Venus Weizen

   I've been part of the Venus Project for a couple of years now.  Its is a wonderful group made up of top brewing talent across the country, and they happen to all be women. Although there is no official data for the number of women brewing professionally in the UK, from personal experience opportunities to meet fellow female brewers are rare ones.

  The brainchild of Sara Barton of Brewsters Brewery, the Venus Project is an association of female brewers, its aims are simple: to educate & promote women in brewing.  One of the ways this is achieved is through collaborative brewing, one such event took place at the Gyle 59 brewery based in the tranquil Dorset countryside.

Arriving early on Halloween, I made my way into the Gyle 59 brew house nestled on the Sadborow Estate Yard. In a nod to the holiday we're making a Dark Winter Wheat Beer, made up of Pale, Wheat, Black & Chocolate Malt.

Using a traditional hopper, malt & water are added from the 1st floor into the mash tun. 

The sweet wort is extracted by running hot water through the grain bed.

Brewing in London as I do, usually means very little industrial space, often a converted railway arch, or in my case an old World War II ammunition's warehouse.  Most, if not all have 3 phase power.  I was fascinated by the Gyle 59 brewery set up, they use a combination of a wood burning stove to heat all their water, and propane gas to heat their Kettle.

Propane burners heating the kettle

The hops are then added, in this case a combination of Nugget & Perle.  The beer is then moved from the Kettle into the hopback where even more hops are added.

The Hopback

One crash cool later, and the beer is off into the Fermenter with a Belgian yeast, where it will stay for the next week.  After a hard days work, a well earned drink!

I'll be doing a full review of this Venus brew, appropriately named 'Venus Weizen,' once I get my mitts on the final product!