A VISIT TO WOODFORDE'S BREWERY
18th June 2023
On Monday, 12th June, we made our way to Norwich from all directions and enjoyed an excellent and very informative visit to the award-winning Woodforde's Brewery in Woodbastwick. The tour was led by our dear friend Ray, a regular at our CACB meetings in Cambridge, who showed us the older part of the brewery, which was converted from redundant farm buildings in the 1980s.
Following that, Bruce, the current Head Brewer showed us round the newer areas in the extension built a few years ago, plus the bottling & canning hall etc. We then retired to the brewery tap, The Fur & Feather Inn, for a super lunch - and of course a number of beers!
JANUARY MEETING
29th January 2023
Yesterday saw the first CACB gathering of the year at the, always welcoming, Maypole in Cambridge. It was great to welcome some new faces. On the agenda was dry hopping with pellets, grinding malt at home and method for using hops in a conical fermenter so as to avoid hop particles in resulting beer.
You can contact us to get a full run-down on what was discussed.
A VISIT TO PETER'S HOME BREWERY
29th December 2022
A number of us visited Peter's home brewery. A very interesting afternoon and we also sampled a number of home brews too. Some pictures in this post - and Peter has provided a description of the brewery - below:
"The Brewery consists of a three vessel rig, Hot liquor tank, Mash tun and Copper all on the same level with two March May pumps to move liquid from the HLT to the Mash tun and another from the Mash tun to and from the Copper via a separate HERMES/Heater/Counterflow cooler. The vessels are plumbed together with soldered copper pipe and manual 3-part stainless valves. One day I will stop messing around with the layout and go all stainless. The HLT and Mash tun was once a 250L stainless pressurised hot water cylinder I acquired from Triplow dump for £5 and cut 2/3 -1/3 for HLT/Mash tun. The HLT has two 3Kw elements and a level sensor to prevent me accidentally burning out the elements due to lack of water! (come on we have all done it!). The Mash tun is insulated but without an element. The wort temp can be either maintained or adjusted via the HERMES. The Copper is an ex-Ham boiler with a 4/8Kw element, and a hop filter. The system is controlled via a wall mounted control panel that has PID control for the HLT which is also on a timer to take advantage of the Cheaper Night rate electricity. There is a Boil/PID controller for the Copper and a PID controller for the HERMES/Heater/Cooler. There is also an Auto-Sparge system to control the level of the sparge via a float switch/relay and a controller to stop cooling once pitch temp has been reached. Wort is fermented in one of two conicals I had fabricated with PID control of heating (via a heating coil) and cooling via a Maxi 210 cooler with a stainless coil inside the fermenter. The beer mostly goes into Cornies and a typical Gyle is designed to produce 3 conies worth, but can range from 2-4 (40-90L). For yeast propagation there is a Class 2 hood and a temperature controlled incubator which was made from an ex Innocent Smoothies display cooler and tube heater with PID control and a magnetic stirrer."
DUXFORD: THE VILLAGE REDISCOVERING ITS LOST PUBS AND ALE HOUSES
11th January 2023
In the mid-19th Century, the Cambridgeshire village of Duxford was home to a few hundred people, most of whom worked the land. But while Duxford may have had just one butcher, one carter and one joiner, it had at least eight (possibly nine) pubs or ale houses. The question is: whatever happened to these pubs and ale houses?
The BBC today published an article about the village and one man's mission to rediscover its brewing history and drinking habits. You can read the full article HERE.