Les Voyageurs Audacieux

You'll remember our brewday with former GADDS' brewer, Iain Shuell? Well, the poor lad had to leave these shores before getting a chance to try any of our efforts, so we bottled some and sent it out to him at the Molson Coors brewery in Toronto, his latest workplace.


Ten out of 12 of the intrepid little Voyageurs made it intact, the remaining two had accidents and made a bit of a mess, by all accounts.

Iain was delighted and described the beer thus:

Great head retention. Love it. Expected more maple at the start and hops and the end but found the reverse. Definite maple on the nose but only trace lingering. Can't comment too much on the body because I haven't gave any time to let it settle. As I write this there is half the glass left and a cm of head. I'm so happy. Lovely belgian ale esters. I think the Saaz put this beer in the catagory of continental ale. Am I right? Ok I gotta stop this in fear of being one of those beer geek critics who bleet on the web. Worth every second. Including the late November death rally from York. I'm off for a wee cry to myself.

Bless him.

2.8% - the health case

My doctor knows what's best for me and he reckons 28 units of alcohol, spread evenly over a week, is about right.

A unit of alcohol is defined as 10 millilitres of ethanol in the UK*.

Our 2.8% beer contains 2.8% alcohol by volume, meaning that in 1 litre (1000 ml) I have 28 ml of the evil stuff. Since 10 ml constitutes a unit I have 2.8 units. That's easy, isn't it? And I'm allowed 28 per week, which is fully 10 whole litres.

10 litres = 2.2 gallons.

2.2 gallons = 17.6 pints.

That, spookily enough, works out at 2.5 pints per day. My regular 'go to' beer is 4.4%, and I'm only allowed 1.6 pints of that per day.

But I'm lucky, I drink beer. It's much lower in alcohol than the alternatives of cider (average 5.03%), wine (12.58%) and spirits (40%). Here's a picture illustrating how much of each you and I are allowed to sup in a day - a measure of safety, if you like.

It's a no brainer isn't it?

*The Aussies get more, they're allowed 12.5 and that can't be fair, can it? It sounds random to me.

Proud of Beer

Dear reader, just in case you haven't already seen it, I've embedded a video we brewers made recently. We're pretty fed up with the 'duty escalator' whereby the level of excise tax levied upon our beer is increased by 2% above inflation every year. It's really beginning to hurt us and we want it stopped. We need it stopped, we all need it stopped!




I'll follow this up with more information for you to use when talking to your elected representatives.