Electronics is the Solution

Beer is a solution. It is an aqueous solution of various carbohydrates, ethanol, alpha acids and volatile aroma compounds. Beer remains a very enjoyable drink for me but as far as being a solution to my financial needs on balance it has failed to be so. I still enjoy beer tremendously, but must accept it cannot be a career for me any longer.

Time has moved on significantly since we closed the Hardknott brewing experiment. I failed to find a way that I could satisfactorily make money and be able to stand by my aspirations. Therefore, by the end of 2018 it became imperative for me to find a way to make a living. There is a bit of a tale here and I think for the future of my writings I must bring his blog up to date. It is a bitter-sweet story of success and further failure. The future is where it is and I want to leave a positive legacy. I have learnt a lot through the pain of Hardknott, lost a lot of money, but gained significant experience and moved on to a new world. It will take several instalments to bring this blog to the present day.

Around the time we were winding up Hardknott we met a new friend, called Fran, who shared some interests. Fran has become an integrated part of my household and the story really cannot continue without introducing her. She was foolish enough at an early stage to agree to supporting my life-long goal of climbing Mont Blanc, and so it was in the Summer of 2018 that Fran, Ann and I spent 3 weeks in Chamonix training, acclimatising and eventually reaching the summit (4,808 m - 15,774 ft) of the highest mountain in Western Europe.

In the same year it became obvious to everyone inside Hardknott that we couldn't carry on, Scott left to join Fell Brewery¹ and we made the final decision to move on.

I was unsure what the next step would be. Ann had the unenviable job of trying to liquidise our assets whilst trying to minimise our liabilities. In reality the costs of putting the industrial unit back to a point of being able to hand over to the landlord, the ongoing costs of renting the space and all the other overheads was barely, if at all covered by the sale value of the assets. We should really have declared bankruptcy, but due to an ongoing and debilitating sense of altruism that has plagued my business and because I wished for a solid credit rating, we decided to wind up the business cleanly and by paying what we believed we owed.

Meanwhile I set-to resurrecting my engineering career. I set up an electronics lab in the brewery, brushed up my skills with a bit of self-training and updated my CV. It was perhaps at the time a bit of a long-shot. My experience had been significant but my overall skill-set was perhaps a little bit out-of-date.

I applied for several jobs, updated my CV several times until eventually I was successful in an interview and landed a job as an Electronics Design Engineer. It was exactly what I was doing before I was silly enough to buy a pub. In all honesty the only reason I ever parked that career was because I failed to see how I could advance it without moving out of Cumbria. A combination of family ties and my love of the Lake District conspired to instigate a change of direction into the beer and pub industry.

If I can leave one lesson for other people to takeaway it is that although beer and pubs are great, it is hard work and you really need to invest a large amount of money, have a vision that is acceptable to a target audience that is large and accessible enough. Most importantly you must have a ruthless attitude to business to succeed. I may come back to this topic in some distant future time.

I started my new role in December 2018. Between then and COVID lockdown I learnt a lot, made some good progress re-floating my 14 years dead electronics career and was well on the way to being an awesome electronics design engineer. I was back. I was doing something I enjoyed. I had hope for the future and it was looking likely I could succeed in buying a house and saving for retirement. A massive turnaround from the low-point of my previous post.

(Back row, left to right) Fran, Ann and Alfie
(front) Sarah

In the spring of 2019 Ann, Fran and my "kids" Alfie and Sarah went back to the Chamonix valley for a skiing trip. It was largely great fun but among other disasters Fran snapped her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) very probably due to my poor instructing skills. This wiped out any mountaineering activities for the rest of 2019 while she had it repaired and then started the lengthy job of recuperation. We were really looking forward to getting back to the alps this summer.

Late winter, early 2020 I started to see the exponential growth of COVID in the UK. Seemingly I could see this before my bosses and seemingly even before the UK government. Lockdown was inevitable and was the start of a troubled time for everyone on the face of the planet.

However, for me, during lock-down a further dramatic series of events have left me with serious difficulties and some interesting opportunities. I find myself in a situation that I realise is poorly understood by people who are not in this position and I wish to share these experiences to try and help others who may find themselves in similar situations.

Shortly after the start of lockdown I became ill, at first I thought it was COVID², and that may have also been at play, but it seemed something else was going on, so I contacted the doctor, and things moved on very fast indeed.

To be continued.........

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¹We remain good friends with Scott, who's brewing talent continues to go from strength to strength. Fell Brewery beers are extremely good and very much to my liking. I hope Hardknott has helped him to be where he is today.

²We all had symptoms and later Fran tested positive for the antibodies, so COVID did play a part.

A most upsetting experience

I originally wrote this post somewhere in the spring of 2017. At the time we didn't feel it was appropriate to publish. Time has moved on and there are many things that have changed, obviously the closure of the brewery, but many other things too that may bring me back to writing. If you are friends with me on Facebook you will know.

Meanwhile it is time to tie up the loose ends with the brewery and move forward. This post describes possibly one of the most upsetting things I have ever decided that I must do.

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Spring 2017

I don’t cry often. I guess it’s a blokey thing. I mean, it undermines any macho image one might have and probably has some sort of deep, long-engrained social conditioning. But sometimes, just sometimes, the need is there to really just weep buckets and damn what anyone else might think about the fact.

I was stood in the kitchen of the cottage. I felt cold. It looked like it was a functional kitchen, if in need of a bit of repair here and there. The fridge, it was suggested, didn’t work. The hob and oven, built in, probably did. The washing machine, which was too big for the space and so stuck out a little, apparently would wash clothes, but might leak a bit.

The owner of the said property had made some gallant efforts to clean the place. It looked good considering we had earlier claimed to not care a jot. The ground floor consisted of a kitchen and lounge in a semi-open plan format. If there was an open fire it would be cozy, but some idiot years before had removed the wall at the base of the chimney, presumably to make a little more space.

Heating was by a combination of storage heaters and electric wall heaters. God, I thought I had left this sort of primitive life behind. Growing up I remember cold winter days in a house heated solely by storage heaters. The only room that ever got warm in winter was the living room, and only then when we lit the open fire and had the flames roaring up the chimney. So, just on temperature alone I was feeling just a little bit underwhelmed.

Upstairs was a bathroom and two reasonable bedrooms. Fitted wardrobes and a double bed in each room meant we could move in at a drop of a hat. As it was we were due to move in imminently, possibly the next day. This was to be a new start, a solution to some fairly large problems. A chance to wipe a few slates clean and move on.

I felt a huge sense of sadness; only surpassed by the death of my Mother some 17 years ago. We were selling our lovely four bedroom, centrally heated house complete with fully fitted kitchen, large garden for the dogs, garage, en-suite master bedroom and enough space for me to have a “creativity” room, and as the kids had all but moved out Ann was likely to get her own space too; all quite lavish really.

We had recently increased our pet population from one crazy, energetic but incredibly intelligent and fairly well trained Collie dog called Jester by adding a slightly less well trained, rather strong and bullish, if very friendly Springer Spaniel called Teddy. They got on well, too well, nothing was safe from their romps and were very firmly banned from the living room as the TV and associated multimedia equipment that are trappings of a comfortable life were completely at risk of annihilation. These two boisterous adolescent dogs tried out play-fighting tactics well beyond any reasonable creature’s fatigue levels would have kicked in. The lack of a garden for them to run around in was by itself starting to fill me with dread.

The fact we had Teddy was in itself a symptom of what was really a very positive influence on my life. A recently new friendship was certain to make 2017 a hugely pivotal year. Life is bound to be different in many ways and there are some incredible positives that should be capable of making me very happy indeed. None-the-less I was filled with the biggest and most dramatic sadness. The old over-used cliché of having a heavy heart felt so apt. The feelings were tangibly physical and I really, really wanted to cry; I could find no other way of making myself feel better, but still that deep routed macho thing was holding on to it’s stupid street-cred engrained principles.

We had convinced ourselves that we didn’t need all our capital locked up in the house and huge, unserviceable and expensive debts in the brewing business creating losses that were inevitably likely to take us down. If we didn’t do something, as a result of the way our debts were structured, we’d risk loosing everything within a few months. Suppliers were loosing patience, some had already removed credit facilities and others had us on stop risking the halting of beer production. HMRC was owed some money, and that is always a bad position to be in.

A very good customer of ours owns the cottage. We sell them beer, we go into their pub and drink our beer just the way it should be. It’s a good pub, good beers, friendly staff, wholesome home-cooked food, great bunch of locals and Azimuth on-tap. The cottage front door is less than 8 seconds at a brisk run to the door of the pub. What is not to like?

We had mentioned to these good people that we might need a bolt-hole as we were due to sell our house. They have various properties and we just needed somewhere to rent. We agreed a mutually satisfactory rental and so planned to move in. We knew it wasn’t great, but just somewhere, for now, would do.

We were 48 hours away from completion. We still had a lot to do to get out of our house. We had moved some furniture to a friend who was a little in need and had moved some more to store in the brewery. I knew there was a mammoth task ahead of us to get it finished. We had not done anywhere enough packing, I guess because we really didn’t want to make the move.

I still felt cold. The cottage looked unbearably small. Where was I going to put all my guitars? The idea of setting up my baby grand piano in the centre of the kitchen, whilst possible, was clearly bonkers. Whilst we were at liberty to “borrow” bandwidth from the pub WiFi I knew it’d not be as good as our fiber broadband. Having cooked in a commercial kitchen, even the rather spacious and by domestic standards well-equipped kitchen we were leaving behind irritated me. The kitchen I was currently standing in was sure to drive me mad.

I don’t know if I said anything to Ann regarding my regret at having to make this unfortunate change of circumstance, but it felt like a huge fall from grace was in progress, and all because I decided to attempt to make an honest living out of a passion for beer. Ann was trying to console me, but to no avail. The despair just deepened and deepened. I still felt cold, the thick stone walls had yet to yield to the increasing spring temperatures outside and just prayed we would not still be there come the autumn, but had still to find that magic plan that would ensure we are not. The uncertainty about the business, our living arrangements and the general future just weighed very heavily.

“Let’s go home” I said, looking around in desperation for something to cheer me up. And then it came. I realized, this would be home very soon, and what I had just called home had already been emptied of large amounts of sentimentally precious stuff. I had yet to dismantle the glass-fronted bookshelf that survived in my Grandparents house through a V2 rocket attack in 1944. Once that was done the place was certainly not to be my home anymore.

I walked upstairs; mainly I think so as not to let Ann see my face. Daft really. Why on earth would she think worse of me? A grown man crying over a justifiably upsetting experience is probably, I expect, quite endearing to his partner. But cry I did.

Was it the thought of moving into this undeniably cold house, a house that was really just a little to small for our needs? A house that could be heated, without much trouble and anyway, summer is on the way. I’ve done this before and been very happy about it.

Ultimately no, it is the uncertainty of knowing where we are going with the brewery. This move is being made to free up capital to enable us to make the next step with the brewery. Relocate somewhere where we can more easily sell more beer.

And then, who in their right mind would sell their house,with over-saturation of breweries in the country, and significant price wars being raged driving down the wholesale price of beer below sustainable levels? Only a madman, am I right? Am I mad enough to risk my all? Here is the crux, I am not sure I am quite that mad.

To add to the mêlée of melancholy confusions I am left wondering where it has all gone wrong. Where did we fail with Hardknott? We were once the boldest and most progressive craft brewery in Cumbria. Perhaps we still were, but somewhere, commercially, there is a lot of work to do, and the beer-landscape filled me with a sense of doom. With an industry that is most certainly broken, and despite attempts to get great beer out to great people the barriers presented by legislation, taxation and dirty deals by bigger breweries leaves me uninspired.

I looked around upstairs and still couldn’t quite see where my guitars, stage piano and Mac were going to be accessible. By now I was really quite full of tears, and knew I had to just get out; no longer could I hide my total grief from Ann. Her attempts at consolation resulted in a frustrated brush-off from me. The instinct to be ashamed of my crying was still very still strong.

“We don’t have to do this” she said. “Yes we do” I replied with inappropriate anger.

I was angry with myself. How has this happened? How are we going to make things better? When will I again live in a reasonable house, which I own? Am I making a huge mistake in being dogmatic at keeping the Hardknott dream alive?

Letting go

It is often difficult to accept defeat. Indeed, when one has been working on something for a long time it can be almost impossible to actually make that final decision that the end of that road has finally been reached. However, until that ultimate decision has been taken it can then also be difficult to move to the next phase; that part of life that doesn't contain the thing that is holding everything else back.¹

One of our tanks - new value now close to £7k
We only want around £3k

I have been working on various solutions to keeping Hardknott alive. Mostly these consist of trying to find a partner, a brewing business that has holes in their makeup that we can fill, and in turn perhaps they would bring something to us that we lack. We have followed various leads, offered to talk and we've also approached some who we feel likely to be a good fit. Sadly this has not worked out and largely has lead us down blind alleys wasting time and resources we can not afford.²

I am certain that there are now too many breweries in the UK. There are some successes and those that have managed to get everything right will continue to flourish and grow. However, I firmly believe that the vast majority of breweries below the 5,000hl mark will find it difficult to find true sustainable success, that is unless there are some significant changes to the culture within the industry. My recent experiences searching for a solution to our own position I feel is proof of certainty of this.

Let me explain this in a little more detail. Below 5,000hl annual production profitability is extremely slim³. It's a sliding scale and closer one gets to this important number the more likely a brewery is to make profit, but that profit is still likely to only really satisfy an owners short-term living requirements. Below 2,000hl my research strongly points towards a loss making operation. What this means from a business valuation point of view is that within the range of brewery sizes we are talking about any exit strategy for the business owner looks poor. Making return on investment is highly unlikely without some sort of growth.

Consolidation is in my view the obvious answer to this. Critics of progressive beer duty as it stands points to a "cliff edge" at 5,000hl which it is claimed creates a negative incentive for mergers and acquisitions. I dispute that for various reasons. In actual fact the real barrier to such "normal" business activity seems to be in the very psyche of the owners of microbreweries. "This is my baby, we think we'll make this work all by ourselves" is a paraphrased and slightly exaggerated message I've heard now from the majority of people we've talked to.

Meanwhile there are also talents and passion being lost from the industry as people like me become disillusioned with the hopelessness brought about by the massive over-supply of beer and undervaluation of hardworking micro-brewers.

There are around 2,000 breweries in the country, the vast majority, around 1,400 of them, are below 5,000hl. Their total volume of production is currently around 1.3 million HL per year. If every single one of them were to produce 5,000hl per year we'd see them have to increase their total share of the market from around 3% to a whopping 16%. This stark and fairly scary thought omits to include that fact that if all 2,000 breweries wish to grow, as indeed we assume they do, then massive share of the market must be taken from both multinationals and regional brewers alike. This simply cannot happen as despite attempts to the contrary, and bluff from some quarters, the shape of the beer market hasn't really changed as much as we'd like to think it has.

In actual fact pointing a finger at those under 5,000hl is a bit unfair and it seems to me that no one in the brewing industry is really terribly interested in mergers and acquisitions until we get to the very biggest. Massive publicly listed breweries are snapping up some of the more successful brands, but unless I'm missing something very little is happening other than that.

My prediction is that most breweries will struggle to grow and therefore leave the owners without a plausible exit strategy. If you couple this with the realisation that no one is going to be laughing all the way to the bank, why then does anyone still plug away with the dream when the probability of burnt fingers is so high? It all leaves me somewhat confused.

Me, as a climber, free and happy

I spent 3 weeks in the French Alps this summer, something I would have failed to be able to do if I was trying to put in the effort I'd need to to make our business work. I achieved a life-long goal of reaching the summit of Mont Blanc, a story I shall get around to telling on here I expect⁴.

I have other life goals, and I'm working very hard on one right now which hopefully will realise itself in the next 6 months. However, to be able to fund these things I need to find a job that has nothing to do with beer. There simply isn't the money in this daft job to even survive, let alone make a decent living, unless I went to work for the enemy and I can't see me coping with that. So, my CV has been dusted off and is being sent out, back to engineering for me I hope.

This post is something of a "goodbye" to the beer industry. We really have had enough. The above description, be it inaccurate due to my jaded point of view or not, has lead me to the decision that all there is left for me to do is sell any remaining stock, of which there isn't much left, and dispose of assets for the best I can get for them, which sadly won't be anywhere near as much as I would like.⁵

This blog will remain, but is likely to wander completely off the subject of beer and pubs. I've been here long enough, seen the same old arguments come back around again and again and although things have changed, and I hope I've helped change things for the better, there is still an incredibly depressing inertia to new and radical things.

Leaving the summit of Mont Blanc (4810m ASL)

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¹Yes, that's right, we have given up completely. We're breaking down the brewery and selling everything we have. Look out for listings on the SIBA website and my eBay account. The best things we have are 6 x 2000 litre gross conical closed tanks which apparently costs close to £7000+VAT to buy new. We also have a 661 bottling line which hasn't been worked hard. We have various other bits of tanks and stuff, although with stainless steel being £900 a tonne to weigh in at my local scrappie some of it will be going that route.

²With due apologies to the businesses that we have actually started dialogue with and it has been us that have decided to walk away. There are numerous reasons why deals can sometimes fail of course. Sometimes it's timing, and where we chase one possible lead at the expense of another only to find the fist is a blind alley it can get very frustrating for everyone involved.

The point is that without enough businesses thinking truly about sustainability and personal long-term gain it becomes impossible to find suitable partnerships and I believe for the micro-brewing industry to prosper and fight much bigger foes a concerted effort to work together must be found.

³Of course there is always the brewery business that manages to also own pubs. Be it a brewpub style operation, a brewery with a tap room or a brewery that owns an estate of pubs, they all have powerful advantages over the stand alone brewery. My current advice is don't own a brewery unless you want to also own a route to market.

Why don't I do that? Put simply, been there and done that. The licensed retail is tough too.

⁴Indeed it was epic. After 14 years of being my own boss I've learnt a lot and I don't regret it for one minute, but many things have suffered and my passion for mountaineering has been left unsatisfied until now. Why climb? Because the emotions of reaching the top are incredibly powerful, especially when doing so without buckling to the increasing pressure to hire a guide.

"Dave, why am I crying?" asked Fran, which of course was a rhetorical question; when you've planned and dreamed and trained for such a thing for so long the happiness of achievement is incredibly emotional. I spoke to my GoPro, for the sake of the record "The summit of Mont Blanc" as I panned around to show that everything else within visible distance was indeed lower than us. There have been times I have questioned if I'd ever be there, and so I myself found it impossible to fight back the tears of happiness.

⁵"If our business spends £1 million on a pub the following day we will still have a pub worth £1 million pounds, and that asset is likely to appreciate" a well respected brewery director expains to me "If I convince the board to spend £1 million on brewery kit the day after installation it is simply has scrap value"

Actually, I'd say that there is a risk of brewery installations becoming liabilities as the costs of removal can sometimes be greater than value of any of the installed components. Although this is a smaller risk with microbreweries as second hand brewery equipment can easily be removed and normally has a better realisation of value on selling I know we have some significant costs to deal with to be able to hand back our building to the landlord.

The real tie.

Getting micro-brewed beer onto keg taps in outlets is no easy task. It occurs to me that in actual fact this is a far greater barrier to growth of small independent craft breweries than PubCos or any other form of hard tie.

"There's been an interesting bloke on the phone" Ann informed me as I returned to the office "He's just bought a hotel and wants our beer"

At that point it seemed a reasonably ordinary enquiry and I assumed it was part of the usual irritating background noise that distracts me from my own job.

"OK, that's good" I replied, with a fairly thick layer of dismissiveness "Do go ahead and sell them some of our beer, after all, you are the sales department"¹

"They want Space Hopper in keg" Ann persisted in breaking down the barrier to her information flow "the guy tried it in that place we sent a keg to the other week and really likes it. Likes the beer and likes the branding"

"Oh?" I replied "not cask, that's nice, but..... equipment?" she was starting to get through, a sale of keg to a new account was something that interested me.

Intergalactic Space Hopper at Haweswater

"He doesn't think he'd be able to serve cask beer as they have no cellar" ah, so that's going to see me heading off to sort something out in this place. "You need² to go and look and see if they have the right things to serve our keg"

This was following on from a recent bad experience where we had installed a keg font in a pub and a few months later, when the manager changed, they then decided not to buy our beer anymore. I rushed to the pub immediately I discovered this to remove our equipment only to find a Marstons sales rep there trying to argue that my equipment in fact belonged to them.

So, I felt a little bruised and reluctant to spend the best part of £500 on another project of unknown outcome. Never-the-less I pitched up at this rather remote location on the shores of Haweswater in the Eastern Lakes.

That was over two years ago. I installed the tap I had removed from the previous pub and we've been merrily selling the place beer ever since and in enough quality to justify the effort and expense. It turns out that the new owner of the hotel is delightfully alternative in his outlook towards business.

They contacted me a couple of months ago as they were negotiating with suppliers of their major brand lager. It seems that they were being offered a cash lump sum for a two year exclusivity deal. They were being offered £2k cash to kick our Intergalactic Space Hopper off the bar. Apparently it isn't just one major beer producer that is doing this, it is most of the big multinational brands and is looking a little bit like a cartel and anti-competative action.

Now, Stephen the owner is no ordinary hotelier. He seems to have no intention of removing our beer, even with an incentive so great. John, who is dealing with most of nitty gritty, was simply contacting me to see if we could do anything to go someway to match the offer from the big boys. We considered for a while, contemplated taking over with our own exclusivity deal involving sourcing more artisanal lagers etc, but then our decision to stop brewing at Millom rather took over the situation. Indeed, the realisation that big multinational beer brands are actively tying up many routes to market in ways that we simply cannot commercially compete against was partly a catalyst to us deciding that we had to be drastic with our business progression.

£2k is roughly the annual value of this particular account. We cannot compete in this territory. It isn't about the small amount of extra revenue they are trying to buy, it's about keeping the growth of small producer keg off the bar fronts in run-of-the-mill outlets.

I firmly believe that growth of micro-brewing has to focus on gaining acceptance on the bar for keg. That has to be in your regular nominally free-of-tie pub, restaurants, hotels and similar. However it looks very much like the big multinational brewers have agreed a plan to make sure that we cannot make much progress into these areas.

I recognise a barrier, but to quote a famous person, we choose to do these things "not because they are easy, but because they are hard". I just wish the rest of the beer world would wake up and realise that this is where the real effort should be targeted.

The good news is that as a result of us announcing our cessation of brewing at Millom we have been chatting a little bit more with Stephen and John. Interesting and supportive people with whom I hope we will continue to have business dealings with.

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¹It is entirely likely that as this is a while ago, and I'm grossly paraphrasing the actual conversation, that in actual fact I displayed high levels of irritation at the intrusion into my current thought train. It happens, I may have been in the middle of fixing something in the brewery, which does tend to put me in a less than ideal mode for receptive dialogue. It might also be the case that I was considering some wider beer-related issue that I felt required a blog post to be written, or a tweet replied to, or some such thing. On many days it happens that both things are occurring simultaneously and my mind often fails to complete either task with satisfactory levels of competence. The sales department keeping me abreast with micro-details of individual customers seems a waste of any remaining brain power that might be surplus to requirements. Thought train derailment I do find so frightfully annoying.


²I'm really working hard to remove this word "need" ... I'm sure it would be awfully useful, but no one is going to die as a result of it not happening.

Cafe, culture, cats and craft beer

"Is that a problem?" replied Luke to the lady's question. "Well yes, I can't be in the same room as cats, and they know it"

"There is Poppi Red across the street there, they serve really nice coffee and cakes" Luke rather charmingly replied, quite deftly and politely dealing with the issue. Me? I thought the lady a bit daft and I might have been tempted to question exactly what she expected when the sign outside clearly said "Cafe Culture Cats" - dead cats? Stuffed? A place simply adorned with cat-related art?

No, this place very definitely has live cats wandering around, 4 at the last count, although I believe more may be introduced at some point. My reason for being there was purely on my technical merit and thankfully no customer interactions were required from me. Despite Luke's warm explanation and obvious desire to help, the lady still appeared to leave somewhat grumpily. I was surprised then when she returned a few minutes later to take some photos of the cats as apparently she has lots of friends that love the feline creatures.

Luckily I was simply finishing off the keg line install in Kittchen, a new cafe-bar in Hawkshead village. I had promised Emma that I'd help them with the cellar fit when they first talked about their own pleasantly unique project. We knew they were planning a cafe-bar style operation, with some inspiration most definitely from Hardknott along with their visits to various other proper craft beer bars and were especially excited about the project.

What was kept very quiet for a long time was the concept that this would be a cat cafe. This is not a completely new concept and my brief look on Google shows quite a few in the UK along with a BBC article back in 2016. I guess I'm more of a dog person myself so what appears to be a growing phenomena had completely passed me by.

Luke and Emma had intended to serve Hardknott beer at the cafe so I was very pleased to help them with the cellar. Despite our own uncertainty, as I had promised to help these guys out, and in any case it fits with my love of the unusual, I had no hesitation in supporting their venture.

I've fitted them with 6 keg lines, no cask as it would be bonkers to even consider such a thing in such a place. Currently we've got them going with a selection of Hardknott beers including Azimuth, of course, Cumbrian Lager, Neutron Citra and La'al Peat. We also sourced for them a keg of Timmermans and a keg of Delirium Tremens.

We've returned on several occasions since they opened two weeks ago. Well, the beers need to be checked for consistency and dispense reliability. They also serve lovely platers of locally produced meats and cheeses, cakes and pastries. Along with my introduction to Cards Against Humanity, which is definitely a game best enjoyed with openminded friends and a few Delirium Tremens.

Oh, I didn't comment on the culture bit, glad you reminded me. There is a superb large area upstairs ideal for showing films, live music events, poetry readings and many other diverse cultural curiosities. Check out here to see what's on.

The Cask Anomaly

Life goes on, and you might be surprised to know; so does Hardknott. We have plans afoot to continue, perhaps against my better judgment, and will be involved with the business of making beer for a while yet I hope.

We have definitely stopped brewing at Millom. The brewhouse is just old, tired and in need of serious upgrade. We simply cannot justify solving that where we are. But we have some nice tanks and a bottling line. It seems there are people out there who believe they could use them, and perhaps use me too. People who might just be able to help me with the issue of lacking a decent brewhouse. It's all top-secret, and I might even be jumping the gun by leaking this little snippet.

That preamble is relevant however. As part of working out what to do for the future I've thought long and hard about a number of aspects of the beer market. My conclusions are that the British beer culture is still largely stuck with a huge number of preconceptions, traditional practices and frankly stupid dogmas that inhibit microbrewing from emerging out of the twentieth century.

I've contemplated the issues regarding cask beer before on several occasions. As part of my review I have considered cask very carefully indeed and have come to some fairly decisive conclusions, key to it is the following point.

The vast majority of draught beer brewed by brewers below 200,000hl/yr production is cask. The vast majority of keg beer is produced by brewers over 200,000hl/yr production and these brewers produce nearly no cask at all.¹

Something is very wrong with this situation, very wrong indeed. I do not think one can understate how this is linked to another fairly important point.

Cask beer represents less than 10% of the total beer sales in the UK and around 16% of the total draught sales. The remaining 84% of draught sales are keg beers and the vast majority of that volume is from the big global producers.

The total beer market is shrinking, partly due to overall reductions in alcohol consumption but also critically due to changing customer preference to what are seen as more artisanal products. Cask remains roughly static as a proportion of the overall beer market. Cask in the free trade also appears to remain largely free from dispense equipment ties and this is in itself an interesting observation.

People like cold and fizzy

It is undeniable that people like cold fizzy beer. Only the deluded would try to deny that, and indeed it is important to note that contrary to the message CAMRA have put out for years, people who drink keg beer are not morons simply influenced by the advertising campaigns of large multinational brewers. Drinkers really do prefer beer that is cold and fizzy.

The artificial restriction of microbreweries largely to cask rather weakens their ability to capture a larger market. If a drinker's enjoyment of a beer experience is inferior under certain circumstances then that consumer is likely to be swayed away from that situation.

I have long pondered this situation. A long-time lover of the pub experience, brewer of cask, keg and bottle beers, twice over publican, past lover of cask beers and now a firm believer in keg as the future of great beer has come from observation and thought about the whole market.

What is wrong with cask, surely it's the best?

Have no doubts, cask beer is technically easier to produce, needs less capital investment and is less expensive to produce. It is ideal in many ways as a method for a brewery to gain an entry to the market.

Cask beer has a number of serious disadvantages;

• ·      Served at a warmer temperature and with less "fizz" making it less palatable to many consumers (this is true, get used to it)
• ·      The open container results in the beer noticeably deteriorating in a couple of days (actually, in my experience, a few hours)
• ·      The lack of carbonation inhibits the demonstration of great hop aromas
• ·      Variability in the quality of dispense resulting in brewer's beer not always being as they'd intended
• ·      Significantly more skill required by staff to ensure quality is maintained
• ·      Poor cellar cooling and cleanliness impacts on cask over keg
• ·      Due to significant over-supply in the market the wholesale price of cask beer is very depressed
• ·      Simply not funky and trendy enough for youngsters resulting in microbrewed beer losing out to trendy spirits, fruit ciders and fizzy rancid grape juice from Italy

The dichotomy

The beer market is still very much sliced in two by the terrible dogma instilled into the culture of British beer. Whilst there is no denying that some changes have been made and craft keg has become a thing, despite many people being sceptical, it is still very much a niche and confined to craft beer bars and a few very bold progressive pubs.

Mainstream pubs generally have a number of keg fonts almost exclusively for multinational brands. They may well, if free of tie, have handpulls serving locally produced cask beer, if they serve any microbrewed beer at all.

Beer drinking customers can be broadly divided into two types; the cask drinker, who might default onto smooth-flow if desperate and the solid keg drinker who wouldn't wash their socks in that cask stuff.

Admittedly, there is a group of wise and discerning people who are much less blinkered, and who will drink based on their mood, thirst, level of sunshine or just because they are curious, but I'd suggest this group of people are in fact a small proportion of drinkers.

The future really is keg beer

A bold statement you might think, and indeed it is only part of the future, but a very significant part of it. It's not an easy road though. Much investment is needed along with working out the route to market.

Equally there is the task of convincing cask-only drinkers, who are only so in my view due to the pressure from CAMRA, to love microbrewed keg along with gaining trust of the keg-only brigade to try new beers. Changing that is likely to be a bit of an uphill battle, CAMRA AGM voting continues to prove this point.

Not only that, we have to tackle the stranglehold of the multinationals on the bar front. Various "soft ties" that effectively prohibit microbreweries from even being permitted to sell their keg beers to pubs in fact tie much of the market even where a pub is apparently free of tie. This last point is important. Many observers are getting their knickers in a twist about PubCos and brewery owned estates forgetting that this is actually not the really big issue we have to deal with.

And for Hardknott?

It is almost certain that in whatever form we finally re-emerge we will be focusing on keg much more than cask, very probably eliminating cask all together. For a start, the most likely solution to continuing would be to join with an existing cask producer thereby possibly forming a conflict.

My task then for the next few months is to work out how to tackle the various barriers to getting really great keg beers available and better accepted by the beer drinking public.

I think a return to a much more combative, confrontational and outspoken ethos for Hardknott is required; there is a lot to change in the minds of the public if we are to see microbrewed beers on keg fonts in many more regular pubs. I do not think there is any good reason for this not to happen other than inappropriate inertia emanating from a Luddite attitude.

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¹OK, so I expect I'll get some challenges here. Yes, there are the likes of Fullers and Marstons who put quite a lot of beer into cask, but even so, that vast majority of beer produced by breweries over 200,000hl/yr is keg beer.

A catatonic beer industry

After several years of careful consideration as to the future of Hardknott and in particular after I have examined the beer industry very closely it is my sad duty to inform you that our brewing facility at Millom will very shortly cease production. It simply isn't sensible for us to invest any more of our own personal equity in a market that is so saturated, and where brewery gate prices are stagnant when costs are rising year-on-year.

It continues to frustrate me that many commentators in the industry are heralding how massive the craft beer thing is, and yet stupefied by what appears to me to be an inevitable likelihood of massive attrition of many small brewers as they realise that making money at this daft job is the preserve of very few.

We do not know yet what the future holds. We have a hope that we may well keep the Hardknott ethos and beers alive in a way that stands by the provenance and spirit from which we were born. We are already engaged with potential partners in this regard and hope to have some news soon.

We also have beer in tank and some stocks. We think at current rates of sale, and with stuff in production, we'll have beer until May or June, and selling it would make me feel a little happier.

What I can say is that I am in many ways relieved. Also very sad, obviously. It is now over 12 years since we first started brewing. I have learned a lot, and potentially discovered some fairly uncomfortable truths about the beer industry. It is for this reason I am relieved, because I am likely to be much more forthright regarding the many things that are so wrong with the industry, and there is plenty, trust me.

A period of reflection, perhaps some time-out, perhaps a regroup and restart, or perhaps I'll just find a job, who knows?

Meanwhile I have a busy week. Two great things are happening this week. I do have a life outside beer and musical theatre has been a helpful therapy when I've been going through periods of disillusionment with the beer industry.  I am very proud, the week Andrew Lloyd Webber has his 70th birthday, to be involved with a likely sell-out¹ 7 performance run of an amateur² production of Cats.

This same week we have the micro-brewing legends that are Sue Hayward and Gazza Prescott visiting to take part in a Waen/Hopcraft/Hardknott collaboration brew, and laugh at me in a unitard. Watch out for what might be that swan-song of our endeavours.

I hope to return here in due course to start a constructive appraisal of life as a micro-brewer. I have a lot of damming things to say about the way the beer industry works. The way in which SIBA and CAMRA alike are missing some very important issues that could be resolved to make the micro-brewing sector much more sustainable for the poor souls who are brewing, and who often have nothing but a dream of getting good beer to good people.

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¹It is likely that all performances will sell-out. As I type this there are only 21 tickets for Saturday matinee. The rest of the performances are completely sold out. (I believe there may be a small number of returns available each night very much on a first come first served basis)

²Giving the company the term amateur really does not do justice to the talent in this society. I'm only a small cog in this 51 strong cast and the professionalism is incredible. It's going to be a great show.