Odessa in London

Almost a year ago now I went down to Otley Brewing in South Wales and did a brew with them. Unlike many collaborative brews, they made me come up with the recipe, select the hops and everything. When I co-created Brew Dog’s Avery Brown Dredge with Zak and Mark, they did most of the work and I just said things like, “Yes. very good.” This time I was on my own. Nowhere to hide. (There’s a nice video of the brew day of you follow the link above).

Inspired by Martin Dickie’s ginger nuts (we were very hungover) I decided I wanted to brew an imperial stout with ginger. And chocolate. And then mature it in whisky casks for a year.You may say that’s showing off. I say it was cruising for a fall. As I kept chucking handfuls of crystallised ginger and Belgian chocolate drops into the copper when Nick Otley wasn’t looking (unaware that Nick was doing the same when I wasn’t looking) I was genuinely worried it wouldn’t work.

For ten months, some of this beer sat in bourbon barrels and some in mead barrels. Nick finally tasted it last weekend and after he stopped saying ‘wow!’ (which took a while) he said it was pitch black, and very warming.

Tomorrow you get a chance to see if we pulled it off or whether I should stick to writing rather than brewing. Odessa Imperial Stout is launching in four London pubs, and Nick and I are touring them to give it a try in each one. Each pub gets either the whisky or the mead finish, randomly chosen. So if you can, it’s worth trying at least three pubs. The beer will of course be on sale all day until it runs out. But if you want to see me or Nick (save the difficult questions for him) our rough timetable is as follows:

1. The White Horse, Parsons Green, between 1pm & 2pm

2. The Rake, Borough, between 3pm & 4pm

3. The Jolly Butchers, Stoke Newington, between 5pm & 6pm

4. The Southampton Arms, Kentish Town, between 7pm & 8pm

I’ll be tweeting events for as long as I can focus. Though after the first couple of pints of this stuff, I may well ask someone to take my phone off me.

See you there!

30th November 2010 | Uncategorised

November V-Blog: The Astonishing Rise of London’s Brewers, and the Jolly Butchers!

With just hours of November left, the team behind our video blogs have managed to pull together the edits of me in the Jolly Butchers, and Peter Amor’s latest instalment of brewing fun.

In previous V-Blogs we’ve gone around various pubs trying a variety of beers. This time we stayed closer to home – very close to my home in fact – just around the corner from my house, and focused the whole episode on the astonishing rise of London’s small brewers. Four years ago, London had Fuller’s and Meantime. Both among my favourites, but a shockingly small choice for the nation’s capital. A couple of years ago something exploded in the collective beery psyche. The result, well, click below…

Pete Brown’s British Beer Blog – November from Ian Hudson Films on Vimeo.

By the way – I’m slurring a bit – that’s not drunkenness – just tiredness.

If you enjoyed these, and haven’t seen previous ones, check out my adventures in Nottingham and in South Wales.

Meanwhile, Peter Amor, after taking us through beer’s ingredients and the process in the brewhouse, moves now to fermentation – in both the brewery fermentation room, and the pub cellar.

Peter Amor’s British Brewing Blog: Episode 3 from Ian Hudson Films on Vimeo.