Obsolete technology

I was sent a pocket diary the other day. You know, one made of that quaint stuff called paper. It was a well meaning present from a supplier. I doubt I'll use it as I have a smart phone. My smart phone can store dairy diary¹ type information, tell the time, send texts, emails, tweet, browse the internet after a fashion and can be used to phone people. It is smaller than the pocket diary and does a whole load more. I change my smart phone about every 3 years, mainly because I use it a lot and it breaks due to heavy use. It confuses me why anyone who is possession of a busy life requires a paper diary that only lasts a year.

Facsimile machines are another thing that baffles me, along with typewriters and steam engines. Although I'll admit that the romantic part of me does see the point of museum railway companies that are for the purpose of amusement for occasional family outings and something for well meaning enthusiasts to be enthusiastic about. However, having a father who is something of an over enthusiastic railway bore I tire very quickly of the noisy, dirty, inefficient modes of transport. I like to travel in comfort and speed these days.

Cask beer is of course a Great British tradition, but I do wonder if it is now being pushed beyond the scope of its very outdated method of dispense. Don't get me wrong, I do not wish to see its demise and hope that it will continue to be strong where it is well executed. But there are places that seem to feel the need to serve cask beer, and beer drinkers who are overly choosy due to, what I believe to be a misguided view, that cask beer is always better.

The number of times I have tried my beer, in two different venues, knowing full well that the beer is from the same gyle, racked on the same day, and delivered on the same run but the taste in the two pubs has been very different. It would be very easy to blame cellaring techniques. It would be easy to blame dirty lines, and sometimes these are the reasons. Sometimes however, it is simply down to the very real disadvantage of cask beer and the fact that pubs are urged to have it, even though they would be better with an alternative method of dispense for their micro-brewed beer.

I feel that some of the issues do make consumers quite sure that they "don't like bitter" and "I only drink lagers" when that same group, when faced with micro-brewed keg, irrespective of the beer style, are more likely to have a go. Distrust of handpulls, especially with younger demographics, is a problem that faces the microbrewery industry.

As we expand at Hardknott we have to make choices as to what technology is best for us to continue to invest in. We will have to increase our container population, our container washing throughput capacity and our racking facilities. Is it wise to continue to invest in cask equipment when the technology is outdated, the market is driven more by cost than quality and often portrays a quint, marginal and sometimes even amateurish marketing image?

The reader no doubt will have their own view.

------------

¹To be fair, although it was a typo, I can store information about milk too. Thanks Phil.

Duality

Light can be considered to be both a wave and a particle¹. It can be a difficult thing to understand unless you have a massive brain, which is why I struggle to understand it. But, I am assured by physicists that this is a truth. It's not that light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle. No, they are both things at the same time. Actually, this applies to all types of electromagnetic radiation. You see, the only difference between visible light, infra red, ultra-violet, gamma radiation, radio signals, x-rays, microwaves and the stuff that carries your tweets to your mobile phone, is the energy in the particles, or the wave length, or the frequency of the signal. The relationship of the frequency, wavelength and individual quantum energy is accurately and firmly linked by equations that I suspect some bloke called Albert made up.

So, what has this to do with beer?

Beer is beer. There are different types of beer, but they are all beer.

Some people like to group beer into two types; Real Ale and chemical fizzy lager.

Lots of people like chemical fizzy lager, market data confirms this.

Some brewers like to make stuff they call Real Lager, put it into casks and proclaim they are clever for doing so.

Other brewers make mild, yellow beers, put them into casks and give them a name that invariably has "Gold"² or "Blond"in the name, which are designed to be popular by being something pale, balanced, competently brewed but unchallenging in the flavour department. They appeal to a broad audience and it is a shrewd business move to do so.

Many chemical fizzy lagers are brewed in big breweries where it is important to achieve a short production time. The result has mass appeal, but is barely honest to give the name lager. I have no idea how these beers are actually made, but I have heard tails of relatively warm fermentations and next to no lagering time whatsoever. The main thing is that they are manufactured for mass appeal. Who actually cares if they are genuine lagers? Does it matter?

Then there are stouts, barley wines, dark milds, red ales, IPA's of various colours, various speciality beers and not to leave out the good old faithful hoppy bitter. These are all, at the end of the day, beer, mostly made from a juice we call wort made from hops and barley fermented into a beverage.

We generally, up to now, made beers that have higher hopping, increased coloured malts and otherwise different to what everyone else has done. We like it that way but is hardly a way to gain widespread acceptance.

So, we decided to brew a beer that is slightly less challenging, but doesn't leave behind our core values. We hope that on cask it is enough like a blonde, gold or other "Real lager" type beer to be acceptable to the drinker who likes that sort of thing. We also hope that on keg it will be enough like a "lager" to appeal to those who like a cold fizzy thing.

It's pale, made with lager malt and noble hops. Oh, and it's dry hopped with some special stuff, just to add that little bit of Hardknotty magic.

What is it?

It's Duality.

-------------

¹I personally, don't like doing things by halves, I always prefer a full tickle.

 ²Apologies to all my brewing friends who do just that, I'm not having a dig, your beer is lovely and sells very well.

Today Booths tomorrow The World

One thing about having a bottling machine is that to make it pay it needs to put lots of beer into bottle. Selling large amounts of beer needs a major partner, one way or another. Either that, or a big tied estate. We started planning our recent expansion back in February. We attracted grant approval around the beginning of June and ordered the equipment soon afterwards.

By July I was starting to think about how I was going to get full use of our machine. How we might increase the volume of sales. It's a tricky one to start selling to supermarkets, with the inevitable accusation from the beer geek world of selling out, but realistically I knew it was an essential business step.

For various reasons we wanted to be selective. Partly, I guess, because I didn't want to be seen as selling to a low-cost, pile-em-high type operation. More-over, I don't like to over-sell and then have difficulty delivering. Booths, who have 29 stores in the North West of England and 7 in Cumbria focus much more on quality rather than attracting purely on price. I had long considered the friendly family run business, an ideal place for our products.

The founders ethos was simple "Sell the best goods available, in attractive stores, staffed with first class assistants.” - and over 160 years later this easy rule makes an attractive place to buy food and drinks. If there is a problem it's that there are far too many nice, tasty things to buy resulting in me buying too much quality, and then feeling the need to enjoy it all before it goes off. Cheese, that is our biggest downfall, and olives, and those nice Fudges crackers, and the nice continental cooked meats and.......

.....but this is not about my own weakness for scrummy things to consume, no, this is about our experience of pitching at a major retailer, the experience from beginning to end.

Having decided to properly seek a listing in this worthwhile outlet I started to research how I should do this. I hoped, and had been led to believe that their treatment of suppliers was slightly less daunting than bigger, nasty retailers.

After a short hunt on the interwebby thing I found a page that allowed me to propose my products to Booths. They have a nice and helpful website dedicated to inviting suppliers to pitch at their buyers. I filled out the form and back came an automated reply confirming receipt of my gallant attempt to attract their attention.

At this point I had no idea how long it might take to actually start talking to a real buyer. I knew that the original web-form is just the sort of filter that any buying department must need¹. I imagined they got loads of applicants and might have a huge long backlog of people to sift through and form a shortlist. Never-the-less, I had hoped to get listed in time for Christmas.

To my surprise, less than a week later we received an invite to pitch at a meet-the-buyer event. Cool, perhaps we will get in before Christmas.

We were told that we had 15 minutes with the buyer, only 15 minutes. And we were told this would be very strict. We drafted a script. 5 minutes of pitch and 10 minutes of Q&A, we were informed.

Damn, they were not wrong. It was done by bells. A bell to say "all change" and a bell 5 minutes from the end of the session. The script went out of the window as it seemed our buyer just wanted to ask questions. We hurriedly tried to get in our points as much as we could; why we thought Booths and Hardknott were a perfect match.

Indeed, the whole experience seemed a lot like speed dating. Almost bizarre, but also exciting, challenging and quite rewarding, even if we felt unsure that we did the right thing. But John, our buyer, assured us he'd be in touch.

John did get in touch. Initially through his secretary inviting us for a more relaxed meeting. We have now met, mostly agreed the beers that will go into Booths and our supply price. We have yet to find out  what the retail prices will be, but I imagine it'll be about right.

Sadly we were too late for Christmas. Just as well in reality. As is the case with these things, the expansion is only just getting up to speed. If they had ordered for Christmas we might not have been able to deliver.

I am told by John that the first official order³ will be placed in mid January and the beers will appear for February. Initially only in the 7 Cumbrian stores, but you know what you have to do if you want our beer in the other Booths stores.

It looks likely that they will be Continuum, Code Black, Azimuth and Queboid. Great choices John, if you don't mind me saying.

-----------------------

¹One of the things I'd most like to change about the way my business is run is stopping every single cold caller wasting my time. And the time of others in the business. For example, just today I had sterilised an important fitting and had it in my hand, carefully keeping from all forms of potential microbial contamination. Ann was loading the grist case for tomorrows brew and other staff were fruitfully engaged cleaning up the brewery at the end of a brewday. The phone rang. It might be someone important. A customer perhaps wanting to buy beer. Damn, I had to put that fitting down on the sink and go ad answer the phone. It was a time-wasting cold caller. I had to go back and re-santitise the fitting.

I want a web-form for potential suppliers. And a nice, leggy² secretary who tells cold callers that, if they don't mind, would they like to go fill in the damn web-form if they want to sell us owt.

²Yes, I'm a leg man. Breast is OK, but for the very best stir-frys I bone out legs. I do love to get my teeth into a good bit of thigh.

³Apparently the official order will be sent by fax. Now, I don't want to seem rude about a new customer, but are faxes not a little 20th century? Surely, for heavens sake, everyone does things through the internet these days?

I have been in business for nearly 10 years now, and although that nasty f word has cropped up from time to time, I really did think that the fax machine had been consigned to the same bin as the typewriter. What does the reader think? For goodness sake, do we need to call BT and get a fax line put in?

I've asked the question. I guess if we have to we'll get a fax line, but really.................

Bottled

Off-sales of beer are outstripping on-sales. This is of course very sad. More beer is sold through off-licences and supermarkets than is sold  in bars, restaurants, hotels and pubs. I can, and frequently do, lament this situation. I could stick to my principles and say that I will not sell my beer to the off-trade and maintain a on-trade only brand. This, in some ways, would seem to be a nobel thing to do.

I'm a business man. Not a very good one it seems as I've yet to be hugely rich. Indeed, for a while I was able to claim free prescriptions, for instance, so low was my disposable income¹. We have consistently found it easier and more profitable to sell bottled beer than cask. We are very happy to sell cask beer, but if we divert more of our output into bottle and avoid the inevitable fact that cask competes largely on price, we can perhaps make an honest living.

So, when we got to the New Year that was nearly 12 months ago I had a couple of business goals. Apparently that is the thing one is supposed to do in the New Year, make resolutions. As giving up beer wasn't an option, I vowed to make the process of bottling easier and more efficient. I vowed to get a bottling machine. You see, hand bottling is all very well, but it's just not cost effective. To be honest, it's a right pain in the arse and no one really cared for bottling days.

On Monday we put a little bit of Azimuth in bottles. It went quite well, although we have a few tweaks to do.

Today we got our new labels, so I'm hoping we are getting very close to full production runs of all our beers.

It's been hard work getting this far. Put simply, we couldn't really afford to buy a bottling machine. When we went to the banks with our business plan they pointed out that we hadn't made enough profit yet. Explaining, patiently, that the business plan showed that we would make a profit if we had the efficiencies of the bottling machine got the persistent insistence that we hadn't made a profit yet.

However, a couple of public funded schemes have made it work. Lots more paperwork, business plans and a forecast on something called gross added value. It's all to do with jobs and profit seemingly. I guess if I employ more people they pay tax they mightn't have done, and if I make a profit I pay tax. I'll even have to start paying for my prescriptions, although not for long, as the way life is flying by at the moment I'll be retired before I know what happened.

But we did it, we got a working bottling machine that'll probably spit out up to 1000 330ml bottles an hour, provided Alex and Jules load and unload at that rate. Watch out, before long we'll have loads more beer in loads more places, and that has to be good for us and you.

----------

¹And at times, negative. That's the nature of business, you have to invest to get anywhere.

The Jennings Worlds Biggest Liar Competition

I often show contempt for some of the larger family brewers, and nearly any brewery larger than that. It's not surprising, I want some of their market and generally I don't care for much of their beer. I hope the observer can forgive me for this hot headed contempt. Some of the breweries bigger than me fail to hide their open contempt for the microbrewery industry, or their obvious aggressive approach to pushing out broader choice in pubs. I could tell stories and name names, but I've had my fingers burnt before when doing this.

There are, however, some very friendly brewing businesses, who could quite easily treat me with equal contempt, but don't. They have no real reason to treat me nicely, and even, on occasions, positively offer help. They do, and when they do they make me feel quite humble and genuinely pleased to be involved with the bigger world of beer.

Examples of great brewing businesses that have shown me genuine warmth include Fuller's of Chiswick. John Keeling is one of those great brewers who deserves respect, not only for his open embrace of the bigger beer picture, but his down to earth approach to life.

I remain tolerant of one of the biggest lager brands in the UK, Carling. This is not only because in all fairness it's very competently brewed, but because Molson Coors have, in the past, extended unconditional hospitality on a number of occasions.

I could mention many other breweries for which I hold a healthy respect, the list is too long to make here, so don't read too much into a lack of mention. There are some that I'd like to name and shame for what I see as underhand or irresponsible approaches to a wider goodness in the beer world. Your list, dear reader, will no doubt be different to mine. This blog entry is about a brewery that most certainly is not on that list for me.

Jennings are the biggest brewery in Cumbria. They are owned by Marston's, who have been very clever in avoiding controversy by keeping the likes of The Jennings Brewery in Cockermouth not only open, but by investing in it. Jennings, in my opinion, do make some very good beer and are above average in interest compared to other breweries of similar size, and indeed many who are much smaller. It would be churlish for me to do anything other than acknowledge the fact we are very fortunate that the biggest brewery in our county is Jennings.

Most importantly for me, when we first came into the industry, Jennings fitted out our cellar and supplied very nice brand new handpulls for the bar. Water jacketed beer engines are essential for the very best cask dispense. They are brilliant and made by Angram of course, I wouldn't endorse anything else.

When we decided to brew our own beer, and eventually decided to stop ordering Jennings beer, they could have, and would have been legally entitled to come and claim back their cellar equipment and handpulls. They didn't, and I'm very grateful to them for that. Of course I left them in the pub when we left and they have since been used for Jennings beer.

The other week I got an email from their PR agency asking me if I'd like to attend The World's Biggest Liar competition and blog about it. Jennings, you see, kindly sponsor the event and quite rightly wanted some ROI for their trouble. I was very tempted. However, for various reasons, I felt there were other things that required my attention. This didn't stop me finding a way to have a representation.

My American friend Ted was in the country and was persuaded, perhaps unfairly, to pretend to be me. I was glad about this because having agreed to be there I felt a bit of guilt about letting people down.

As it happens, Ted's blog about the night is probably more poignant than any ramblings I might have produced and gives an interesting insight into how a "large American" views such a unique and very special Cumbrian event.

The competition, by the way, was won by Jack Harvey, 25, who beat eleven other entrants to take the Liar cup at Jennings pub, The Bridge Inn, Santon Bridge on November 15th.

Colonial Mayhem, Ted and Friends of Ham

You might have heard of my friend Ted Sobel. He brews beer in a little brewpub, called Brewers Union Local 180, in Oakridge, Oregon, USA. His little town nestles in the Willamette¹ Valley just before the start of the really long climb up to the pass.

Ted came here last year and brewed Colonial Mayhem. It was fun, I think. It's not the first time he's brewed in my brewery, but the first time in the current brewery.

I think it was also the fullest we've had our mash tuns. I'm just about over the trauma.

Ted is back. He's in the UK doing what I think he's persuaded his wife and the IRS is legitimate beer research. We brewed his recipe of Colonial Mayhem again earlier in the year and saved one pin². 

So, in order to bring the beer and the man together we have arranged a little tap takeover in Friends of Ham, Leeds, on Tuesday 20th November. This might well be your only chance to try this beer on draught. It is certainly a rare chance to drink Hardknott beer with Ted. Trust me, it's worth it, he's quite mad.

"Yes Dave, this mash tun does need to be this full"

We love Friends of Ham, not just because they have great beer but also because they have a quality food offering. The ham really is very good, great olives and cheese. I can't think of better food to go with a general evening of beer drinking.

We will also bring some bottles of the original beer batch along with some bottles of the 2nd batch. A very rare chance of a vertical tasting.

If you are in Leeds that day, please do call in and say "Hi"

-------------

¹Absolutely, that is where the hops by the same name originate. We use quite a lot in Dark Energy and a hint in Continuum.

²Just the one pin. The rest went into keg and bottles. Say what you like about cask, it's far easier to sell strong beer like this in keg and bottles.

Sexy new bottles

It's all getting very exciting here at Hardknott HQ. We understand that our bottling machine is being packed and will very soon be on it's way over here to the UK. Thanks to everyone that ordered beer over the last 24 hours, it helped pay just a little bit more off the balance and there is not far to go now.

We are also nearly there with things like label designs, all worked in to coincide with the delivery of the new machine. We think they look quite good.

There have been requests for the ability to pre-order on our web-shop. As this would certainly help us get the project to completion we though "why not?"

So, here's the page if you want to be the very first people to get the full set.