– Festive opening hours
Seasonal greetings to you all!
Hope the year 2012 has treated you well? The past twelve months have been pretty great round these parts, we will be publishing our end of year review next week, alongside a collection of ‘Top Ten beer lists’ – collated from our faithful customers and some of our favourite breweries.
Meanwhile, here are our opening / closing hours for the next couple of weeks :
Tuesday 18th / 4pm – 12am
Wednesday 19th / 4pm – 12am
Thursday 20th / 2pm – 12am
Friday 21st / 2pm – 12am
Saturday 22nd / 12pm – 1am
Sunday 23rd / 12pm – 12am
Monday 24th / CLOSED
Tuesday 25th / CLOSED
Wednesday 26th – CLOSED
Thursday 27th / 2pm – 12am
Friday 28th / 2pm – 12am
Saturday 29th / 12pm – 1am
Sunday 30th / 12pm – 12am
Monday 31st / 4pm – 1am (pre book tables in the saloon from 8pm – more info here)
Tuesday 1st Jan – CLOSED
Wednesday 2nd Jan / 4pm – 12am
Then we are back to our normal opening hours.
Hope this finds you well… All the best for the festive seasons – from all at Port Street Beer House
– New Year’s Eve at Port Street Beer House / Monday 31st December 2012
The upstairs saloon of Port Street Beer House will be available for table reservations on NYE. Tables will be booked out for a minimum of 4 people and bookings will be reserved with a £10 deposit per person. This deposit will be returned to you on the night in the form of a bar tab. For example, if you book a table for 4 people, you’ll need to leave £40 deposit but on the night you’ll have a £40 bar tab set up waiting for you.
We have a limited number of tables so put in a booking request and providing we can accommodate your group we’ll be in touch to arrange the deposit. Please note tables need to be occupied by 8.30pm
In addition to the table booking you can also pre book a special bottle or two for your group or a lovely plate of pie, peas and gravy will be brought to you at your table.
The downstairs bar at Port Street will be open as usual from 4pm so you can choose whether to mingle around or hang out with your group upstairs. Service will be until 1am (ish).
Please email jamie@aplacecalledcommon.co.uk with your name, contact number and how many people you would like to book for.
We will get back to ASAP with a booking form.
Special NYE beers available to pre order :
Alesmith ‘X’ / 750ml – £9
Alesmith ‘Grand Cru’ / 750ml – £15
Alesmith ‘Wee Heavy’ / 750 ml – £15
Alesmith ‘Horny Devil’ / 750 ml – £15
Port Brew ‘Santa Helper’ / 750ml – £12
port brew ‘Santa Aged’ / 750ml – £18
Jester King ‘Noble King’ / 750ml – £12
Brewdog ‘ab:07’ / 375 ml – £9
Brooklyn ‘Sorachi Ace’ / 750ml – price TBC
Ps Unfortunately we won’t be having fireworks
– Old And Dark Festival / Saturday 1st December until late December 2012
It has reached that time of year when it’s necessary to comfort one’s self with dark, flavoursome, delicious beer.
Throughout December we will be aiding and abetting individuals in their pursuit of the perfect porter and the selection of a superb stout. Alongside firm favourites like Summerwine’s Teleporter, Magic Rock’s Dark Arts and Red Willow’s Smokeless we’ll be throwing in a few bits of special stuff such as, Thornbridge’s Heather Honey Imperial Stout-one of only six kegs in existence!
Unfortunately we can’t do a full dark take over as there’s always someone who fears anything outside the realms of a 4% pale, ready to have a whinge! (Guaranteed a goodly portion of people who just read that sentence only got half way through it before whipping their social life out of their pocket to get a tweet on, but I digress) We will do our best to ensure an interesting and eclectic range available throughout the month for people who truly understand what exactly tis the season for. Keep your eyeballs peeled for bottle offers too.
Picture ‘borrowed’ from Get Beer. Drink Beer.
– Brewers Group / November review and dates for 2013
Had a great turnout at November’s Brewers’ group where James Campbell gave us some excellent tips and wisdom on brewing high-gravity beers. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here are just a few of the things we discussed:
First of all, for high gravity brewing, make a highly fermentable wort so mash at a low temperature (around 64 degrees) for a VERY long time (3-4 hours) and make sure you’re getting the right Ph in the mash (around 5.3). Fermentability can also be enhanced with enzymes such as amyloglucosidase, although this will impact on flavour and mouthfeel.
The other key point is to pitch healthy yeast so you get good attenuation. Pitch slightly more yeast than you would normally (1 million per ml per degree Plato is the general rule), add yeast nutrient to get a vigorous fermentation and oxygenate well to promote yeast growth. After fermentation the yeast are done for so throw them away rather than storing for re-pitching. Conditioning should be for a long time and maybe even shake the bottle every now and then to re-suspend the yeast; the story goes that Marble’s Decadence gets ‘taken for a walk’ periodically during its maturation!
…and after all that talk of beer we cracked open some really good quality homebrew, followed up by a fair bit of tasting downstairs at the bar. Great night! Thanks to everyone who came and a special thanks to everyone who brought along some homebrew.
We’re taking a break for Christmas now so next Brewer’s group will be on Tuesday 29th January 2013 at 7pm, when we plan to get a yeast expert to give us some tips on yeast management. Hope to see you there.