Make over

Please extend a warm welcome to Matt who joined the firm a couple of weeks ago. He's flirted with us for years, waiting for the right moment to make his move and his timing is impeccable; the artwork used to front our beers has been getting increasingly random and scruffy and one of Matt's skills, as you'll gather from one of his websites, is design.

Over the next few weeks and months you'll notice the changes to pump-clips, bottle labels, website and letterhead. Crikey, even Morrison, our new van, will get a going over. You'll miss the old and it'll be a fairly painful process of change but in a few years you'll look back and realise that we all grow up eventually, even breweries.

The last 24 hours has been hell for me, relinquishing a creative area of my business. The worst is over and there'll be no more tears.

Psst....pass it on.

There is an old drinking adage that runs along the lines of 'drink whatever the Landlord drinks'; the suggestion is that if the gaffer don't sup the ale it won't be much good and whilst there are many admirable exceptions there remains a good deal of truth to the rule. Certainly, if the gaffer does drink the ale you can be 99% sure it'll be good.

By extension, is it too much to ask the government to source its food & drink from its own dominion?

Without getting horribly jingoistic I would like to see pride in our own produce displayed at both civic and national level: it is just and right so to do.

Frazer Thompson at English Wines thinks so too and has begun a petition.

Whilst I rather hope he's pushing at a door that will swing open the more support the better. Please, do sign up.

Changling

'Mild Ale' - a dark, weak and sweetish brew enjoyed in gallons by men wearing clogs and cloth caps after a grueling and dangerous shift on t'face? Well, yes, that's the way it were and completely appropriate it were too; the heavy industries of Britain during the 20th century drew every joule of energy from many thousands of strong, hard men running on enormous volumes of revitalising (and very well deserved) ale that could be consumed in haste and gay abandon.

Examples of this style are relatively rare today - you'll fondly remember GADDS' Dark Ale, a 4% version that reached the finals of the Champion Winter Beer of Britain a few years ago - but generally speaking this kind of ale is left without an audience: the mines have shut, the factories mechanised and the mills have been knocked down. Modern man seeks not a belly full of Mild to slake his thirst after an 8 hour shift in front of his computer - he quite rightly heads home for tea and nips out for a quick and tasty pint later on.

Now Mild was not always dark, weak and sweet. The name referred to any beer that was suitable for drinking soon after brewing. You see, way back, brewers would have two classes of beer: Keeping Ale and Mild Ale. Either could be dark, pale, strong or weak but the difference would be one of bitterness - in brewing Keeping Ale many hops were used for their preservative qualities.

So what is today's Mild like? There's little point in brewing miners ale so lets reinvent, hoping perhaps to rejuvenate. Darkness is out; lets go for an amber colour, that way we can use a mixture of malts with none too overpowering. Hey, if we use a little amber malt with its faintly roasty aroma we'll have elements of dark flavour in a pale(ish) ale! That'll surprise. We can use aromatic and juicy malts too and hop diligently not for bitterness, but for flavour and balance. We'll end up with a bit of the past and much of the future.

Available from next week across the finest of East Kent's hostelries.