An Introduction

Firstly it seems worth providing something of an introduction. My name’s Matt and I’ve been a homebrewer for a long time, making the switch over to all grain coming up for three years ago. Since becoming a father two years ago I’ve found I have a lot less time to brew as I’m either at work or helping with childcare. I thought I’d start this blog as a way of keeping a log of what I’ve been brewing, both as a reference for myself and also hopefully to be of interest to other brewers out there. As well as recipes etc. I thought it might also be useful to include some of the ideas and techniques I’ve come up with in order to fit brewing in around family life and work.

I enjoy brewing a range of different types of beer but my firm favourites are dark and smoked styles: particularly smoked. As well as this I’ve been really enjoying experimenting with mixed fermentations and farmhouse/historical styles of beer and have set up a sour aging programme in my understairs cupboard. Hopefully there will be more on this in the next couple of months. Kit wise, I’ve been using a Robobrew V.3 for the last year and have found it to be brilliant overall. Alongside this I have a couple of Speidel 30 litre HDPE fermenters and a fermentation fridge which I use to control temperature, so nothing too elaborate or expensive.

I gave up on bottling a while ago because I found it so labour intensive and now only tend to bottle beers which will require long aging, like Imperial Stouts or mixed fermentations. As a result I built a three tap keezer around a year ago and have found kegging to be a much simpler and relaxing process, plus the prospect of being able to pour myself a beer whenever I want is pretty great!

Hopefully that tells you a little about me and I hope you find something of interest amongst my posts.