Late the week before last, while we were arranging the wheat beer tasting, my beloved old BMW fell ill, and I eventually had to have it put down. So, like many of the brewery bits and pieces we’ve bought over the last few months, I hunted around on ebay until I found this monster, now the official brewery dray. Its a Toyota Hilux Surf, officially designated ‘indestructable’ by Jeremy Clarkson.
It’s got many advantages over the old beemer. I can throw Granny, Grandad, and the boy in the back along with 8 or so firkins. It does an astonishing 40mpg, which is not a lot but much better than the 18mpg I got out of the old car, and it’s diesel. I’ve been doing a little investigation and it turns out that you can make biodiesel from used cooking oil and some of the chemicals we are already using in the brewery. In fact they are easier to find than the oil – if anyone knows a source of used cooking oil, let me know. I’m allowed to make 2500 litres a year duty free. I’ll swap beer for old oil.
The car itself is a complete monster. Flowers wilt as it it passes, and babies wake, screaming, from their cribs. Within 24 hours of getting it back here from its native Wales someone tried to key it. I say try to, as I think the car turned around and ate them. All I found was a few scraps of bloody meat under the front tires tyres* the next day.
I’ve reported it to the police but if anyone knows of a teenager gone missing in Steyning, do let me know.
*Thanks to Gregg Sawyer at the Tatton Brewery for pointing this typo out.
Over the weekend, we had a short visit from the Belgian hop farmers that were able to sell us some hops last year. The small family group consisted of the husband and wife farm team and two children aged 7 and 9. They’d not tried Merry Andrew (alc. 6.2% vol) before so despite the hour I opened a bottle and we shared it in the summer sunshine.
After a few mouthfuls, mum turned to me said (I’m paraphrasing slightly):
6.2% you say? This is a very pleasant weak beer suitable for ladies and children. I think you should export some of this to Belgium, it makes a pleasant change to the stronger beers we often see there
A few months back I asked for suggestions on what spices should be used in a Belgian style wheat beer, along the lines of Hoegaarden. Hoegaarden uses coriander and curaco peel in fact but other combinations are possible.
In response to some comments and thought, we brewed up 50 litres of a standard beer and packaged thirteen 2 litre containers each with a different flavouring agent. These were unleashed on a hapless alpha tasting crew last week, here are a few of the 11 victims:
In the end three examples stood out, alkthough there were several others that we might try again with a different ratio of spice to beer. The three winners, romantically named A, D, and L will be brewed again in more substantial quantities and we’ll try again with a larger beta tasting group.
Over the weekend, the news that the Scottish Executive would be modifying the licensing regulations again was reported.
What’s really interesting about this is the suggestion of that alcohol should have a minimum price per unit at around 40p per unit. This is intended to prevent ‘irresponsible promotions’.
As I write today, Sainsburys is offering Stella Artois at £9.31 for 15×330ml cans, equivalent £1.88 a litre, but this is down from the usual price of £13.98. Five litres of Stella at 5.2% contains 26 units of alcohol so at a minimal price of 40p a unit Sainsburys would only be able to offer this at £10.40. I doubt that’s going to have a huge effect on the problem of binge drinking.
More to the point, a UK wide rule of this nature would prevent me doing a free tasting. As it happens, we have a small ‘alpha tasting’ tommorow. Twelve variations on a wheat beer with different spices. I’m trying to narrow it down to two or three at the most that we will give to a larger number of beta tasters. Presumably if I had to charge a minimum amount I wouldn’t be able to do this.
As it happens, I do know someone who has recently been making a sterling effort to drink themselves into an early grave – and its not pleasant to watch. That said however, this article in the Times recently did make me laugh:
I don’t drink because it tastes nice, or because it relaxes me. That, my friends, is what mashed potato is for.
…I’ve often wondered what mashed potato is really used for. Now I know.
Various developments have been keeping us occupied. There’s been a certain amount of dithering on the subject of sewage which turns out to be quite a complicated subject. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – mastery of drains was one of the benefits of Roman civilization and the subject’s had some time for developments since then.
In any case, it looks like a cess tank is the only practical solution in our situation and it will be going in shortly. In an attempt to stop this filling up too quickly, we will be collecting all our uncontaminated water and recycling it for cooling or more beer. We’ll also be making spare fresh water available to our neighbours. I’m not quite clear how much we will have left over at the end of a brew day but it’s possible that hosepipe bans may become a thing of the past down our way.
The second piece of news is that Merry Andrew is now a registered trademark. I set this into motion so long ago that I’d forgotten all about it. The main upshot of this is that I’ll have to go through the website adding TM all over the place.
Finally, and talking of Merry Andrew (TM), it will be available at the 4th Southdowns Beer and Cider Festival in Lewes between the 20th and 22nd June. See the Where To Get It page for more details.
01273 467527