At September’s meeting we had the pleasure of welcoming one of the UK’s most exciting new breweries, Double-Barrelled.
Double-Barrelled was started up by husband and wife team Luci and Mike Clayton-Jones after a tour of some of the best global beer locations. Since returning from their travels, they have been brewing commercially in Tilehurst for nearly a year (in fact, they will be celebrating their 1st birthday at their taproom on the 8th-9th of November) and launched their first brews at Craft Beer Rising in 2018. Earlier this year Luci and Mike were joined by brewer Dan Wye.
While the guys at Double-Barrelled are very passionate about brewing fruity sours and big barrel-aged stouts, they are also producing some great American IPAs. It was this particular style that Mike and Dan joined us to talk about – specifically how they have adopted the continuous hopping method made famous by beer greats Dogfish Head.
The guys brought along a great example of their work “Is 3D True?” which has layers of piney, resinous hop flavour thanks to continuously adding hops throughout the full 60 minute boil & 8 minute whirlpool followed by a healthy dose of dry hopping. This is backed up with the crisp bitterness you would expect from a classic west coast IPA.
After fielding all our questions, ranging from how to improve head retention and pitching rates for Kveik, Mike and Dan kindly hung around to taste some of our members’ beers and provide some feedback.
If you haven’t been along to their taproom over on Stadium way then I highly recommend you make the short journey. I personally am already looking forward to welcoming the guys back to another RAB meeting in the future.