Most blokes I know have a story about drinking homebrewed beer, whether it is a story about how bad it was, how good it was or more commonly about how crook it made them. Although recently I heard the best story ever about homebrew and how a shed full of exploding homebrew stubbies sliced through an acquaintance’s leg, he passed out from blood loss and was saved by his flatmates.
It’s amazing how funny a story can be when it involves alcohol.
I’ve only been lucky enough to try truly great quality homebrew twice so far in my 37 years. A lot of people claim they can make great stuff, and when you try it, you hope that their shed full of bottles would explode and save you from that homebrew hell. I’ve often thought that because of the extremes of quality in homemade beer that there must be some secret coven somewhere that shares their brewing secrets. But back to my point, making your own good beer is an art form and recently I discovered “U-Brew It” in Portsmith, who I think may be able to lead us all toward brewing nirvana, and into an inner Brewing circle, a kind of beer drinking Freemasons society if you will, in their tuxedos with secret bottle openers instead of handshakes, and yeast and hops instead of the compass and square.
“U-Brew It” run a “brew on premise” concept which, it was pointed out, is often wrongly referred to as “homebrew” setup. In fact it is a commercial quality facility allowing you to brew your own very high quality beer. And at a huge saving to a regular carton, for example their version of Hahn Premium, which by the way was excellent and may even be slightly better than the original, came in at $165 for 6 cartons or $27.50 a carton!
“U-Brew It” has also just received their commercial licence, so if you choose not to brew your own, you can purchase their ready-made brews. Whilst we made our own batch of “Irish Old”, a porter, I sampled their “Cairns Bright Ale” and “English Bitter”.
The Cairns Bright wasn’t to my taste, I found the medium bodied beer had a burnt coppery taste, yet still crisp and bitter. I purchased a six pack to try at home, and found that with food this became an ok beer. I’d drink this if it was handed to me at a BBQ. The English Bitter, also ale, however, was fantastic, bitter and hoppy with crisp pleasant, long lingering finish to it. I can’t wait to try more!
If you ran a restaurant or any licensed venue really, you’d be crazy not to look at some of these guy’s beers… and did I mention the massive savings yet???
So what does my “Irish Old” taste like? I’ll let you know in four weeks when we bottle it!