Making beer all over the city

Happy foragers with a post-walk pint

There wasn’t much going on on Saturday that I could take part in. I’m doing a cheese and beer matching on Wednesday and had to meet up with my partner in that to finalise the choices (Which was fun). With that out of the way, I went for a few pints with Ron who’s in town to do tonight’s talk on British lager.

Feeling a bit fragile on Sunday morning, I had to put in an appearance at the homebrewing demonstration a couple of chums were doing in the back room of the Good Spirits Co in the city centre. This demo has been a feature ever since the Glasgow Beer & Pubs Project and it’s always fun. Fortunately for me, though, there’s quite a bit of waiting around involved – brewing is not really a spectator sport – so I was able to sneak off and deliver beermats to a couple of pubs before heading over to the South Side to see how they were getting on at “From Park to Pint”. 

This is a thing I had really wanted to take part in, but couldn’t be in two places at once. Wholefood shop Locavore and foraging expert Catriona Gibson had led a walk through the park collecting plant life as ingredients for a special beer to be made at Clockwork. When I got there the walk was over and people were enjoying a pint afterwards. I was delighted to find how many people had turned out for it.

I had been really keen to go to, because it was inspired by Eric Steen’s “Beers Made By Walking” projects in the United States. Eric says he got the idea from Williams Bros in the first place, so it was kind of coming full circle. I think the flora in Queens Park is probably rather less exotic than that in Colorado where Eric works, but the foragers collected various bits of vegetation – sorrel, rose hips, crab apples, blackberries. Now poor Declan the brewer at the Clockwork will have to come up with a recipe using the big sacks of Nelson Sauvin he has lying around for help.

Back in the city centre again, the homebrewers were busy cooling their wort and already running it off into fermenters. Despite being a long day, this event had been well attended too.

Sunday night is for relaxing. Now that Beer Week is here I don’t really need to do much more other than turn up at things on time and stay sober enough to blog about them when I get home. I headed for Inn Deep at Kelvinbridge, as I hadn’t had a chance to visit since it opened on Friday.

Cromarty Hit the Lip was the perfect refresher after a long day. Nice and cold and tasty. I was only in for one, but was tempted by the much raved-about Moor Hoppiness on keg. When it arrived, it resembled a peach smoothie.
Unfined beer is one thing; beer with so much crap in it that it forms a layer of sediment while you sit drinking it is something else again. Still tasted nice though. But I was looking forward to an early night anyway.

Mmm, soupy