Project 15 begins

The lull before the storm; I've done the planning and the expansion project proper starts (slowly, at first, manic for a while, steady and manic once again) in a week's time. Here's my tool set:

Engineering plan: a big drawing using Google Sketchup, the free on-line CAD package used mainly for modelling in Google Earth. Look what I can do:

Squeezing the most out of what we have.

Schedule: a spreadsheet itemising the various necessary works and installations, linked to both Production (we don't want to run out of beer) and Budget (we don't want to run out of money). The coming 'holiday' period is inked in with my initials - well, it's better than lounging around relaxing with fine food and beer, or so I tell myself.

Budget: a tight affair. Nothing more than a list of expected expenditure, organised in a fashion that makes sense to me, the primary user. It's timelined so I can forecast cash flow implications (look, I haven't got a very large capital pot OK?). I update it regularly as prices are confirmed, the bottom line fluctuating little, either way. It's like a vital signs, real time readout.

The Cast: a small group of highly trusted trades persons, experts in their respective fields - R the Brick, Cool S and B the Spark, all local, augmented by Lofty A and J the Boil, proven specialists picked up from friends in the Biz.

The vessels we're buying are second hand and still in use as I write, the owner testing his new, 21st century stuff with a first brew tomorrow (good luck M, make it so). If all goes well we're set fair for a decommissioning party hours before the Yule break, and a few long shifts whilst you lot engorge yourselves on Little Cracker.

I've woken in the middle of the night for the last three, thinking and worrying about the minutiae of the job - I've been here before, it's a perfectly healthy reaction and means I'm fully engaged in the task. And it'll go on for another three months so forgive me if I look a little frazzled from time to time.

2010 Year in Beer - 80 Shilling Ale

New look pump clips will be a feature of 2010

Next year's 'Year in Beer', to be published pretty soon, tells me we're featuring '80 Shilling Ale' throughout January and February and, since late December in the brewery is likely to be a little unsettled (I'm installing and commissioning a total of 140 hectolitres of fermentation space - phase I of GADDS' great expanding girth), I thought I'd best stay ahead of the curve and get the first batch brewed tomorrow.

So I'm sat thinking about Rannoch Moor and sweet, mellow, heady ale (a fairly one dimensional view of Scotland I'll grant you, but it does things for me). I delved through the malt store for a half kilo of the most peated malt on earth (180 ppm) and crushed it up, the resulting aroma one of sweet smokey malt and wild, weather beaten peat. Perfect for a little background atmosphere. I'm using some crystal malt for its colour and distinctive sweet flavour, oats for their general northerliness, aroma and enriching property, chocolate malt for colour and smoothness, melanoidin malt for aroma and some amber malt for a juxtaposing drying character and toastiness.

As for hops, well, not too many; 80 shilling isn't really about hops. They're there, and they're classic British (Fuggles and Goldings), but they're far from dominant, though the Fuggles will add some smooth grassiness to flavour and aroma.

Come January, expect the kind of ale capable of driving the dampness from your bones, warming you through with its very wholesomeness and leaving you happy and ruddy faced. A fireside ale, one to drink with haggis (quorn) and something to chase a little Islay malt with. The kind of ale winter was designed for.

Beery presents

Large gift pack: 3 bottles of Dogbolter, 3 bottles of Number 3 and a pint glass - £15
Small gift pack: a bottle of Dogbolter, a bottle of Number 3 and a pint glass - £7.50
Sipping beer gift pack: one bottle each of Ancestors, Black Pearl, India, Oooks!, Reserved and a tulip glass - £12.50

Each of these gifts comes ready wrapped in bag with a handle - it's a 'grab and go' Yuletide present solution for the way we live today.

Where the wild hops grow....

....outside my brewery door.

Humulus lupulus (gaddus)

This little lady (for it is a female of the species, as evidenced by a couple of very small, immature hop cones) forced her way through a narrow gap between the concrete foundations of our building and the concrete slab of the car park. I'd be delighted to afford her long term shelter but, I suspect, this isn't an ideal site for a hop to prosper (unless I dig up some of the concrete, which is a distinct possibility).

Chelsea Clive and I are going to take cuttings and, through a process of mist propagation, we hope to have healthy plants in suitable ground (our allotment) by next summer. A couple of years after that and who knows, we may be drinking Ramsgate Pale Ale indigenously hopped.

I love being a brewer in Kent.

Hanging up the old boots.

Nah, not like *that*. This pair of old faithfuls has done its last shift - heel worn and leaking, they're heading for a cabinet in the Hall of Fame. In my possession alone they've brewed around 4 million pints of beer at 9 breweries in 3 different countries.

"You can use these until you get a pair to fit" said Stevie, as he handed over the keys to the Ferret & Firkin Brewery in Chelsea back in '94. They've flopped around on the end of my legs most working days ever since and I'll miss them.

Retired with Full Brewing Honours

Yule have to order soon.

Around here we start thinking about our mid-winter celebrations early in December and though work tends to intensify, so does the expectation of fun and merriment later in the month. Buying presents for one another is a creative way of showing, and sharing our love. But we're no good at that and, we suspect, nor are many of our customers. To that end Lois has created a range of gifts, ready wrapped and ideal for the beer lover in your life, even if, or especially if, that happens to be you yourself. First up, draught beer in bulk to take home:

For the month of December we're offering our Yule Special 'on draught' in mini-pins (10 litres - 18 pints) and poly-pins (20 litres - 36 pints) for you to collect, to take home, and to savor.


This is a beer specifically designed to complement your Yule Feast(s), so there's no need, or excuse, to bother with that annual bottle of dodgy red stuff that gives you a hangover.

Mini-pins are £30, poly-pins are £50. Ring Steve or Lois on 01843 868453 to order one.

Next up will be 'gift-packs', priced to suit a range of budgets from skint to just-about-head-above-water.

10 year overhang

I'm suffering from a 10 year hang-over, that is, it's the worst I've been for the drink for that period of time. (Probably longer but I lived in Holland back then and don't remember much.)

My regular reader (hi Owen!) will know that, apart from a weakness for decent Claret and a fine appreciation of Islay malt, I very rarely stray from beer. And real beer too, because not only does it taste damn good it never, ever haunts me the following day. Not so though cheap red wine and cheap Armagnac. Urg.

Please don't try it home and yes, I probably did exceed my daily allowance but so did the other 40 adults in the room - that's the problem with the allowance, it's so unrealistic it's laughable. That said, I rather wish I'd stuck to it now.