Of Foam and Fury (Galway Bay)

upforit101 wrote: »

I've been told that the Foam and Fury tastes a lot like Flying Dog's "Raging bitch Belgian style Ipa".
Is this an accurate Likeness?
http://www.drinkstore.ie/Flying-Dog-Raging-Bitch-Belgian-Style-IPA-355ML-786243119913/

I wouldn't agree with that assessment at all to be honest...

irish_goat wrote: »

I don't think they change recipes, it's just hard to always replicate them when you have different qualities of malt and hops being delivered and they don't have the most sophisticated brewing equipment.

This.
One batch of hops will be slightly different to the next in acid content. Malt, even two batches from the same supplier, can vary between batches.
Even things like temperature changes can be an issue. They (most Irish brewers) are working in such small batches that a change in climatic temperature can effect their brews in various ways, if it takes longer to ferment the beer because of it being colder than you'd like and you are dry hopping, then the hops are in for longer, there's really not much you can do about it either. When I was down in the metalman brewery last spring Grá was trying to heat fermentation tanks with a small space heater to keep things going!


It's easier to keep things consistent in bigger batches, that why O'Hara's never have consistency issues, their scale is so much bigger than everyone else. Small batch breweries always have and always will, at times, have differences between certain batches of beer, it's just the nature of the beast.

drumswan wrote: »

Troubles Sabotage is a different beer than at launch, I suspect Kinnegar and Bo Bristle beers are the same. All of these have changed for the better mind, so Im not sure its a complaint as such.

I know Galway Bay do an actual pilot series, so you know in advance you are buying a 5 euro + experiment.

Do these lads have small pilot kit to experiment on before scaling up to commercial production levels?

Well until very recently, Kinnegar's entire operation was on a tiny kit so they would have had to change recipes when scaling up to full production launch a few months ago.