Visiting the Bagneres Beer Brewery

There is a small brewery in town, we went to visit with a couple of friends. We were interested in their techniques and whether we could learn any exciting new things from them - and also in buying some beer.

Many beers waiting to go places...

They brew 1000l at a time, but apart from that the process is very similar to our 20l at a time one. They do have a separate mash and boil vessel whereas w do both in the Braumeister.

We bought a few bottles after tasting as tasty beer.

Cycle up the Hourquette d’Ancizan

Part of my training, Doug drove up and walked the dog, bringing me my lunch at the top. Brilliant!

There are markers every km from a certain point, they can get a bit disappointing sometimes, but nice to see the distance ticking past.

At the top with a mushroom bouquet.

Support Doug and support dog

They had a nice walk while waiting for me to get there

Afterwards I went for a bit of a ride around on the flat to keep the legs moving without too much up and down. Views back to the mountains from Hiis

Bramble Whisky

We made Bramble Whisky many years ago and recently finished it. Since then, we haven't managed to be bothered to pick the number of brambles required. Though we have loads of huge shambling bramble bushes, each only has a few crappy berries at any one time, I presume the birds get the rest. I spotted a bush this year with a lot of large berries and the recent drinking inspired me to be bothered to pick them - many scratches to show for it.

Well worth the effort if you can be bothered. You need to age it a long time for it to reach its full potential.

Mead Update

Many years ago, before we even came to France, we made some mead. It was REVOLTING, it had a taste that we have described as battery acid, mainly because it feels like it is stripping something off the lining of your throat. Having tried twice we gave up in disappointment.
Then, for some reason, after we came to France I felt tempted to try again - this was 2013 - and we have never sampled it because it was hidden away and forgotten about. With our recent excitement about getting bees in the Spring we remembered, and found and tasted it
It is much much less horrible than the original two, but this is not saying much. We haven't thrown it out though...

Drive drive drive

Work on the drive has been going on for some weeks (months). We recently had another very heavy rainfall and work so far successfully stopped further damage, which is GREAT.

This isn't actually the drive but the edge of the lawn got mowed in the same push to try to bring the sides of the drive under control so that weeds etc don't block the drain.

This doesn't look bad, but there is a lot of water flowing down this wheel ruts. There will soon be another drain to stop this flowing so far - the further it goes the faster it gets, plus it picks up more water on the way. You can see the ditch is doing a great job of taking away run-off from the roof - it has just been dug out.

This is the first drain and you can see it is almost overflowing. The soon-to-be new one mentioned above will help with this.

Still a lot of work to do...

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

110g soft butter
90g caster sugar
45g soft brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
210g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugar, add the vanilla and egg and mix until smooth.
Add the baking powder and salt to the flour and add the flour mix to the wet ingredients. Stir gently until just comined.
Stir in the chocolate chips
Put blobs on to a baking sheet covered in baking paper.
Cook at 170°C for abot 10 mins until lightly browned. They will still feel soft but should crisp up as they cool.

Stout Stout Stout

We bottled one stout and brewed another one all in one day! We also have the ingredients for a third on order. We didn't perhaps mean to brew quite so much stout, it just happened, but we do like it so it will all be ok. 

This is a dry stout, hopefully a bit Guinness like

We added a little bit of lactic acid along with the sugar as we bottled it, this is meant to give a more Guinness like taste - originally apparently it was brewed with some lactobacillus to form the lactic acid but now days as it is made in such volume they just add the acid.

The stout we brewed uses an oatmeal malt and should be less dry, it is a lot less dark also.