More progress

I've been quiet, at least on my blog. There has been a lot going on, and there is still a lot to do.

Some time ago I announced that we had been awarded a grant to help us expand. The project is now well underway and really we are only waiting for delivery of the bottling machine. Our new tanks arrived a less than three weeks ago and are now mostly full of wort, conditioning beer or some similar liquid that will at some point in time become beer.

You will also all know of my involvement with a Samsung TV advert, which is now being aired. Look out for it, apparently it tends to go in the commercial breaks in the like of X-Factor, I'm sure the reader can imagine my thoughts on that.



Samsung – We Are David Bailey from Rokkit on Vimeo.

Anyway, here's an on-line version, in case you don't get X-Factor. See if you can spot me, I am there.

We've also been in Italy, promoting our beer out there. We were invited by Ales and Co, who look after our beer in Italy, to go along to Salone Del Gusto. This was a massive, and I really do mean massive, food and drink exhibition. Far too much fun was had by all.

The most bizarre foodstuff we ate was in a restaurant in the centre of Turin. This seemed to specialise in strange and unusual dishes that included tripe, brains and spinal cord. If that wasn't enough to put us off, we were told that one pile of squid looking offal was, in fact, uteri. I'm still trying to convince myself that it was squid, otherwise I feel I may have gained a taste for uteri.

Several other breweries were represented including Black Isle, Summer Wine and BrewDog. You might recognise notable brewery personnel in the picture.

Whilst we were in Italy we also got to see our new bottling machine, finished and ready to ship to the UK. Cool.

And there was the small matter of a four day holiday to fit in too. I love The Alps and the great outdoors. It's been about 5 years since we got to use our passports so this was very much a necessary indulgence.

Now, I must get back to work, we have a bottling machine to commission.

I am David Bailey

My name is David Bailey. There is another bloke called David Bailey who, when I was a teenager at school, caused me some unintentional indirect irritation. It wasn't his fault really, it was the fault of one of those Japanese camera makers, namely, Olympus. You see, they made a series of adverts with various tag lines like "David Bailey, who's he?" - you can understand why my peers used it as reference to ensure my ridicule and a reason I now prefer to be referred to by the more casual sounding Dave.

I guess this is the right place then

However, this week I'm pleased to say my name association has paid off. I do have some interest in photography, and not just your normal holiday snap stuff, but occasionally I take to trying to take really good pictures. Last week, several very good people alerted me to the fact that Samsung were giving away cameras to people called David Bailey as part of a campaign called We Are David Bailey. All I had to do was pop the short journey down to London and take part in the shooting of a TV commercial. They also promised to pay expenses, cool.

The film crew, filming David Baileys
taking pictures of models

Apparently I was supposed to take pictures of the stuff they had arranged in the building, like sexy models, a very interesting female contortionist and various still life stuff. The fact is, I was quite interested in the professional film crew and all their equpment, I ended up taking pictures of them, filming various David Baileys taking pictures.

There were a lot of David Baileys, 143 in total, including the man himself. Unfortunately not quite enough to break the world record of the most number people with the same name in the same place, but close. If everyone who had applied and been accepted had turned up then apparently we'd have got the record. It seems not all David Baileys are as good to their word as me.

Just a few David Baileys

Well, there you go

Some bloke who shares my name

It might be sunny, but for a proper shoot you just HAVE to have great big lights.

You might all be wondering what on earth this has to do with beer. Well, as part of my blag to get accepted on the program I talked about Hardknott, my blog and the videoing I've been doing. The researcher had already found me online but figured I couldn't possibly be stupid enough to travel all the way down to London. I also indicated that I liked the video facility of the camera and hoped to be using it for Hardknott promotional stuff later. Watch this space for some combined Olympus DSLR, JVC video and Samsung NX1000 Smart Camera productions from the Hardknott production team.

Meanwhile, after the event we had to pick the van back up from a friends pub, Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty, who as it happened have a hopbine growing in the car park. Here we have a couple of picies, one with my trusty Olympus and one with the new Samsung. Make your own mind up.

Picture of hop cones taken with Samsung NX100

Picture of hop cones taken with an Olympus E-420