Hand Luggage Only: Stu Brew take Brussels

Hi everyone, Carey here! You might have noticed that we’ve been away last week. We embarked on our first ever Stu Brew Tour. I thought I’d give you all an update to the exciting things we’ve been up whilst we’ve been away.

Our time in Brussels was amazing. Thank you to everyone who came with us. The team stayed in the Meininger Hostel which was an excellent choice. The beds were very comfortable which was perfect after a long day of taking in the sights.

Our first day, Saturday, started at 10am sharp with a tour of Cantillon Brewery. Our guided tour was fantastic. I learnt a lot about the brewing process and it was great to see the different techniques used to create Lambic beer. The brewery was founded in 1900 and is renowned for its Gueuze that is aged in oak casks. The tour lasted half an hour and we were greeted at the bar with two samples. I opted for the classic Gueuze and the Kriek, a sour cherry lambic.

Squad goals, am I right?
Cantillon’s brewing kettle!

Later that afternoon we went to 3 Fonteinen which is another famous brewery located in Beersel. We spent the day basking in the Belgian sun (I didn’t know this was a thing either…!) tasting some fine Lambic beers. The brewery was in a beautiful location with a superb beer garden. After a short but expensive Uber ride back to the city centre we gathered in Brussels Beer Project for a tasting session. This was one of my highlights of the trip. The experience included the biggest cheeseboard I had ever seen. My favourite beer from BBP was probably the Smoked Blonde Stout – an interesting concept!

Dom, Tom and Sandy taking on the mighty cheese and meat board at BBP.

The team split into groups the next day. A few of the more cultured members decided to take a trip to the European Parliament to try and sort Brexit out once and for all, but unfortunately things didn’t work out. Harry Conn, one half of our stocks and sales team, tried to get in for a toilet break but was unfortunately turned away.  Better luck next time. Meanwhile, the rest of the team tried out a great bar called Moeder Lambic. We also tried out Brew Dog in Brussels later that evening which I would seriously recommend to anyone visiting the city! The rooftop terrace was the perfect place to make the most of the sunny weather.

The next day I went with Chris, Sandy, Tom, Brett, Dom and Arthur for another visit to Cantillon. This was a lovely afternoon where we had the chance to taste a wider range of Cantillon’s beers exclusive to the tap room. As many of the tour attendees will know my favourite beer was the Kriek! I’m not a huge fan of sour styled beers normally but it seems that my tastes have changed after becoming acquainted with new styles on this trip! Later that evening the whole team paid a visit to Amadeus Rib House. This was a great experience. The Stu Brew record for rib consumption at Amadeus is currently held by Ali Middlemiss who managed to devour 3 full racks of ribs (I’ve just had fajitas for tea and thinking about how much food I ate that night makes me want to pop!) Congrats, Ali!

From L-R: Sandy, Tom, Carey, Lydia, Liam, Arthur, Dom, Dan, Lewis, Ali, Will, Chris


Our final day saw us taking in some more sights before our flight. A selection of us went to see The Atomium. This is sculpture is an icon of Brussels. I was really impressed at the attraction’s architecture. Whilst we were here we learnt that it was built for the World fair in Brussels in 1958. This was the first post-war World Fair so it pretty much had to blow the world’s socks off. The Atomium remains a popular tourist attraction and it isn’t too hard to see why. I learnt that the nine spheres are supposed to be a replica of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. Not too shabby! After visiting this work of art we popped along to Brasserie De La Senne which was off the beaten tourist path but worth the visit. I particularly enjoyed Brussels Calling which is a Belgian Style Pale Ale!

The Atomium

There were so many great breweries that we visited and Brussels is definitely the kind of place you NEED to visit if you’re a fan of beer and the culture surrounding it.

Outside the Atomium

I was craving cheese and meat for the majority of the holiday – I was so happy when Tom discovered La Mort Subite which was a stone’s throw away from the main square of Brussels. Their mixed meat and cheese board was DIVINE. This was, for me, the perfect end to the trip.

Cheese and Salami at La Morte Subite


In my opinion, the trip was great! We made some great memories and I would argue that this was the perfect way to end my year of being involved with Stu Brew alongside the majority of my amazing committee.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our time in Brussels and hopefully this review of the city will tempt you to pay it a visit if you get the chance. Finally, I’d also like to thank our superstar trip co-ordinator, Rachel, for planning the trip! Keep an eye out for our tour video which will be hitting the social media channels in due course.

Bye for now,

Carey

The Week That Was…

We were lucky enough to have hosted a bar this weekend at Brinkburn Street’s Spring Advent Beer Festival. We really enjoyed attending this festival and meeting new people. It was great to hear the general feedback on our Banoffee Imperial Stout, Sticky Imp, which a lot of the atendees loved. If you haven’t been down to Brinkburn Street Brewery already, what are you waiting for?

Malliot Blanc is BACK. IN. KEG! We last put this beauty into keg in November 17. It’s been a long wait but FINALLY, Maillot Blanc is back in keg! If you’re a pub or a bar and fancy getting your mits on some of this you can drop our sales team an email and they’ll be happy to assist.

Our Brewery Bash is on Friday! We’ve got Goodtimes Tacos providing the food which we can’t WAIT for you to try. As usual, we’ll be kicking things off from 5pm in the carpark of Merz Court. Let us know if you’ll be attending via our facebook event.


Thats all from us this week. We hope to see some of you on Friday at our Brewery Bash. Have a great week!

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Team x

Brewsters Assemble!

We’re back again with our weekly update. This week is looking exciting! Let’s have a look at what we’ve got going on.

This week we featured in the Education section of the Guardian! It was great to meet Naomi Larsson and we really enjoyed reading the article. You can read the article here. A big thanks for the lovely write up, Naomi!

Photograph: Naomi Larsson


The first North East festival celebrating women in the brewing industry is coming to Newcastle this week. We’re going to be hosting the bar for the symposium that is happening on Thursday evening. It’s going to be held in Venue, the space underneath the Student’s Union, from 7.30pm until 9.30pm.

The Symposium will be a panel discussion, where each panelist will spend around 10 minutes discussing their experiences, and a subject of their choice. We will then spend around 30 minutes discussing topics such as sexism in the beer industry, what we’ve done to combat it, and what we can do better. Finally, we will then have a Q & A where the audience can ask the panelists questions. Special guests include Melissa Cole and Julia Austin. There will also be an event at the The Town Mouse on 7-10 March to celebrate and showcase women in the beer industry. This festival is designed to highlight women in brewing, bars, and everything beer, and to celebrate their achievements. It’s worth noting that every ticket for the symposium comes with a free pint of our beer! What’s not to love?

We’ve got our hands on a new piece of kit. As many of you know, Stu Brew are strongly supported by the School of Engineering and it’s now the time of year where our research projects in the school are underway. This week saw the arrival of the dealcoholization unit. Keep an eye out for the results of the research sometime soon.

Finally our secretary, Harry, was joined by a couple of members; Harsh and Cameron on a brew day on Sunday. They brewed Lady Liberty which is a beer we brewed exclusively for Pacific House. To try this get down to the wonderful Pacific House who will pull you through a pint… or two!

That’s all from us for this week. Have a GREAT week!

Cheers!

Stu Brew x

Stout, stout, let it all out!

It’s that time again, the time for our weekly blog. We had an exciting week last week. On Thursday night the gang went down to the Town Mouse to celebrate the pub’s 2nd birthday! We had brewed a beer especially for the occasion, called All Night Breakfast. We had a great evening and enjoyed the great company. The beer went down really well!

Then, on Saturday it was time to pop over to Tyne Bank Brewery for Craft Beer Evolution. We enjoyed meeting everyone there and hope everyone enjoyed our beer, Sticky Imp and Gose’berry Jam which we brewed in collaboration with The First & Last Brewery.

Also, the society has been awarded a grant from Go Volunteer. With this grant we’ve been able to fund a fridge for the Home Brew Club to use to store prototypes. You can get involved if you fancy participating in Home Brew Club by coming along to The Buttery in Merz Court Tuesday at 5pm.

Hope you enjoyed finding out what we’ve been up to this week! We’ll be back next week with more updates.

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Team! x

What is new this week?

Hi everyone,

First and foremost, this weekend there is a very special event happening that we are so glad to be involved with. Readers of this blog know our passion for the North East beer scene and this weekend is a perfect opportunity to get involved. We’re going to be at Craft Beer Evolution on Saturday. The event, put simply by Tyne Bank Brewery themselves, will see people come together in pursuit of great beer. We have brewed something really special for this event which we’ll be announcing on social media this week, so keep your eyes peeled!

We’ll be there, alongside 10 neighbouring breweries, including Allendale Brewery and The First & Last Brewery. On the bar will be 10 amazing one off craft ales. During the day you’ll get the chance to discuss the North East craft brewing scene with the breweries! For all you foodie lovers out there Meat:Stack serving up the type of food that is the perfect accompaniment to great beer. We’ll be there selling merchandise too so come and say hi if you fancy picking up a snazzy new hoodie or hat! It’s called fashion, darling.

We brewed Malliot Blanc yesterday for another canning run. This will also be available in keg! If you are interested in getting your hands on Malliot Blanc drop our sales team duo, Harry and Lucy, an email.

Keep your eyes peeled on social media this week for more details regarding another Brewery Bash we have planned! We’re also in the process of organising our AGM which is very exciting…

That’s all from us now, but we hope you have a great week.

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Team x

We’ve been brewing…

It’s Monday which means that the blog is back!

We hosted a Brewery Bash on Friday night in the Venue underneath our Student’s Union. We had a great turn out! Thank you to everyone who came along. We had a great night. Newcastle Student Radio were there providing the tunes and we had the gang from Newcastle Gaming Society providing the video games – thanks guys!

Yesterday we did a brew day with Tyne Bank Brewery. We were brewing something really special for an upcoming event. Next Saturday, 23rd October, we’ll be down at Tyne Bank. This is geared to be a great event with lots of other great breweries from all over the North East. You can find out more about it here


That’s all for us for now, but stay tuned on our social media channels for more updates.

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Team x

What’s been brewing?

Hello everyone! Hope you’ve had a great week. We’re back with an update regarding what has been happening in the society. Grab a cuppa or a pint – this is a big one.

On Monday we were joined by an extra guest. Nicci Peet came along to our committee meeting to take some photos of us for her freelance project documenting diversity in the brewing industry.  A big thanks to Nicci for coming along – we can’t wait to see the pictures.

Friday was a busy day! On Friday we did the first day of brewing our latest collab with Red from First and Last Brewery. It was really good to have Red back! We also met with Naomi Larsson from The Guardian who came to report on the research we do to combat sustainability in the brewing industry. Stay tuned for more on this!

On Sunday, Chris and Red finished off their brew. The gose is packed with sloes, corriander and raspberries. This beautiful brew will be launching at Tyne Bank Brewery’s Craft Beer Evolution Event on February 23rd. We’re super excited for this event.

This week we’re going to be at the Refresher’s Fair where you can come and meet some of the team. Always fancied getting involved in Stu Brew? Here’s your chance! As well as this, Home Brew Club will be meeting Tuesday at 5pm in the Buttery, Merz Court. This week’s task is a flavoured stout. Feel free to come along if you’re interested in creating some new recipes!

Last, but not least, we are hosting a brewery bash on Friday. We’ve decided to pick a warmer venue this time, since it’s a bit chilly outside lately. Join us in Venue (the bottom floor of Newcastle University Student’s Union) where we’ll be serving up a range of cask and keg beers. Looking for a break from your studies, or simply a Friday evening out – we will be serving from 5pm!

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Gang x

We’re Back!


Hello everyone…

THE BLOG IS BACK! We hope you all had a lovely christmas break and are all feeling refreshed and ready for the new term. We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned this semester which we can’t wait for you to hear about.

We’ve just undergone an intense exam period and we hope that you all did well in your exams. They can be such a stressful time for all of us! On Friday evening the gang headed over to Coppers at Gosforth as a type of post-exam celebration. We held a Meet the Brewer session which went really well.  At this event we met Chasing Everest and organised a Brew Day with them the next day. This was a great opportunity and we always love finding awesome breweries to collaborate with! Thanks guys.

If you’re interested in joining our society make sure to keep your eyes peeled for us at the upcoming Refreshers Fair. We still have a lot of opportunities for members to get involved and it’s never too late to join our society!

We’ve got another Brewery Bash on the 8th February which we are very excited about. It’s going to be held in Venue which is located inside the Student’s Union. Coming? Let us know here.

That’s all for now!

Have a good week…

The Stu Brew Team x

Review of 2018

2018 marked four years since we first started brewing in Merz Court and what a year it has been. Stu Brew gave over 40 different people the opportunity to experience a brew day, brewing 33 full scale brews and 13 different prototypes. Highlights include trebling capacity and going into cans. 22,000 pints later, here’s a recap of what we’ve been busy with the year:

January:

  • Our first brew of the year was during exam season, students were hard at work  but that didn’t stop Paulius and four sabbatical officers knocking up a prototype.
  • To celebrate end of exams we ran a pop up bar in the SU.

February:

  • One of our first February brews was an adaptation on VMS, creating 9:00AM Lecture, to celebrate the Town Mouse’s first birthday.

March:

  • First brewery bash of the year with the food delights of Sghetti Monster.
  • First pub quiz of the year at Errant Brewery.
  • Celebrated St Patrick’s Day with green Lab Session.

April:

  • Chris headed over to Flash House and brewed the ‘About Time’ collaboration.
  • Additionally, collabed with Errant to make ‘Combustible Lemons’.
  • Second pub quiz of the year held in Luther’s after our AGM.
  • AGM and new committee elected.

May:

  • First brewery bash held by the new team. Sylvia provided some gorgeous Gyros to accompany the beer.
  • The team won the Community Impact Sustainability award from NUSU.
  • Emily and Jack gave a Pint of Science talk about ‘Yeast in Brewing’.
  • We packed up the 400l kit and TRIPLED in size!!
  • Ran a pop-up bar outside the Student’s Union.

June:

  • Won ‘The Siemens Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainability and the Environment’ at the ‘Pride of Newcastle University Awards’.
  • We got a swanky new electric delivery van.
  • Another brewery bash saw the big revealed of the new kit.

July:

  • Ran a Graduation 2018 bar and launched our newest Saison in the Graduation Saison series.

August:

  • Shot some footage with Thumb Design for our nomination for the 2018 Green Gown awards.

September:

  • Finally put beer on Eebria Trade.
  • Teamed up with Tyn CAMRA and made a cider.
  • Fresher’s Week stall and bar.
  • Pizza and Pint night at Newcastle Tap.

October:

  • First brewery bash of the academic year.
  • Launch of Core Curriculum at the Town Mouse, followed by a bar crawl showing the new students the Newcastle scene.
  • Our first batch of cans arrived!

November:

  • Green Gown Awards – finalist in enterprise category.
  • Final brewery bash of the year.
  • Second batch of cans arrived.
  • Collaboration with Rob from Two by Two.

December:

  • Last pub quiz of the year, at Errant Brewery.
  • Return of our third batch of cans.
  • Our final brew of the year is something not destined to be a beer. Keep an eye out in 2019 for more details!

We’ve had a blast this year and hope you’ve enjoyed it too. All the best to our customers, pubs, brewing friends and members this New Year.

Cheers,

The Stu Brew Team x

Weekly Blog 19 10/12/18 – Lets get quizzical, it’s Christmas!

Hi everyone! It’s finally the last week of term before the Christmas holidays and we’ve got our weekly update for you.

Paulius and Suzanne brewed a Vienna Lager over the weekend which we’re excited to taste soon. Members –  we’re brewing a whiskey wash on Sunday! If you’re interested in participating in a brew day later this week please drop our secretary, Harry, an email.

Fancy a bit of festive fun before the Christmas break? Come and join us at Errant Brewery on Friday for our Pub Quiz! We’ll be starting the quiz at 8pm but we’ll be heading down for 7.30pm to indulge in some of Errant’s beer beforehand. To reserve a table for you and your friends, drop Tom an email! Check out our facebook event for more details.

We’ll be in Luthers Bar this week selling bottle packs, cans and a selection of our merchandise which all make perfect Christmas presents. Come and see us from 12-2pm to get your hands on some last minute Christmas presents.

That’s all from us! We hope you have a very merry Christmas and hopefully you’ll find some Stu Brew under your tree this year… if you’ve been nice.

Cheers!

The Stu Brew Team x