Fairwater Brewery

Over The Fence IPA 2 - Motueka edition

2026-08-01T00:00:00Z

We live literally next door to local brewing legend Tim Lloyd (he of Elusive Brewery's Morrisman fame), and we've been friends since we moved in, so it made sense when Tim suggested that we do a collaboration brew. It made even more sense when he suggested we call it "Over The Fence IPA"!

The first version was based on my frequent "Facets" receipe, with Nelson Sauvin. For our repeat, we're sticking with New Zealand but Motueka this time. I couldn't remember if we'd chosen Motueka or Riwaka, so I got both, but the day before Tim posted that we would be using Mosaic, so this was clearly well thought out! In the end we settled on Motueka, so I'll keep the Riwaka for a later New Zealand Pilsenser or something!

To make a bit more of a day of it, we've invited a bunch of friends over as well. Should be a nice day of brewing, drinking, eating, and chatting!

Here's the recipe.

The Morrisman himself!

Another of Tim's colabs - the label is Tim being taken for a walk by his dog, Obsidian

Rhubarb & Gooseberry Crumble Sour

2026-07-11T00:00:00Z

This is my latest iteration of this sour. I'm still using up the rather large quantities of frozen fruit I was gifted along with the freezer I used to make my keezer.

This recpie was tweaked in conversation with Gemini to try and get a more biscuity, crumble-like flavour from the grains. I also doubled the amount of fruit I used, to push those flavours front and centre.

Here's the recipe.

I took a 12l keg to a friend's party last week, and the consensus was that this is the best batch so far, which was pleasing to hear! I would still like to emphasise the crumble a little more, so more tweaking is called for.

Fairwater Czech Lager

2026-07-11T00:00:00Z

This is basically a repeat of an earlier recipe, this time with NovaLager rather than W34/70, and a simple single step infusion mash, rather than a decoction.

The first time I did it was based on this recipe (I think!) from TMM

Last time I was pleased with it, and I wanted something similar for the hot summer we're having. Slight changes to the hop schedule to last time, to use what I had in stock, but I stuck with traditional noble varieties.

Here's the recipe.

ESB

2026-05-08T00:00:00Z

I've made a few variations on the ESB theme over the years. This batch's variation is that I used WHC Saturated yeast - while this isn't a NEIPA (obviously) I have heard that it's a good choice for an English bitter as well.

For some reason my OG was low - 1.048 rather than the target 1.056. Not sure why, possibly I sparged a bit quicker than I do usually. I'll try to remember to take more measurements on my next brew and if I'm low again then I might get an idea of which stage is causing it.

Here's the recipe.

Fairwater Facets - Super-Citra-delic

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

The next in the Facets series - using my old favourite Citra, combined with the new kid on the block Superdelic.

Even at dry-hopping time it's tasting rather good!

Here's the recipe.

RABFest tickets now on sale!

2026-04-28T00:00:00Z

Tickets have now gone on sale via EventBrite for RABFest 2026.

Full details can be found on the Reading Amateur Brewers website.

It was a great day last year - we're hoping for an even better one this year!

RABFest 2026 publicity poster

Rhubarb & Gooseberry Sour

2026-04-24T00:00:00Z

Part of the bundle I received when getting the old chest freezer from my in-laws for my keezer build was a large quntity of frozen fruit, which is now occupying a large amount of space in our freezers. This is mainly rhubarb, gooseberry, and backcurrants. Sounds like a lot of sour beer will be in this year's brew schedule!

First off, and using a kilo each of rhubarb and gooseberry, is this recipe. I did a 12l batch last year that went down really well, so this is a scale-up to my normal brew length.

Looking back as I'm writing this up, I used a kilo of each in the 12l batch, so I'm not too sure why I didn't scale the fruit up any for this longer brew... silly me.

Here's the recipe.

Updated 2026-05-10: I kegged this a couple of days ago, and it's tasting really good.

Building my new keezer

2026-04-09T00:00:00Z

I have recently finished building a keezer. Rather than having the details of the build as a blog post that will disappear down the list, I thought it worth a page all of its own, and just have the announcement here.

Hopefully this will be of interest and use to someone!

Here it is.

Fairwater Facets - Noir

2026-04-05T00:00:00Z

I haven't done a BIPA for a few years, so this should make a pleasant change from my usual pale-n-hoppy beers.

When I went to choose the hops for this one I was very surprised to find that I didn't have anything new-worldy enough in stock - I had English hops like Fuggles and EKG, and European noble hops like Saaz, Tettnang, and Hallertau, but that was about it.

So the recipe as saved here is using a mix of Sorachi Ace and Bramling Cross in the boil and whirlpool, and currently has Citra for dry hopping - which remains to be determined, as I need to buy some new bags of hops and I'll pick one when I get to the dry hopping stage.

Hopefully the Bramling Cross will add some notes of dark fruits that should work with the slightly roasty flavours of the BIPA.

Here's the recipe.

Water

2026-04-02T00:00:00Z

Water treatment is far too complicated a topic for me to want to attempt to write a blog post about it - there are far better sources of information out there than me! So that's not what this is about. Rather, it's a brief mention of what our water profile is like around here in Reading, Berkshire.

When I started getting a bit more serious about water treatment I put together a reasonable profile using the information from the Thames Water website - you can get a PDF containing most of the info you need. This is the current one for "Reading East"

I plugged the numbers into a water treatment calculator, and went from there. I originally used the one on the Jim's Beer Kit website, but in recent years I've exclusively used the one in BeerSmith (my preferred brewing software). My results have been fine, but I wanted to confirm that the water profile I came up with actually matched what comes out of our tap, so I bought an "Advanced Water Report from Murphy & Son" from The Malt Miller.

The results were:

Calcium Ca⁺²	Magnesium Mg⁺²	Sodium Na⁺	Chloride Cl	Sulphate SO₄^-2	Alkalinity as CaCO₃	pH	Nitrate	Total Hardness as CaCO₃
111	2	12	31	18	229	7.9	28	336

Table 1: Water profile for Reading, Berkshire, May 2025.

Interestingly, this is pretty close to what I had originally gleaned from the TW report, no more than a few ppm out in any of the values, but it's good to have proper confirmation!

As a comparison, in The Modern Homebrewer, Andy provides the profile he works from at Elusive Brewing, who are only about 7 miles away from our house:

Calcium Ca⁺²	Magnesium Mg⁺²	Sodium Na⁺	Chloride Cl	Sulphate SO₄^-2	Bicarbonate as CaCO₃
118	7	21	41	45	343

Table 2: Water profile for Elusive Brewing, Finchampstead, Berkshire, as listed in The Modern Homebrewer.

Pretty similar, though there's more of a difference than I expected, especially given how close my previous numbers based on the TW report were to the values I got back from Murphy's.

Oh, and I remain as confused as ever between Alkalinity, Total Hardness, and Bicarbonate......