Filed under: Uncategorized
What: The Art of Brewing Lagers
Where: The Brewery (B1 – 116 103rd Street E, Saskatoon)
When: November 8, 2011 7:30 pm
Who: Anyone interested in Brewing Lagers
Why: Because Beer is Good
Filed under: Company
Paddock Wood Brewing Co. by Penny McKinlay
Starting a business is rarely straightforward, but even I was surprised by how many unexpected events have shaped the history of Paddock Wood Brewing Co.
I’ll have to make my own
In 1992, Steve Cavan and his wife, Kathleen James-Cavan, moved to Saskatchewan from Ontario. Kathleen had been hired as an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan and Steve was hired as a lecturer in Classics and History. Things were looking bright for the two former graduate students, but Steve had one big problem – there was no good craft beer in Saskatchewan. The only solution was to brew his own.
Using his well-honed research skills, Steve applied himself to learning how to brew beer. And that’s when he ran into the next dead end. He needed to buy malt, hops and yeast, but they weren’t available locally. Steve’s current favourite was British ale, so he contacted Paddock Wood, England, hoping to buy hops directly from the local cooperatives. But the smallest order they’d accept was for 1000 pounds, and Steve was only using about 5 pounds a year at that time.
Steve eventually found a US supplier who would sell to him – as a home-based business. So, in 1995, Steve set up a mail-order business supplying other home brewers with supplies.
Mail order business
Business was slow at first, but it really took off in 2000. By 2005, Steve was selling $12,000 a month in grains and Canada Post was doing daily pickups. But then the bottom fell out of the market. Large wholesale companies, such as Cargill in Western Canada, started selling oats, grains and malt directly to the public. By 2007, Steve’s sales of grains had dropped to $1200 a month and Canada Post was no longer doing pickups.
Steve pulled the plug on the mail order business, but Paddock Wood was still alive and well under a different format.
But Paddock Wood had such a small brewing unit that they could only make 2 kits at a time. They were working triple shifts, but it was crazy. They needed to move to a bigger space with bigger equipment. But they didn’t have the money.
Again, Paddock Wood turned to its supporters. The company incorporated and raised enough money to move to a larger facility in Sutherland. They purchased a 300-litre system and could now make 12 kits at a time. But that’s when they hit the next roadblock.
Rules and regulations
Steve phoned Revenue Canada on an unrelated matter and discovered that it didn’t make a difference whether you were making wort (unfermented beer) or brewing beer. You needed a license.
If that was the case, Steve decided he might as well start bottling and selling beer. But that was easier said than done. The Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) had no regulations covering micro breweries. You could set up a brew pub, but brew pubs could only sell from their own location – the beer couldn’t be distributed through SLGA.
Finally, in December 2004, Paddock Wood obtained permission to sell their beer through SLGA. But could they keep up with demand?
Let’s make more beer
Paddock Wood invited more shareholders on board and bought a bigger brewing system. In 2007, they installed a bottling line. Before that, the operation had been completely manual, bottling a maximum of 24 bottles an hour.
Looking ahead
Paddock Wood is once again finding it difficult to keep up with demand. Last year, a single batch of Mai Bock sold out locally in 6 weeks. This year, a triple batch sold out in a little over a month. SLGA asked for more, but there was none left.
Steve believes that 2011 is the year that Paddock Wood will really take off. By this time next year, he hopes to be building a new brewery with a much larger system and a separate bottling room. And he’ll retain the current facility and use it to make lambic beers (a Belgian style of beer that undergoes secondary fermentation providing a very distinctive flavour).
Research and experimentation
Craft beers, such as Paddock Wood’s, are a combination of 4 essential ingredients – malt, hops, yeast and water. The art of brewing lies in finding the right balance between the hops and the malt and the right temperature. You can tweak the taste and the mouth feel of the beer by using different kinds of malt, yeast and water.
Steve loves experimenting and reproducing beers from other countries and past centuries.
Kolsch is a light summer ale from Cologne, Germany. Cal Soloway, a local home brewer, has studied and won awards for his Kolsch beer, and he gave Paddock Wood the low down on every detail, from the water to the temperature. Paddock Wood purchased the same yeast that is used by a Cologne brewery and a computerized program replicated Cologne water.
In the 1700s, brewers in England roasted the malt over an open fire. When he was developing the Black Friars ale, Steve replicated this process by putting a tray on his barbecue at home. When the grains started to pop, he knew it was roasted.
Sherbrooke Liquor Store in Edmonton has commissioned a series of 12 beers dedicated to 12 gods and has commissioned a famous cartoon artist to design the labels. The first beer in the series is the Baltic Porter. Steve plans to introduce the second in the series for Christmas. It will be a Belgian triple ale. He plans to add some grape juice to the mix and thinks it will work well as Belgian yeast tends to be fruity.Try something different
There are many stereotypes surrounding beer: it’s a man’s drink; it’s only good in the summer to quench your thirst – taste doesn’t really matter.
But the stereotypes don’t apply to craft beer. There are so many distinctive flavours, and they need to be tasted before you can tell whether you will like it or not. I really enjoy London Porter, which was a complete surprise as I thought I would only like http://pennymckinlay.axonsoft.com/ beers.
Drop by the Paddock Wood store at B1, 116 – 103rd Street East and pick up a variety of different beers. Email Steve at paddockwood@paddockwood.com if you would like to participate in the home brewing and tasting club, which meets monthly (except during the summer). Or sign up for a tour of the brewery.
And, above all, enjoy the flavour of natural, locally-brewed beer.
Article by: Penny McKinlay
http://pennymckinlay.axonsoft.com/
Reprinted with permission.
Filed under: Company
Come for a tour of the Paddock Wood Brewery:
Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Time: 11 am
Location: B1-116 103rd street E, Saskatoon, SK
Phone: (306) 477-5632
Show up at the front office and our brewmaster, Stephen Cavan, will take you on a guided tour of Saskatchewan’s first microbrewery.
Filed under: Company | Tags: Brewery, new, paddockwood.com, website, welcome
Welcome to our newly redesigned website! We’ve rebuilt our site to make it much easier to find and share information. This was a very large project that we hope is as exciting and enjoyable for you as it was for us.
You can also follow us on the following social network sites:
Please feel free to share any comments with us below!
Filed under: Beer, Recipes | Tags: 606, Beer, DIY, Food, Paddock Wood, Recipe
Ingredients
- 1kg rump roast
- 2 onions
- 2 cups beef stock
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 bottle of 606 Ale or Oatmeal stout, if you like a darker twist
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- 1 Bay leaf and a pinch of thyme
Steps
- Pre-heat oven to 325F
- Prepare a 1kg Rump roast, sliced about 6-8mm thick and seasoned with pepper.
- Brown in a pan, then move to a plate.
- Turn pan to medium heat, add some oil and cook onions till golden
- Remove onions, add flour and make a roux
- Add stock and beer; stir until thick and smooth
- Add some salt & pepper and vinegar
- Place half the onions in an oven dish, and cover them with the meat.
- Add a pinch of thyme over the meat and drop in the bay leaf.
- Cover with rest of onions and roux from pan.
- Bake at 325F for about 2 hours
- Serve with either the 606 Ale or Oatmeal stout to match the flavour in the sauce.
Filed under: Beer, Company, Q&A | Tags: Beer, Bottle caps, FAQ, Paddock Wood, Q&A
We use premium oxygen barrier crown caps on our bottles. The caps may not look different, but regular crown caps bleed oxygen into the bottles (CO2 pressure inside the bottle does not stop this process), and studies have shown that normal caps will lead to oxygen damage of beer in 6 months. Our barrier caps provide protection for several years, but we hope that most of our beers will be consumed before that long. Our Imperial stouts and barley wines, however, which improve with 3 to 5 years of storage, will show the real power of these caps.
Our beer is a pure brew, as a craft brewer we do not pasteurize beer in order to maintain flavour and mouthfeel. To get the most out of your Paddock Wood experience, Please store our beer in a cool place, ideally under 4C, but please do not drink it that cold. Most of our beers will peak for flavour in the 8C to 10C range.
Shelf-life is a variable that we have no control over, once the beer leaves our brewery. We use the finest “double pre-evacuation” counter pressure bottle filing system, and oxygen barrier crowns, and dark amber glass to reduce ultraviolet light damage. But our craft is not pasteurized which means it is to some degree open to biological changes. The warmer the storage temperature, the more rapidly the beer may move away from what we had intended.
We do not declare a “best before” date as such a date needs to anticipate the storage conditions. Stores which offer cold storage for our product will have great shelf-life, but stores which hold our beer at room temperature will have less. We mark our 6 pack boxes with a date of production stamp, and hope that you can assess the potential quality based on the store. We hope that our 5% beers will be fine for 3 months at room temperature, while they should be good for a year or more when stored below 4C. Our strong beers 7% and 8.5% are protected more by the alcohol and elevated hop levels and probably triple their shelf-life. But when storage temperatures rise, it does become hard to promise quality.
Filed under: Company, Q&A | Tags: Brewery, Craft beer, FAQ, Micro brewery, Paddock Wood, Q&A
We are Saskatchewan’s first craft (or micro) brewery. These terms are used interchangeably by most people, but microbreweries typically produce less than 1.5 million litres of beer annually. Craft breweries might base that designation on the size of the brewery equipment. In this case a kettle size of 50 to 80 barrels is considered the largest system that still allows for a ‘hands-on’ quality control. Our kettle size is 10 barrels.
Craft beer is typically unpasteurized and not micro-filtered. These are two techniques for extending the shelf-life of unrefrigerated beer. All large breweries do one or both of these treatments to their beer. Craft brewers want to offer beer in its purest form, not cooked in a pasteurization tunnel and not stripped of flavour and mouthfeel by microfilters.
Filed under: Beer Ingredients, Q&A | Tags: FAQ, Hops, Ingredients, Making Beer, Paddock Wood, Q&A
Hops are flower clusters that are an important aspect of brewing. They bring two different aspects of beer: acid bitterness and oils for flavour and aroma. Bitterness comes from alpha acids which need to be boiled in order to form a stable, long lasting bittering chemical. The process of stabilization takes time, usually 30 to 90 minutes of good boiling action, during which the flavour oils are diminished. So by adding extra hops late in the boil, a brewer can boost flavour aroma profile, should that be appropriate for that style of beer. Our Porter has no late additions, while the 606 Pale ale or Loki has a lot.
Commonly used hop varieties
Lager hops: We tend to use European aromatic hops with low bittering power. They impart more flavour oils than high acid hops. Czech Saaz, German Spalt & Hersbrucker are most commonly used in our brewery for lagers. These often add floral or spicy aspects to the beer.
Ale hops: We reach for either British hops such as Target and Challenger, or sometimes Progress or Bramling Cross (East Kent Goldings crossed with a wild Manitoba female – how could we not use this one?). These often add fruit notes such as orange from Challenger, or Blackcurrents from Bramling Cross. We might also grab classic American hops such as Cascade for its grapefruit flavour, or Warrior for a big acid kick.
Filed under: Company, Q&A | Tags: FAQ, Hops. Paddock Wood, Logo, Oast House, Q&A
Those odd-looking buildings with conical roofs and distinctive caps are Kentish oast houses -large kilns for drying hops. Oast houses are widespread throughout the countryside of County Kent, England, an area renowned for its fine hop production.
We use the oast house in our logo to reflect our commitment to providing high quality products in the tradition of the Kentish hop growers.
Oast kilns began as square towers which were easier to build. Around 1840 it was decided that the heat distribution was better in round kilns and so this became the predominant design. However, as science advanced it was proved that square kilns were more efficient after all. As a result, square kilns regained their popularity in the 1890s. Most kilns are topped with the familiar white-painted cowl and weather vane, but some, especially those along the Kent and Sussex border, have a simpler, squatter, wooden chimney-type of vent.
- Time Travel Britain – The Oasts of Kent (photos)