Chocolate Stout Bread

As promised here is the recipe for Chocolate Stout Bread. It turned out quite well, still has the flavours of the beer and the Free Trade cocoa powder I used compliments the favours of the stout. Ingreients are for a bread machine with 1lb capacity, so it may have to be adjusted to suit other machines.
9fl oz Penlon Cottage Chocolate Stout. Do not chill the bottle and swill out the yeast in the bottle to go into the recipe.
1lb strong white bread flour.
2 tbsp Free Trade cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (Anglesey Sea Salt of course)
2 tsp caster sugar
1 oz butter
1/2 teaspoon dried yeast
Add the ingredients according to the instructions of the bread maker and set to the sweet setting. Drink the remainder of the beer and let the machine mix and bake away. 3hrs my bread machine took to produce a double chocolate bread, next time I will add some chocolate chips for even more flavour. Enjoy.

Pen-lon Cottage Brewery Chocolate Stout

Every so often a beer comes along that has a wow factor. The Penlon Brewery Chocolate Stout is one such beer. An intense black ale with aromas of roast and caramel flavours leads into a smooth and silky rich flavour of, well chocolate which continues well into the aftertaste. I have tried chocolate beers before, with varying degrees of success, but Penlon have really pulled it off with this beer as they use chocolate and not just chocolate malt in this beer, along with roast barley. In fact this beer is so good I'm going to attempt to use it in cooking a chocolate cake! Will post the recipe in a couple of hours if it works out okay.

Pen-lon Cottage Brewery - Gimmer's Mischief

I'm glad the bottle label informs me "A gimmer is a young maiden ewe" as I had no idea who or what it was before discovering this beer. A dark amber coloured ale with an aroma of Seville Marmalade and a bittersweet almost chewy flavour. Lingering orangey flavour continues into the aftertaste. A bit strong at 5.2% ABV and a stronger version at 7% is brewed for export to Denmark. The 7% version won the True Taste Wales best alcoholic drink product last year and every batch is hand-produced on the small 15 gallon brewery in West Wales. Another moreish beer, may have to check the cellar to see what else is in there.

True taste Winners 2008

The True Taste Awards for 2008 have been announced.
The full brochure is available as a pdf here but here are the beery highlights:

Alcoholic Drinks Section

1^st Place went to Penny & Stefan Samociuk from Penlon Cottage Brewery in Ceredigion, with their Gimmers Mischief Premium Ale – Export.

2^nd Place went to Steve & Marc Evans at Rhymney Brewery (Dowlais) Ltd with Export.

With the first two winners it seems that only beers meant for drinking outside of Wales would win awards but

3^rd Place went to Otley Brewery with 01. A Highly Commended award also went to current Champion Beer of Wales, Otley 08. Well done to Nick, Charlie and Matt for brewing such excellent beers.
Other Highly Commended awards went to Breconshire Brewery with Red Dragon and Golden Valley, Hurns Tomos Watkin Cwrw Haf , SA Brain with Reverend James and Purple Moose with Dark Side of the Moose.

Now I'm not a fan of non-alcoholic drinks but well done to Alan Wordsworth at Springfield Cider for winning a Highly Commended with his Llangovan pure welsh apple juice. I prefer my apple by-products fermented though.

Sifting through the food results, in the Baked & Confectionery – large producer section, Lewis' Pies in Swansea came joint first with their Steak & Ale Pie made with Tomos Watkin Cwrw Gaeaf, whilst Peter's of Bedwas came in second with their Steak and Brain SA pie.

Odd that none of our award-winning ciders or perries made it through to the final but if the judges prefer beer to cider then they will choose the beers!