Two articles of interest into todays Times, Jane MacQuitty who usually writes about wine, says:
For all the trumpeting of English wine and brave talk of England’s flowering vineyards, beer and cider are Britain’s finest drinks. The odd good still and sparkling wine is harvested in England’s green and pleasant land – if we have a good spring and long Indian summer, that is. By comparison, there are rafts of great beers and ciders made all over the country year in year out, none of which is especially dependent on good weather, and each with its own distinctive taste and style.
Full article here
I think I might gently dispute that brewers are unaffected by the weather; the bad summer last year impacted both the barley for malt, and the availability of hops. The business with the hops nearly stopped us before we had started. That said, the article is a good one and she picks out some excellent and easily available examples (though sadly, not ours yet).
There’s also a good piece by Tony Turnball and Ben Machell on how some pubs are staring down their economic difficulties here.
The first straws in the wind of a new fashion ?
The tasting at Steyning Threshers was pretty successful – they sold out in fact – so there’s going to be a repeat on the 31st of May. The address is 24 High St. Steyning.
If you happen to be going to the Steyning Country Fair next week, you can try Merry Andrew at the Threshers at the top of the High St. It is conveniently located just opposite the stop for the park and ride buses that take you in and out of the town.
If you can’t make it to the fair, they are also doing a tasting on the Saturday the 31st of May.
See our new Where to get it page for details.
Over the weekend I received the news that John and Jeanette Simpson, the brains behind our Church Ale, have decided to give up leading guided beer tasting sessions in adult education classes.
Why ?
Last (academic) year we had the idiocy over Criminal Records checks. I quite agree that precautions should be taken about teachers who have contact with children or vulnerable adults. However, it seemed a bit of a nonsense to apply the rules to us, just teaching beer courses.
…and now…
This year the final straw was the government’s latest daft idea. Every tutor must be registered with the ‘Institute for Learning’ which they have just dreamed up, and unless you register, you won’t be allowed to teach (even if you have already been teaching AE for 20 years!) Of course a £30 fee is involved which for this year (but no promises for the future!) will be paid for by the AE service – you know, the same service which is too short of money to run courses!
A system reaches perfection just before the point of collapse. I wonder how many more useful and enjoyable courses will be lost because of the red tape that volunteers have to deal with.
I set up my first business in 1992, which means I’ve been unemployed for around 16 years by now. It’s had its ups and downs but it’s rarely been less than exciting, and of course I’ve learned one or two things along the way, such as the vital importance of keeping spare underwear at the office (long story).
Probably the most important thing I learned was that being in business is largely a matter of keeping your promises both literal as in ‘we will pay for that sack of malt’ and implied such as ‘that bottle of Merry Andrew is the best ale you’ve ever bought’.
Of course, sometimes mistakes happen, and when there are more people involved in the business, the chances of mistakes increase. Under these circumstances all the business can do, is its very best to do the right thing.
Recently, we accepted a gyle of Velocity from our contract brewer, and as it turned out it had gone bad. Unfortunately it was in sealed casks and there was no bottled sample available. So we were not able to apply our usual highly sophisticated quality control techniques i.e. we drink some. We were also surprised with the news that our contract brewer was shutting up shop and had sold all his equipment.
I accepted the beer anyway on the strength of the previous gyles that had been made for us and sent out three casks to a couple of festivals in the same area. That was my mistake.
A few days later we got the bad news that the Velocity was unusable, although the other beers we had delivered at the same time were perfectly OK. In fact the Merry Andrew gained the third prize at the Strathmore Arms festival which is rather better than OK.
But what should we do about the Velocity ? Well just about the only policy the brewery has that’s set in stone at the moment is that we do not quibble over ullage. It’s in our terms and conditions in a more formal sense but if it turns out that we have blundered by delivering a beer that’s not up to scratch, we will refund immediately, or not charge if there’s a credit line in place. That’s what we’ve done in this case, along with an offer of a free replacement cask when we are brewing on our own premises. After all, we would like people to understand what Velocity really tastes like! The remaining 12 casks of Velocity will be destroyed. That’s a huge ceremony including chanting priests and a guy in a black hood.
So that’s why there was no Velocity at the Church Ale, and why we do not expect to see any more Velocity or Merry Andrew until our own plant is ready, currently expected to be around August. Merry Andrew will be available at the South Downs Beer Festival on June 20th and 21st, and we plan one more publicity event before the plant itself is opened. Bottled beer will also be available in the near future as well starting with some donated prizes at the Southdown Charity Chase, on the 18th May 2008.
Saturday morning was sunny, and ticket holders started pouring in at around 9:45 am. It was an extremely well attended event with around three quarters of our ticket holders actually making it to the Red Lion. We were able to raise about £200.00 for our two charities, St Nicholas Church infrastructure and Worthing Churches Homeless Projects.
We had a lot of positive comments on the beer, although as it turned out we were only able to offer Merry Andrew. The casks that we left behind were pretty much gone by Monday.
I’ll be posting a note on why we only had Merry Andrew available and the consequences of that shortly.
I personally felt that this event was pretty succesful and huge thanks are due to Jeanette and John Simpson who also took the photographs and our co-sponsors The Real Patisserie who did the bread and The Rude Mechanicals who provided excellent music throughout the morning.
In fact, I enjoyed things so much that I’m planning at least two more events before September. Both will feature free beer in vast quantities, after all if you can’t do that when you are a brewery – whats the point?
I’m away until the 9th so the only posting here will be from Dicky, if that. Everything is prepared for the Church Ale on the 10th now and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone at the Red Lion on the day.
See you then.
01273 467527