required for our recipe. Then it’s off to the malt store to weigh it all out in readiness for brewing. The brew date is set for Thursday May 17th.

Hops next!!

My mother in law used to work at Fawcetts maltsters in Castleford....

Thought you'd all feel better for knowing that!

ringo":1ntol667 said:

My mother in law used to work at Fawcetts maltsters in Castleford....

Thought you'd all feel better for knowing that!

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Thats ace....nice one. What did she do there?