April 2010

We’ve never had a beer move so fast. The last firkin went out the door yesterday and I’m brewing it again today. I’ve had kind comments from many people, but this one takes the biscuit.

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The election has finally got underway and I’ve received my polling card meaning that I now have to decide who to vote for. I’ve been watching the broadcasts carefully and I’ve noticed that there are three topics that none of the big three parties seem to be talking about.

• The war.
• Immigration.
• The debt.

What about the fuss about national insurance ? Surely that’s about the debt ? Not really – both Labour and Conservative plan to raise it, the Conservatives by a little less. The notional difference between their plans is £6 billion.

The annual deficit, the amount HM gov spends that they haven’t raised through tax is £176 billion more or less.

The debt is actually somewhere around £782 billion – keep your eye on the debt clock – depending on how you measure it. The only way to fix the problem is raise more tax or institute spending cuts worth hundreds of billions of pounds. Unfortunately tax rates have probably already reached the point of diminishing returns hence the fuss about NI. So cuts are the only way; highly controversial and highly uncomfortable (Greek riots anyone ?)

Similar quandaries exist around the topics of the war and immigration. There’s definitely a problem but the obvious solutions which are withdraw and close the borders are contentious and painful in all sorts of ways. So none of the big three are talking about them.

Although it’s pretty clear what Labour will do about the big three topics, e.g. what they’ve been doing for the last 13 years, I’m forced to guess about the views of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. My guesses are not happy ones.

So I’ll be voting for one of the smaller parties standing in my area, and since my most favoured party isn’t fielding a candidate, that puts me in the UKIP camp for the moment. Apparently that makes me a swivel eyed fruitcake – but why stop now? I always say.

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The brewery has entered its busy season and in addition I’ve taken on a technical project that looks like its going to absorb quite some time. Blogging has already slowed and this will be my last blog for a little while except for brewery announcements. I promise to be rather more diligent about those.

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The recent duty rise (6% !!!) has lead me to investigate how we might reduce our costs in other areas to keep prices down. I’m thinking of using a new pattern for our bottles. The Klein bottle.

The problem with our standard 500ml bottle is that it only holds 500ml, so you need a fair number to contain a single brew. These bottles don’t have that problem, the inside is continuous with the outside so each one can hold any amount of liquid* up to the volume of the visible universe (currently 4.2 x 10^69 cubic miles).

I’ll only need one.

I’ve alerted West Sussex County Council trading standards and I understand that the absent due to sickness rate has gone up alarmingly.

…I’m thinking of getting some glasses following the same pattern. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m very proud to introduce Adur Brewery’s new Klein Stein.

If you’d like to get bottles or glasses like this yourself go to kleinbottle.com.

*Some people claim that actually they have a volume of zero. Obviously I’m not going to listen to such nattering nabobs of negativity – they can’t even tell me if it’s zero litres or zero pints!

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