Attn all Double IPA obsessed canines

Via Beerpulse.com

A Warning about Dogs and Hops

 Posted on April 30, 2012 at 11:32 amby Adam Nason   

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Here at Northern Brewer we love dogs just about as much as we love brewing (maybe more). For many years, dogs accompanied their owners to work at Northern Brewer and freely roamed our offices. And for many of us, brew day is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with our canine friends. So when we heard about a customer’s scary experience after their dog consumed hops we were shaken and wanted to help. For wider education on the issue, we would like echo a very serious warning about dogs and hops.

Though research is not extensive, ingesting hops can be highly toxic to some breeds of dogs (Golden Retrievers and especially Greyhounds have been documented). There are many scary stories on homebrewing forums about dogs eating hops after unsuspecting brewers left unused hops out in a place accessible to their dog, or dumped their kettle trub and hop sediment into the yard, or had a hop plant in their yard that dropped cones on the ground. Some dogs that ingest hops rapidly develop a condition called Malignant Hyperthermia, in which the body temperature rises uncontrollably. This can be very harmful or fatal to the dog. Some symptoms are restlessness, panting, vomiting, abdominal pain, seizures, rapid heart rate, and high temperature. If a dog has possibly ingested hops and exhibits symptoms, they should be taken to an emergency pet hospital immediately for treatment.

This abstract from the National Institute for Biotechnology Information represents one of the few scientific confirmations of the issue, and this page has a record of one homebrewer’s experience (their dog was fortunately saved).

Keep your dogs safe!

Hedgerow Autumn Ale 2012

The basis of the recipe is the same as the 2011 hedgerow brew, six UK malts, German brewers gold, UK Bramling Cross and Slovenian Bobek hops are used as aroma and for dry hopping.   Hawthorn berries, sloe berries and rose hips were then added to the conditioning tank and the beer was allowed to sit for a 12 weeks on this mix, developing the subtle fruit flavours.

A further portion of the beer was aged in two, local vineyard, Moores Hill pinot barrels for a period of 16 weeks, with it being brought back into the main hedgerow beer and racked off. It was then conditioned for 6 months before release.

The beer pours an off-white head laced with a subtle berry aroma. There are certainly some aromatic French oak qualities coming out on the nose, as well as a few spicy notes.  The initial sip is quite sour and sharp, but as you work through the beer a ripe sweetness begins to develop and reflects the original hedgerow beer exhibiting a toasty malt character underlies the subtle seasonal fruit flavour.  Hints of peppery spice result in a semi soft and dry palate finish of this autumn ale, the barrel aged element brings that funky edge to the beer as well as the imparted tartness.

A style very rarely seen in Australia.

A keg or two of the 2012 release will make its way to the Courthouse Hotel, North Melbourne for Pint Of Origin as part of Good Beer Week 2012

The Crafty Pints' take on the beer here

TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale update

TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale, a harvest brew brewed exclusively with fresh Tasmanian grown ingredients. A new cultivar of barley, Macquarie, was grown on a cousins property at CampbellTown in the 2011/12 season that exhibited excellent malting qualities, perfect for this harvest beer. The barley was malted by Tasmanian malting officiando Roger Ibbot and his team at Cascade Brewery, where we managed to snaffle a few hundred kegs of the precious malt *thanks guys.

Hops were sourced from the last family owned hop field in Tasmania, we're we collected 25kgs of fresh Super Pride hop flowers, threw them in the back of the van and rushed back to the brewery to brew with *the most aromatic journey ever taken. Super Pride is a variety of hop normally associated with commercial brewing as a high alpha bittering hop given its 14 - 16 % alpha acid content. We decided to dispel this perception and use a bucket loads of these fresh hops in the TPA, including rinsing the boiled brew over a bed of fresh hops in the Mash Tun, effectively acting as a substitute Hop-back.

The water for the brew, as with every beer produced at Van Dieman, was sourced from springs on the brewery property, purified and then brought up to a water profile similar to Burton-on-Trent in the UK, synonymous with producing high quality pale ales. We used a English ale yeast to compliment the primary ingredients and beer style.

Its A hazy golden coloured ale with a casual hop aroma as if the front lawn has just been mown. Mentions of lemon grass and apricot flavours can be discovered as it rolls across your palate, all the time delivering a refreshing and authentic crispness. Not much was made, even less was put into kegs, don’t wait around – it wont last.

We're delivering a few kegs out to the market this week, so it'll pop it head up at selected good beer venues shortly

TPA - Limited Release 2012

We get excited here at Van Dieman about releasing new beers, none more so than this ripper harvest ale that we are shortly about to release in kegs.

Keep posted here for were the kegs will be heading, as we've only got a limited amount and we'd hate to see you miss out.

Turning over some earth

This morning we saw the start of our coolstore extension, which will house a new coolroom and bottling line. This will give us a much greater production and storage capacity allowing Van Dieman to be enjoyed in more and more places, particularly interstate. Hopefully we''l have it all operational by mid April. Keep updated via the blog for regular photos.

New Bottling line

Here's our inline labeller sitting in the warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina.

Its a pleasant sight and a marked difference from our current manual setup.

Hopefully landing here in 4 weeks or so. Complete operation in play in the next 8 weeks following building which should start this week.

HeartKids Car Show 5 Feb

This weekend sees us supporting the HeartKids Car Show @ Josef Chromy Vineyard.

Billed as Tassies biggest car show, and with hopefully good weather, upwards of 5000 people are expected to attend. HeartKids is a unique Not-for-Profit organisation, in that it is the only organisation dedicated to supporting all facets of Childhood Heart Disease (CHD)

We'll be there serving beers from around 11am, so if your even mildly interested in cars or want to help support a terrific charity event, see you there during the day, Sunday 9.30am - 4pm, more info HERE