4th July, a good day to die?

Today is Independence Day. At Hardknott we think that we should observe the anniversary of an important day in world history. For us not least because Scott is helping us brew some truly stunning beer at the moment. I'd really like to take all the credit myself, but that would be most unfair to the very great contribution our American brewer is providing us.


4th July from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.


Generally, of course, American Craft Beer is having an increasing impact on the British Beer Scene. We take our influences from things we find over in the USA. We try to make beers similar to beers we have tasted from there, and hopefully we'll bring a bit of America to the UK without having to ship beer over the Atlantic with all the added costs, fossil fuel burning and problems of freshness.

One of the biggest antagonists in the UK beer scene is BrewDog. I bought a share way back when Equity for Punks was in its first incarnation. Folk thought me daft. Well, they have certainly grown out of all proportion since then. We now have Equity for Punks IV. Should you invest? Well, of course I'd prefer you to spend your money on Hardknott beer, or wait until we do something similar. If you have some spare cash, why not? Probably better than putting your money into a Greek bank right now.

Anyway, the guys sent me a little goodie pack including Born to Die, which has a best before date of today. We thought we'd review it alongside a few of our beers.

As an aside, and just to be clear, it is a very good beer, and certainly not in danger of going rank after today¹. I expect any spare stock will be sold off at a good price. Go fill your boots.

Which is better, Born to Die or the selection of Hardknott we tried? Well, beauty is in the palate of the beer holder, I expect, but we know which we prefer.

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¹I expect most readers of this blog know perfectly well that best before dates are only advisory. It is NOT illegal to sell beer that is after its best before date. Indeed, some beer can be better after, Fuller's Vintage, for instance (have a look at my previous blog post about yeast in beer. John Keeling points out in the comments that putting yeast into beer isn't just about bottle conditioning, it does help ageing)

It is indeed the case that many food items have best before dates, it is neither illegal nor dangerous to sell these items after the best before. When something has a use by date, then it is illegal and unsafe to sell or consume such items. Things like meat, fish, some cheeses and dairy products have food poisoning risks where the use by date is important. Beer, crisps, many cheeses, much dried food all have best before dates. Sometimes, as in the case of stilton², or Fuller's Vintage, better after the best before date.

²I have the tail end of a round of stilton I bought from the wholesaler a while ago which says it's best before 12th June. This is a lie, it is much better now than when it was bought.

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.