Monday 17 November 2008

Greetings and a strange idea from Cumbria....

I have this idea.

I have a brewery and a quiet remote Inn in a beautiful part of the Lake District. We have comfortable rooms and serve nice food. We often have a good selection of Cumbrian ales on the bar. I like talking about ale and brewing.

I normally brew mid week. Weekends are taken up trying to keep customers happy. I sometimes have rooms empty mid week, which is why I brew then. I do wonder if there are any beer fanatics who might like to stay mid week and try their hand at brewing?

I did help to get Ted on the road with his project I believe he might be doing alright, so I guess I've got a little bit of a track record. I do suspect that Ted would have done just fine without me, but hey, I'm taking some credit anyhow.

So the deal would be along the lines of: Stay for a couple of nights. During the day help with some brewing, cask cleaning and ask me questions about how it all works, in the evening you buy food and beer off me.

It wouldn't be a high tech course, not all about brewing science, because I don't know much about it. It would just give the discerning beer drinker an idea of how beer is made in a microbrewery or the home brewer a chance to try his hand on bigger plant, or maybe give somebody who thought they might like to venture into brewing a taster of the work involved.

This would be most likely to happen in February or March 2009 on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If anybody wanted to bring a beer widow/widower with them then that's fine, if there was enough interest we'd organise a day trip or something.

I'm treating this as kind of market research. If I get no response then I'll forget the idea, if I get enough response I'll develop it further and start setting dates.

Leave a comment or mail me: dave at woolpack dot co dot uk

8 comments:

Whorst said...

I'd do it in a instant. I will let you know when we pop over. Do you know anything about your local water source? Do you have a source for specialty malts?

Alistair Reece said...

Sounds interesting to me - will drop you an email.

Jeff Pickthall said...

Not so strange at all - although I can't for the life of me remember who's done it before.

A press release and ad. in What's Brewing should do the trick.

Check with your insurance co. before using volunteer labour.

The Woolpack Inn said...

Thanks for the thoughts on insurance - although that makes it sound like I'm exploiting eager people to get free labour and also make some money out of them.

Of course that's not the case. Honestly....really, really Scouts honour!

There are simply times of the year when the combination the magnificent scenery and my delicious food and beer are not quite enough to get the hoards here.

There would of course be no compulsion for anybody to "work". But doing, of course, is the best way to learn. Mashing in and digging out the mash are excellent ways to work off a hangover, trust me, I know.

It is a realistic problem ensuring safety of the "trainees" another damn risk assessment I guess.

The Woolpack Inn said...

Artist formerly known as Wurst,

I can get various malts - had you got something in mind??

Tandleman said...

It is an interesting idea. Especially if I can come and brew a beer of my design.

The Woolpack Inn said...

That's not entirely out of the question, although it might depend on how many also wanted to do the same and if I could justify buying any ingredients different to my normal stock.

Mike Ring said...

If I weren't an eight hour flight away I'd definitely take you up on that, as would my wife. Too bad the gentry in the Midwest US haven't come up with this....