It was my 40th birthday last week and my wife, who hates beer, organised for us to have a weekend staying in Witney and do the brewery tours at Hook Norton and Wychwood brewery while we were up there - How's that for true love?
Anyway, I took a snap of the list of ingredients for some of their beers that they had up on the wall. They made no secret of the list but would not discuss quants.
Thought I would post it here as it might help someone down the line..
The second phot has not fully uploaded but the hops for Haymaker reads: Fuggles, Goldings, Challenger.
The tour was great and Strangebrew did a great pictorial post HERE
Other pertinent info that I was able to glean was:
Up until 2005 they cooled the hot wort in the open coolship in the ventilated space at the top of the brewery. They now use a big old plate chiller.
They use fermenters that are totally open (you do not get to see these on the tour but you see a video of that stage).
The bottle conditioned beers do not contain the brewery strain of yeast. It is pasteurised before shipping to a bottling contractor who use a different strain.
They use two different coppers. An old one that loses 8% to evaporation during the boil. A new one that only loses 2% in the boil apparently. Unfortunately the guide was not a brewer himself and was not able to answer my questions about boiling off DMS precursors etc..
Hope the above is of use to someone out there. I would recommend the tour to anyone. The tasting session at the end was very generous with 1/3 pint samples of all cask ales except the Copper Ale which was bottled (in all 7 beers were tried).
The Wychwood tour was less impressive as the guide seemed less knowledgeable and made several incorrect statements. I finally had to pull him up when he said that Hobgoblin was brewed with 80% chocolate malt and insisted that you use 100% black malt to make stouts..
The samples at Wychwood were also in stingy 7cl plastic thimbles and were all poured from bottles..
