March 2008

Its been a pretty busy couple of weeks, and more activity in the brewery really means less activity here, but the main points are:

• 1300 pints of Merry Andrew have been casked and returned to Steyning where they are waiting in temporary storage.
• …and they will be moved to slightly less temporary storage later on this month.
• In the meanwhile, virtually everything is ready for our second brew – Velocity Bitter – in early April.
• I attended a guided beer tasting in Steyning by Jeanette and John Simpson. Samples of Merry Andrew were distributed and enjoyed by the attendees and someone who wandered in off the street
• We placed an advert in CAMRA’s What’s Brewing newspaper
• We bid on eBay for a trailer to help with draying and moving by products. We won! Hurrah
• I drove up to Wigan and back in one day to collect it!
• Our personal license courses and exams have been booked.

We are planning our launch in May and there will be details posted here and to anyone who has signed up in the near future.

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I knew it. Explains all that empty headed wine criticism, doesn’t it.

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Talking of bottles, this came to my attention today.

Original link here. Perhaps I should offer them some Merry Andrew instead; it would certainly make meetings go with a swing.

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Our first brew of Merry Andrew is declared all fermented out at 6.2% ABV. We’ll be bottling most of it, but we are holding a few casks back for some lucky local pubs and our launch. I expect to be posting news on this subject next week.

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Well, another brewer has done us the wonderful service of allowing us to start up our brewing process using his equipment, so we will soon be on the market persuading you that the best thing for you to do if you have a bar is to stock our beers, and fast!
Seriously though, writing this on Saturday after brewing Thursday, I’m finally feeling the tiredness drain away ready for next week, but the achievement is satisfying! We’re going to have to bring the brew back here, and that is going to be a fun little trip in a big white van again for me: thrilling was the word for moments on the trip over, but the weight coming back is going to be well in excess of even that first trip with the barrels; I better take extra care!

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This is all over the interweb today. We wish him the best of luck with it. He’s going to have to work hard to beat some of the beers I’ve tasted from various small breweries over the last few months.

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Here

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Yesterday started with a thrilling* ride over to the Southampton area where we quickly unloaded our malt and got ready for a day’s brewing. Things went pretty well, and by the end of the long day we were finsihed with one fermentor filled with wort ready to turn into Merry Andrew.

If things go to plan, it should have fermented out by next week and we will be in a position to start planning the launch while it conditions.

*First time Dicky has ever driven a van, he had to turn up the radio to cover my yelps of fear.

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Hurrah!

They don’t have the actual clips attached. Boo.

Back they go.

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