America's Coolest Home Brewery built by Chris Bowen of Hammersmith Ales

HammerSmith Ales started in 2005 , the idea for the name Hammersmith was originally inspired after the town outside of London, England. HammerSmith is rich in history and has a few landmarks significant to music, a famous bridge and an important stop along the river Thames. Chris's interest in British culture started many years ago, he has always been a fan of British beer , authors of literature, and British personalities. Early on in my exploration of beer, he quickly discovered breweries like Fuller's, Shepard Naeme, Young's, Samuel Smith and Greene King. When he started brewing, he quickly decided that he was going to focus on British style beers like English Bitters, Extra Special Bitter , India Pale Ale, Old Ale and Barleywine.
Video and photo of Home Brewerey

Chris is a member here. He's done a lot of cool stuff.

Revvy said:

Chris is a member here. He's done a lot of cool stuff.

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Did we just got spammed to go to some blog?

MyNameIsPaul said:

Did we just got spammed to go to some blog?

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I dunno......Chris would usually post about his own cool deeds.

There is something creepy about this.

It's just spam BS to get us to go to a horribly laid out 'blog' that's covered in advertising links. I trust no one with post counts under 6,922, ya know?

I just thought this was cool. Sorry if you consider it spam

No, it's not that it's spam. It's just since it's mbowenz (Chris's handle on here) it was just strange that someone other than him posted it. And usually spammers have low post count. And it's odd also that a profile created 5 years ago would suddenly pop up posting a thread with a link in it. Just a bunch of seemingly strange things...no offense meant.

It's really cool. Chris is great, he's done some cool things, and contributed much to the body of historical information on our hobby.

Here's him demoing Colonial Brewing.

Thanks Revvy & all,

I did not post that link, but appreciate the kind words !

Chris, what's the latest with the Arctic Ale film? Can it be seen online or anything? I'm dying to see it.

Revvy said:

Chris, what's the latest with the Arctic Ale film? Can it be seen online or anything? I'm dying to see it.

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Just a teaser at this point, about to launch a kickstarter effort to raise the last bit funds, making movies is such an expensive endeavor, only about 10 thousand more dollars needed :smack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0gMF94EtXE

Cool...is that a recipe you would share??

if not, would you share the basics of the style?

I have chills watching it. Have you contacted the National Film Board of Canada? This has so much cancon, you would think there'd be some grant money for it.

Xpertskir said:

Cool...is that a recipe you would share??

if not, would you share the basics of the style?

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Thanks for your question, since I produce this ale as a commercial offering, I can't really post the recipe( it wouldn't be fair to my contract brewer). The general style would be considered "old ale" , but very unique in that it has a large amount of unfermentable or residual sugars TG 1.044, but also an incredible amount of hops to balance all the malt and sweetness, the ale is a 12% abv, and the recipe is a bit unique for the time it was originally brewed-1852.

The brewery is Samuel Allsopp and Sons, who really are credited with making IPA famous, you can confirm this in Mitch Steele's newest book on IPA's history. I personally got the chance to search the vaults 2 years ago that had been shuttered since the early 1980's and pulled the last remaining bottles of arctic ale from 1875. Here's an excellent read on a tasting I did with some friends in London a few months back:
http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/an-1875-arctic-ale-tasting/

Revvy said:

I have chills watching it. Have you contacted the National Film Board of Canada? This has so much cancon, you would think there'd be some grant money for it.

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I tried a few times, it's amazing how limited the options become when the subject is based on "alcohol" ...BMW said they would help ( since I own a BMW and featured it in the trip), but once they took it to corporate, they said sorry, it's about beer, we wont touch anything with alcohol and motorsports

Chris, love the pub & brewery! My next door neighbor's kid plays D-line at Lehigh near you.

rvklein said:

Chris, love the pub & brewery! My next door neighbor's kid plays D-line at Lehigh near you.

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My brewery is right near the stadium, go LEHIGH !!

Thanks for the compliments !

How is it that you were able to take the last two bottles with you?

mrbowenz said:

Thanks for your question, since I produce this ale as a commercial offering, I can't really post the recipe( it wouldn't be fair to my contract brewer). The general style would be considered "old ale" , but very unique in that it has a large amount of unfermentable or residual sugars TG 1.044, but also an incredible amount of hops to balance all the malt and sweetness, the ale is a 12% abv, and the recipe is a bit unique for the time it was originally brewed-1852.

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Will you ever release the recipe? or at least where you sourced it from? Can we have it when the film is done? Judging from the time it was produced there can't be any crazy secret ingredients - couldn't be much other than pale, brown and black malt, likely EKG, OG of around 1.130?