Sunday 31 May was the brew day for the wedding batch of Road to Porty and what now sits conditioning in a cellar in Balegem will be poured in Edinburgh in a few months time into the glasses of people celebrating Mike and Fiona’s marriage.
Since we brewed our test batch, a lot has happened so to bring you up-to-speed we’ve highlighted below the five major developments in the last few months:
1. TASTING ROAD TO PORTY AT ‘TOURIST WALK LONDON’
Myself and my three brothers take part in an arts project every year – Tourist Walk – in which we explore place through live music, photography and film. London was our destination this year and we wrote and filmed three songs about the city using the Thames as our linking theme.
This gave us the chance to play music at an old hanging dock in Wapping, sing in a cable car over Greenwich and perform live on the Nest Collective Hour on London’s Resonance 104.4 FM radio station.
Crammed in tiny East London Underground bar to see @belgiansmaak and his brothers play some wonderful music pic.twitter.com/ZwsA5kynCs
— Matthew Curtis (@totalcurtis) April 10, 2015
We also wrote a song about porter as the beer style which was made popular with the street and river porters of the city in the 1700s and had the chance to perform and film our track ‘London Porter’ in Fullers brewery, who happen to produce a classic version of the style. There was an added sense of meaning given that we are brewing a porter for Mike’s wedding.
Hey, it's Breandán of @belgiansmaak with his brothers performing their London Porter song at Manero's. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/VJOcJkcA8E
— Chris Hall (@ChrisHallBeer) April 10, 2015
We always finish the Tourist Walk with a small gathering of family and friends to celebrate the end of the walk and so Tourist Walk London came to a close in Manero’s intimate cocktail bar where we performed these tracks live to a private group of invited guests. We also had the opportunity to let my brothers – and my parents – taste the ‘Road to Porty’ test batch in an intimate atmosphere.
I was delighted – and relieved – that the test batch went down well with those that tried it and made them excited about how it will turn out for the wedding.
'Road to Porty' went down really well on its first public appearance at #touristwalklondon. Now the wedding batch…. pic.twitter.com/AQ2vNJlHPV
— Belgian Smaak (@belgiansmaak) April 11, 2015
The test batch poured dark with a two-finger, off-white, almost coffee-tan head with an aroma resembling a mix of coca-cola and chocolate and an interesting floral character, something I guess we can attribute to the heather. The base taste is sweet – perhaps sweeter than we had initially thought it might be – but its medium body and carbonation profile mean it will be perfect for people to enjoy at the special occasion in September.
The other thing we noticed was that even though it’s up at 6.5% ABV, it drinks as if a lot less so people will have to be careful as they move through the glasses. The aftertaste offers some spice from the German hops and a subtle herbal bitterness contributed by the heather.
The presentation of the test batch of Road to Porty in London also forced us to start thinking about the labels for the wedding bottles and we came up with a simple design based around an old-school depiction of the beach at Portobello where the wedding will take place. We also wanted to bear in mind that this is a Belgian beer, and as such, to keep the appearance both simple and classy in the style of brown 75cl farmhouse champagne bottles.
We’re still working on the design. If you’re reading this and you have any skills to volunteer in this regard, we’d love to hear from you and get you involved in the project right now. We can’t offer design fees, but you’ll be at the heart of something special for Mike and Fiona (feel free to email me at breandan[@]belgiansmaak.com).
2. GETTING TO THE FINAL OF THE BEST INNOVATIVE HOME BREW COMPETITION
At the beginning of 2015, a Belgian farmhouse brewery – Hof Ten Dormaal – suffered a tragic fire. The goodwill they received from the Belgian and international brewing community prompted them to realise their long-held ambition to organise their own beer festival which focused on doing new things with beer. The Leuven Innovation Beer Festival took place at the end of May.
Given the circumstances of its conception, it felt like the festival kind of popped out of nowhere, and with it a brewing competition to recognise the ‘Best Innovative beer from a home brewer’. The timing and nature of the competition convinced us to enter Road to Porty and we were delighted to hear that we made it to the shortlist, with the 23 finalists invited to attend the presentation of the award on the last evening of the festival.
We didn’t win the competition – that honour went to Nico Lugil and Erik Meyleman, who brewed a beer which was lightly smoked in the wood of their own apple tree – but it was fantastic to be involved and it certainly gave us plenty of encouragement for the recipe.
3. WE CHANGED THE RECIPE (VERY SLIGHTLY)
When we brewed the wedding batch, we didn’t change very much at all from the original test recipe. We decided to boost the hops a little bit, just to try to offer a little more bitter balance to the sweetness of the malt. We’ve Scottish and Irish wedding guests to consider so the levels of bitterness can’t be ‘beer geek’ high. The Irish honey – which by the way is absolutely delicious on its own – was from the same hive and batch, and our malt bill, mash scheme, yeast strains and water source all remained the same.
There were some minor differences in our main ingredients between the two batches. The Irish heather this time around was not from Donegal but rather was handpicked by my parents in the Mountains of Mourne where we all grew up.
The hand-picked Irish heather for the #RoadtoPorty project is on the way to Belgium. Scottish stuff coming soon too. pic.twitter.com/myuufn7zA5
— Belgian Smaak (@belgiansmaak) May 7, 2015
Similarly, the Scottish heather last time was from a flower shop in Portobello but was picked this time from the garden of Fiona’s mum.
Just received a parcel from Scotland. Guess what – It's heather. #RoadToPorty pic.twitter.com/zF3DbRUGXG
— Belgian Smaak (@belgiansmaak) May 18, 2015
Not only did both sets of heather come from different sources than the last time, but they were also picked at different times of year from the initial batch. They both looked and smelled worlds apart from the stuff we used previously. We can only wait and see.
4. THE ‘ROAD TO PORTY’ BROWNIES
It was important for Elisa and I that the Road to Porty project included not only a beer to be enjoyed at the wedding, but Belgian chocolate too. We just weren’t sure what type of chocolate to make.
About to make #RoadToPorty brownies w/ some help from @Bibliocook & @edibleireland. pic.twitter.com/rH7wGCZlYx
— Belgian Smaak (@belgiansmaak) May 30, 2015
Then we got our hands on a copy of ‘Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider’ in which Caroline Hennessy and Kristen Jensen set out their recipe for ‘Double Chocolate Porter Brownies’. They suggest various beers to make this chocolate treat, including Knockmealdown Porter from Eight Degrees Brewing, Dungarvan Black Rock Irish Stout, Porterhouse Plain and O’Hara’s Irish Stout.
Elisa used this recipe to make the Road to Porty brownies the day before we brewed the wedding batch so that the brewers were able to test it out. She used 250ml of the test batch of the ‘Road to Porty’ beer to produce 30 brownies that went down a treat, particularly when paired with the right beer.
Incidentally, we also paired Elisa’s brownies (the non-RTP versions) with one of the beers at our Irish beer tasting in Zottegem recently with the BLES beer club. They were one of the highlights of the night.
5. RE-USING OLD ‘GENTSE TRIPEL’ BOTTLES
You can order new (empty) beer bottles from our local beer shop here in Ghent, De Hopduvel. Their staff are very knowledgeable about beer and always incredibly helpful.
But on my last visit, they mentioned they had full bottles of Gentse Tripel out the back which were too old to sell. They offered that we could use them for our Road to Porty if we liked. Cleaning and disinfecting would be a lot easier because we could just pour the beer out of the bottles without any sediment or yeast hardening and sticking to the bottle. We took 90 bottles.
Pouring away so much beer sounds like a real shame, but this time it was a necessary evil. Because the bottles were quite warm when we opened them (there has been a heat wave in Belgium this week), a huge amount of pressure had built up and the corks popped off quite aggressively before we were able to get the beer down the drain.
WEDDING BATCH
Road to Porty is now conditioning so that the flavours can develop after the primary fermentation and we plan to bottle in two to three weeks time.
What is now maturing in a cellar in Balegem will hopefully soon be in beer glasses in Portobello.
