Tuesday 20 January 2015

Elixir of Invincibility

Some time ago Vitesse Noir was banned by The Portman Group. The award winning duo Boak and Bailey, in their book, 1suggested that we had contrived it as a publicity prank.

"(Hardknott) even had its own rather contrived dispute with The Portman Group"

Elixir of Invincibility
Now, it is important to me to take this opportunity to state that we did not, on that occasion, intend to poke The Portman Group with a pointy stick. They genuinely got a complaint from a member of the public, we simply milked the PR opportunity. It was all a bit of fun for us. Sport, even.

Yes, this however, is a contrived attempt to bait The Portman Group. If it works, we'll get some free PR.  There is no doubt that last time the positives significantly outweighed the negatives. If they don't bite then we can be satisfied that they have learnt their lesson and will leave us alone.

When we recently decided to make a 7.3% double IPA we wanted to catch the attention of people. The beer itself was to be made all with Southern Hemisphere hops, Scott had researched the optimum dry hopping rate, and we got along with brewing it. This beer is now ready to send out in bottles and kegs.

Meanwhile a talented young artist, who is doing A level art, drew me a picture reminiscent of various fantasy type stories. The various Middle Earth movies were shot in part in New Zealand, which has stunning scenery. I'm a fan of The Disk World stories myself. A load of tenuous links perhaps, but we came up with the name "Elixir of Invincibility" and got our very good friends at Lemon Top to finish off the design of the label.

And then we decided to go up into our local mountains and film a sort of adventure, a tenuous story, and some great views. I was going to try to incorporate wizards, dwarfs, trolls and magic into the video, but as it happened, The Chinese New Year has resulted in the resident Cumbrian dragon being unavailable for filming.



Elixir of Invincibility from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.

1It is important to note that I am not in anyway upset at the comments in their excellent book. Indeed, if anything, I am quite flattered.

6 comments:

Stonch said...

It's like Brew Dog meets Hobgoblin this, Dave. I'm not sure to be honest bro. I mean some of us don't like Diskworld novels.

Had dinner with Terry Pratchett once. My gran said never speak ill of the dead but I have to say he was a horrible man. We went to a good restaurant though. The posh Thai in Oxford. Can't remember the name. I had my mate Coatesy with us and he had to leave the table to be sick during the meal. Poor lad. Had too much Stroh the night before.

Unknown said...

Terry Pratchett's not dead, Jeff.

Unknown said...

Jeff, in the Discworld goblins are particularly attracted to filth and have a sadistic streak. He doesn't seem to mention Hobgoblins, specifically, but one can extrapolate a hypothesis.

You have one over on me their regarding the experience of meeting Terry, who it has been pointed out, isn't actually dead yet. (Thanks Matthew)

I have met Ian McKellen, who isn't quite as benevolent and altruistic as Gandalf himself, but gets quite close. A charming gentleman.

But it seems to be getting a recurring theme to have my cultural pleasures ridiculed by commenters after the great Ron Patterson slated me for liking Prog Rock a couple of posts ago.

But I don't care, tomorrow I'm going to the Manchester Beer Fest then off to see what's left of Queen in the evening. Should be a good day.

Cooking Lager said...

Keep poking the portman group with a stick fella, go for it.

First they came for Spesh, then they will come for middle class spesh.

You won't beat them, but it's not my living.

Stonch said...

I was sure he was Hovis. It's a funny old world. Bit like how Walker died first from Dad's Army.

Simon said...

Hello from New Zealand!
Any chance of us getting to try some of this stuff down here? Your mates at Thornbridge, Hawkshead amongst others are being distributed via Beertique NZ.
Maybe this is your chance for new market penetration?