Banging good beer

I'm in Stockholm, which no doubt you know if you follow me on twitter, or are my friend on Facebook. I"m here because I have sent beer to a beer festival. Well, to be more precise, the Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival. Obviously I'm hopeful this might help us expand our export market into a new country. Whilst I'm here I'll have to sample a few beers and whiskies, it would be rude not to.

Meanwhile, back at base, it's the weekend of Beer'n'Bangers in conjunction with The Broughton Festival of Beer. Ann is left running the show, and I'm hopeful the team will be run off their feet.

It'll be a busy weekend, if previous years are to go by. There are numerous hostelries taking part and there is sure to be plenty of great beer.

Of course there is Hardknott OnTrack, which is just two stops up from Foxfield on the train. I believe there is a bus connecting the centre of Broughton to Foxfield. A veritable exploration of various beery establishments is to be had this weekend.

I spent a couple of days making food that can be quickly re-heated for the event. A curry, cheesy party things, savoury rice, "sticky" sausages, sausage casserole and some black pudding scotch eggs¹.

I'm guessing you won't all be flocking to Stockholm this weekend to try Hardknott beer, but if you are the south of Cumbria you could do worse than head towards Broughton and Millom for good beer and local Cumberland sausage.

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¹The scotch eggs are work in progress. Half of them split during cooking, making them much less visually appealing than they tasted. Next time.

Montreal part 1

I do enjoy travelling. At least, I enjoy going to places I've never been before. If I think about it, I'm not sure I enjoy the actual act of moving large distances anymore. I enjoy the anticipation as an emotion whilst moving. The excitement of not really knowing what to expect. Of course, what ever you try to expect, the realisation is always quite different when you get there. But, now I think about it, travelling itself is a real pain in the butt.

I'm sat in a hotel room right now, resting after a couple of days of beer judging. I was asked to skip over to Montreal for the Mondial de la Biere, which is a rather large beer festival in Canada. We've also sent beer here, although I hasten to add, we didn't enter any into the competition I just judged.

When asked if I'd do it, with hotel and flights paid for, I didn't really have to think too hard about if I was going or not. Plucking up the courage to ask Ann if it was OK for me to do it took a little longer. But, flights and hotel paid for in return for tasting a few beers? No brainer, I think.

As it happens, we decided to pay for Ann to fly out too, I thought it only fair, and after all, I'm rubbish at packing suitcases.

Travelling in the name of beer never ceases to fill me with new ideas, changed perspectives and inspiration and sometimes just a little bit of frustration at the inertia I feel we sometimes exhibit in the UK. As more and more people experience world beer culture so we see this culture influence the UK beer scene. In turn we also see a widening gap between those who are open minded and have travelled, and those that cling to tradition like it's the only thing that is important.

There is a down side of our ever increasing global travel. There is the fact that London will soon be under many feet of sea water when the poles melt and that soon the oil will all run out and the planes will fall out of the sky. But that's not the down side I refer to. The real problem I'm finding is the increased difficulty in traveling.

I want to touch on this because I feel beer travel is a great way to widen horizons for any committed beer geek. Air travel has never been cheaper in real terms I'm sure. But it's become a right ball-ache.

I could be wrong, and I'll stand corrected if I am, but I'm sure once-upon-a-time transit through another country was a breeze. Provided you were travelling with the same carrier all the way through you check your luggage and go through security once. You didn't need to clear customs if you are in transit through another country and you just move on the secure side of the airport to your connection. Oh, and for sure, you did't need to claim your bags and re-check them in.

We travelled through Philadelphia to get here from Manchester. Apparently the tickets were cheaper than transferring at Heathrow. If you read this blog and take away one piece of useful information it would be that Philadelphia airport is a real nightmare. We stood in line for boarder control for a whole hour. We had to pick up our hold luggage and then re-check it having cleared customs. We then had to stand in line again for about 45 minutes to clear airport security again. I would have loved a coffee, or  beer and a relax and sit down before our next flight. However, a 2 1/2 hour stop over left us no time at all, only catching our plane with minutes to go.

It seems as more and more people engage in global travel it becomes more and more arduous in terms of security, especially when connecting in a country other than your origin or final destination.

But still, we are here, and Montreal is fantastic. It really doesn't feel like North America, and I hope I'm not insulting the fantastic people here by saying it has a brilliant European feel. It's only the cars, trucks and some of the architecture that reminds you that it's really the Northern American Continent.

I'll have more later on the festival and my experiences of the judging. Meanwhile I'll leave you with a link to a live TV interview I did this morning.



Righty, off to drink beer!

Dulcimer - music to my ears

I often get requests for information from people who want to know where to get my beers. The trouble is, mostly, they go out on pallet, far, far away. And even then, even when we deliver direct, that bit is all organised nicely by Ann, so generally if the question is asked of me, then I normally look a bit of a twit and have to say "eerr, dunno, sorry"


A Dulcimer is an interesting stringed instrument that I particularly like. The hammered version, which I guess would have been the forerunner to the piano, can create in the right hands an interesting percussive-melodic sound, slightly medieval in feel, but with a seductive embrace that does it for me. Not enough musicians play them, and I'd buy one and have a go, if it weren't for the fact that Ann thinks I have enough instruments cluttering up the house already.

There is a place called The Dulcimer in Chorlton, near Manchester. They are arranging a festival for this coming Bank Holiday weekend. They have some of our beers, and for once I am in receipt of this information, hence I am sharing it with the world.

So get along there if you want to try Dark Energy, Infra Red or Azimuth. There are other great craft brewer's beers there too. There is apparently some music, although I have no idea if there will be a dulcimer player there or not.

Progressive Beer Festivals

It has been an increasing irritation for some time that there has yet to be a really great, all embracing beer festival in this country. Beer enthusiasts and progressive brewers alike have been frustrated that there is yet to be non-constraining festival where beers can be shown off irrespective of dispense method.

It was only a matter of time, of course, but it seems that the chit-chat about it has finally turned into real action.

There are to be at least two events happening this autumn which will include beer dispensed in a variety of ways. One is the Leeds International Beer Festival. We will be there.

This event is taking place in the Leeds Town Hall¹ 6th-9th September 2012.

We have agreed to take part in this great event. The organisers are allowing breweries to pitch up with whatever format of beer they wish. For logistical reasons we have taken the decision to serve only keg and bottled beers. As it is, with our small team, it will be something of a challenge, so we feel that the extra problems of cask would make it impossible.

There is also a second event we have heard about, which will be great fun, but as yet news is sketchy. This is the Independent Manchester Beer Convention, which will be held on 5th and 6th October 2012. We've been invited to this too. Watch this space for more news.

We're all full of nervous anticipation about these great events. 2012 is turning out to be a fantastic year for all sorts of reasons.

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¹I'm sure Leeds is a city, surely it should be a city hall?

The BrewPub concept

I've been spending a bit of time resting and recuperating ready for a new season. Getting to spend weekends away when one runs a pub is not easy. During our winter close-down we spend quite a lot of time working on the property and a little bit of time doing what normal people do - having a life.

I probably need to start thinking about brewing some beer ready for us opening. I also have some very nice beers I need to bottle; a 10%+ barley wine and a 7%+ whisky cask aged stout. Time, as always, is getting limited and there is insufficient winter left in which to complete all the jobs I have to do. In a pub beer matters more than anything else, we know that, so I need to get my finger out.

In pubs the difference between what beer is bought in for and what it is sold for is what helps to pay the staff wages, the electric bills, insurance, maintenance bills and all manor of things. Hopefully there will be a little bit left over for the publican, although most people would probably be surprised to know that this amount is often less than 10p per pint. Yes. Really.

As with most things, beer gains some economies of scale as the brewery gets bigger. Small breweries have the advantage of a reduced duty rate to counter this. The smaller the brewery the more expensive per pint the beer is to produce. It is generally considered that for a stand alone brewery to make money for a single owner/brewer, with no additional staff costs, it needs to produce around 10 brewery barrels¹ per week, minimum.

Below this volume then the economies of the BrewPub take over. In this situation the elimination of transport costs, amalgamated overheads, shared administration and other factors help to further benefit the economics of this dubious business model. But there is again a limit to how viable this can be. At a brew length of 2 barrels, the size of my brewery, I would say that the economics are right at the limit of viability. Making beer for the pub, without any external sales, is just about viable because I can sell the beer over the bar at £2.50 or so a pint. At this price my efforts as the brewer pay off. Selling the same product at wholesale prices makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I regularly get requests to supply my beer to beer festivals all over the place. My answer is almost always that I can't. 2 days of my time makes about 600 pints of beer. At wholesale prices it doesn't pay for my time. If I sell beer to other pubs my pub loses out either because I lose a day off or because my pub has less Hardknott beer. Or perhaps I get less time to finish the tiling in the gents loo or tidy up the cables that hang unsightly in the bar, or 1001 other jobs that really need to be done.

So, if you ring me up and ask for beer please understand "no" does actually mean "no" not "maybe if you keep pestering me I'll give in and say yes". My beer is worth at least £2.50 a pint whether it's in a glass or a cask, end of.

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¹A brewery barrel is 288 imperial pints or about 160 litres. 10 barrels is, obviously, about 1600 litres or 16 hectalitres.

Beer Enthusiasts, That's All

There has been quite a lot of talk lately about the relevance of beer that is not real ale. Starting of course with CAMRA sticking to it's principles over extraneous gas. Real Ale Reviews talk about an as yet fictional beer festival that embraces all types of quality beer. I think that would be fun.

Mark at Pencil and Spoon talks about a Campaign for Great British Beer. There seems to be a growing enthusiasm for something, but what? Of course, perhaps we don't need anything. We have a great on-line community already enthusing about beer.

There is a lot of infighting in the industry. Pete Brown complained about it a little while ago. I talked about the same subjects recently, which brought out suggestions for forming some type of society that might take care of beer, just beer, in every form it took. Is this possible? What would be the aims of such an organisation? Do we really need one? What would be it's name?

I like the idea and would be keen to be involved, but if the promotion of good beer is the objective then what beer do we cite as unworthy? What I think is rubbish might well be another man's nectar. Equally, I know for a fact that there are beers out there that I like and others think are "style over substance".

The only real advantage of an all encompassing organisation, apart from providing a unified front against the demonising of beer, might be to organise eclectic, all embracing beer festivals. Beer festivals for Beer Enthusiasts, That's All. B.E.T.A. beer festivals if you like.

What HAVE CAMRA ever done for US?

I was thinking of doing a complete parody of the Monty Python sketch. Replacing The Romans with CAMRA and having a fictitious Peoples Beer Front questioning what CAMRA has actually done for British beer. I don't think I could carry it off, so I'll just leave the reader with the concept.

It's been an interesting few days. Alongside finding myself in a Hairy Bikers kitchen on Saturday, there seemed to be some need for shuttle diplomacy in the beer blogging world, which is not quite over yet. Hopefully this might round things off. I like to remain friends with everybody and what would be even better would be for everybody else to be friends with each other too. Perhaps a big global blogging group hug might be asking too much, but I can hope.

After all, the Romans, according to Monty Python, who we all know have history correctly documented, did bring peace to Judea. Besides, I'm going to the GBBF next week and I might bump into people in real life. For sure, I'm looking forward to the beers on the BSF bar, it sounds too exciting. I'd hope to be able to have a chat with the staff without the spectre of an "entertainingly demented" Sausage, who despite being technically correct and not sounding at all demented on the telephone, has given some grief to a well known blogger recently. OK guys, I know some of you found it hilarious, but some didn't get the joke - OK?

There are issues I have with CAMRA, it's too late for me to try and hide that one. I am for instance concerned that there might be too much pallyness between CAMRA and the regional breweries. This background came out subliminally in my previous post about regionals, in a dumb side dig at CAMRA that was not really relevant to the post. Tandleman commented as much and that was a good call.

The point of this post though, is to highlight the things that I think CAMRA really do that are good. After all, there has to be some good in everything. Hopefully, there might be some bridges built as a result.

They saved cask ale. I can already hear my CAMRA sceptic friends screaming at their computer screens. It is true that cask ale might just have found a renaissance via other routes without CAMRA. After all, quality baked bread has not died out despite the onslaught of Sunblest. But still, the cask ale scene would be quite different without CAMRA. Is that good or bad? You choose.

The Good Beer Guide. Now come on sceptic people, despite the occasional quirky choices, it's a generally good guide to where the best beer driven pubs are if you travel to a strange part of the country. It's better than the pay-for-entry guides out there when it comes to impartiality. We always use it.

Pub and Brewery Awards. Restaurants can get rosettes or Michelin Stars or be listed by Egon Ronay. Pubs would have no real recognition without the CAMRA schemes. For me, I cannot overstate how much of a boost it is, when you are down, to be told you've just got in the GBG or got pub of the season or some other CAMRA award. Tandleman reminded us of this only today.

Beer Festivals. It's true that they might not always be in the greatest of venues. But then what venue can you get hundreds of different beers into and it not be like a big drafty hall? They are a chance to try beers that are rarely found in pubs and a chance for breweries to get their name out there.

Resurgence of Micro Brewing. Although I think that the resurgence of demand for artisan products by the general public would have generated expansion of this sector, there is no doubt that the small brewery discount of beer duty has helped, and this is largely due to CAMRA.

Brought peace to the beer world. OK, maybe not, but it's a concept.

Now, I just hope I haven't dug myself an even bigger hole.

The morning after

I feel like the party has lasted 2 months. In a way, that's not untrue. I've tried to remember the last time I had more than about 2 or 3 hours away from this building and I think it might be about 2 months ago. I think it was when I went to the Newcastle Beer Festival. Easter was late. The beginning of May has a bank holiday and right at the end of the very same month is not only another bank holiday but also a school half term. Thanks to the beautiful weather May was fairly busy. Then, just for good measure, there is, what seems by now to be the unstoppable Boot Beer Festival. It thankfully, is now all over for another year.

Last year we overstaffed early and had a team that more or less coped with the festival. But once the festival had finished, it started to rain. It stopped several months later. The summer trade was poor and our staffing bill too high. We lost money overall. The beer festival was significantly responsible for adding to these losses.

This year we have staffed up later, and although possibly have our staffing right, it has only just been in time and this made coping with the festival much harder. Last year was bad enough, but this year Ann and I need a complete break.

However, there is the possibility of a good summer. Room bookings seem to be up and this is essential to enable us to claw back some of our investment. But it would be nice just to look at the diary, find a day that is empty for room bookings, I think there is one next week, and close for a day. But nobody likes to visit a closed pub.

The beer festival is fun, but bloody hard work for us. It comes at just the wrong time of year for the business logistics and due to the costs of the infrastructure we put in and the drafting in of temporary staff, for the brief occasions when it gets too busy, we make no money from the event. I find it increasingly stressful, especially when I hear complaints about queuing at the bar. After cooking on Saturday night I vowed to never take part in the event again.

Later, when everything had settled down a little and I finally got a chance to talk to some regular repeat customers, I started to appreciate how much the loyal group of staunch supporters love the event. People like James et al, Jim et al, Martin and Dave and many other people who fed back appreciation. On Sunday afternoon the die-hards came back to help finish off the contents of the second bar and as a result finally dissipated my resolve to drop out of the event. Oh, and just to put the icing on the cake, Sheriff turned up, pointing out an important unique selling point - the ability to take the piss out of me.

The staff were troupers. They have worked so hard, without complaints for several weeks now. We need to work out how to give them days off. The temporary drafted in staff were essential for coping with such an extraordinary increase in trade and although the learning curve was steep for some, they coped admirably.

Some economics: The Marquee costs £400, the band this year cost £300, a total of £700. My total extra staffing expenses for the event probably add up to this order of magnitude. A general rule of thumb for events like this is to ensure that increased costs must be no more than 1/3 of the extra revenue. So, to make the weekend worth doing, financially, I have to take at least £3000 more than if I didn't do the event. This is not the case. This year we spent even more, because some could not resist the temptation to complain about queues on the Saturday night so we set up a second bar to cope, but we sold no extra beer.

Traditionally, the event is held 1 week after the end of half term. I'd like to see two weeks gap to give us a better chance to organise, regroup and perhaps have a day off. The trouble is the event will move back a week next year anyway, due to the school holidays being as late as is possible next year. It should have been moved this year. Moving it two weeks for next year might just foul up established calender patterns.

OK, so I'm not much good at remembering Kiplings advice, but perhaps I should.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

But, most of our guests as they checked out have re-booked for next year. It is at least a success from a customer appreciation point of view. We just need to work out how to make money from it and to reduce our stress levels.

I probably have not thanked everybody enough. Apart from the staff, temporary and permanent, there is also Jeff Picthall who provided very useful trade experience. Vortigern, despite me not being able to pay them, decided they didn't want to miss out playing at the festival, so we had a band on on Friday, I'll probably get in to trouble off somebody for that. We are supposed to restrict "our" night to Saturday.

Maybe...

...a beer festival is more than just beer......

Organising a beer fest

I think we've just about got organised for the festival.....

Check out the beer list.

....but still no time to blog, damn.....

Can I burn down the marquee this year?

Festival Frivolity

When you do something that you are passionate about it can be something of a downer when you get criticised. When running a pub in the middle of the mountains it happens all the time. A few people can't understand the difference between a town pub and an out-in-the-sticks place.

I'm sure that people who give up their spare time to organise beer festivals must find it difficult when some smart Alec makes a glib and unfair comment about their gallant attempts to bring together a vast array of beers under one roof. In this post I mentioned, all too briefly and completely unfairly that I had reservations about the Newcastle Beer Festival. Quite rightly a volunteer commented on the post for clarification. It would be unfair for me not to give a more balanced and constructive critique of the event. After all, it wasn't as if I didn't enjoy going to this particular festival.

What I realised though was that it is not this festival in particular that I have concerns about, but more the overall ambiance of real ale festivals in general. Enjoyment of beer starts with the feel of the venue. This is true in a pub, a bar, a restaurant, sitting having a picnic with the family in beautiful scenery on a sunny summers day, a few tinnies floating in the burbling brook or in a large hall with the synergy of other beer fans.

I have followed a very successful geeky career. Beer is only my latest fad after a long line of techno fuelled pastimes. Computers, electronics and radio fares have featured large in my repertoire of days out, sad really. Stalls and stalls full of gizmos, shiny gadgetry and military cast-off rubbish used to endear my pastimes. These events usually left me exhausted, physically and mentally. A sit down in a pub with a nice pint usually the therapy needed.

I guess this is my concern about beer festivals. They are often in large unfriendly halls, the beer cannot be stillaged and cooled to optimum effect, they can get very busy and you don't even get a clean glass for each new beer. Being able to sit down is often not an option, my joints are still in reasonable order, but I stand all day in my job, getting a seat is nice. I can get a wide range of good beer and a seat in many pubs around here.

Go on reader, pick up on the important thing in the above paragraph; They are always busy. That's right; they can't be that bad otherwise people would stay away in hoards. There is a wide range of beer available that you just can't get in one venue at any other time. It's not really badly kept considering the equipment and venue that the organisers have to deal with.

The Student Union in Newcastle University might well be my least favourite beer festival venue, but I did notice a reasonable number of younger drinkers; Students perhaps?  At least if it gets the interest of this cash strapped demographic then that can be no bad thing and at the younger end of the punters there was a much better gender balance of numbers.

I do enjoy beer festivals, but I also enjoy getting to sit down in a pub, with my beer in a clean glass and relaxing. Comparing the two is perhaps a little like comparing a burger from my favourite burger van with a fillet steak from a good restaurant; a futile and irrelevant comparison. Or a bit like comparing a remote country pub with a town pub, perhaps.

My pub, as forecast, has been nicely busy. This post has been stuck in the pipeline for several days. Next week is looking busy as well so normal posting might not resume for a little while.

It's a sign

I've been busy. So a quick post just to show I haven't died yet or given up blogging. I went to the Newcastle Beer Festival on Wednesday, which I wasn't too impressed with. The venue was rubbish and the beer not well kept. Perhaps I wasn't that enthralled because I had to drive 3 hours to get there and three hours to get back, so little in the way of real drinking. But still, the company I found there was good.

On the way there I picked up my new signs. The previous ones were donkey's years old and getting increasingly tatty. They were a negative advert.

Jeff talks about getting his pub sign redone here. He wanted a hand painted one. Theses days of course you can get a standard size painting scanned and printed out poster size. This is what we did. Several people have asked who painted it thinking it was done full size. Kasia and my computer is the answer.

The number of bloody screws we dropped off that roof was starting to get annoying. I'm just glad we didn't drop the battery drill, I've already got through too many of them.

National Winter Beer Festival

I went. The beer was nice. I think the effort put into cask cooling paid off as every beer I had was good and that is unusual for a festival. I really liked the fact that there was a very good selection of foreign beers. Unfortunately I had chosen to go to the trade session and as I had to catch a train I missed the opening of the competition bar. That is the only complaint, if I have one.

Oh, not quite, when rushing to catch the train with only moments to go and a burger in one hand and carrying my expensive  camera in the other I was asked for a ticket.

You should go, it's good.

www.alefestival.org.uk