The well respected Boggart Brewery Distributions will be taking our beer up Manchester way towards the end of September.

I’m very pleased about this news, I’ve had a soft spot for Manchester ever since my three year stay there. It always struck me as a terribly friendly place.

I took my degree in computation there, but hadn’t been back for about 25 years until recently while doing research on setting up the brewery. Truely they say that no man can step into the same river twice. This particular river, having been blown to smithereens by the IRA now looked totally different. Could have been a different country as far as I was concerned.

This is just about the only photo I made on Tuesday - too busy. It shows our new slightly extended flue carrying off steam and off flavours from our copper. In most setups this is a permanent feature, but one of the conditions of our lease was no holes in the walls.

Solution: when the copper comes to the boil we open a window and stick it out!

It certainly worked perfectly on its first outing. Sometimes simple answers are the best ones.

This post is slightly delayed as I was too tired to write anything sensible yesterday. Tuesday this week saw me arriving bright and early at the brewery and weighing out the ingredients for our first brew.

We decided to start with Merry Andrew, which can be a bit tricky. It has quite a high proportion of oats which means that the mash will stick if you look at it too hard. A stuck mash is one of the most prominent of the small brewer’s extensive collection of nightmares. Instead of a quarter of a tonne of malt that you can extract wort from, you have a quarter of a tonne of porridge!

In fact, the mash went perfectly as did the boil, and we ended up with 830 litres of beer fermenting and doing its usual rocky top trick. Much ado with mops yesterday afternoon.

As far as I’m concerned, one of the biggest issues we face at the moment is that it took around 13 hours for us to complete the process. Of course this is largely due to our inexperience with the new kit. Its a bit like driving a new car - weeks later I’m still turning on the windshield wipers instead of the indicators.

The next brew is scheduled in about a week’s time and it will be considerably faster. In fact we know it’s possible to do a complete brew in around 6 hours and some people even do two brews in one day. I don’t think we’ll be trying that trick in a hurry.

The Merry Andrew we made on Tuesday will be going on sale at the end of September, but I’m still expecting Velocity, our bitter, to be available slightly earlier than that.

The Buckingham Arms, hard by the Shoreham-By-Sea railway station is having a beer festival over the bank holiday weekend. They are taking the very last firkin of Merry Andrew that we brewed way back in March. There will now only be a short delay until the next batch is available as it’s one of the two brews we plan for next week.

There’s a link on the where to get it page, where I also found the photo (used with permission).

There is a composter in my back garden and on most days I add vegetable peelings or stalks. I’ve been doing this for over two years now and it never seems to get any fuller. Unfortunately, because of its design, there’s no very convenient way to get at the compost it produces. I’d have to dig my way through a mound of decomposing vegetables to get to the bottom or simply stop using it for 6 months. Because of this it’s really used as a way of keeping our garbage levels under control rather than a useful source of material for the back garden.

We can’t afford to do this at the brewery - every brew produces up to quarter of a tonne of organic waste. We need to process it quickly and get it out onto the garden, otherwise it will quickly build up to quantities that are impossible to handle.

So we’ve put together our first compost tumbler. Incredibly, this will break down organic material in between 14 and 21 days. It uses shredded paper, our spent grain and hops, water, and and any vegetable waste from the garden. All you have to do is turn it once or twice every few days. When it’s finished you simply tip the compost out into a wheelbarrow.

We are building several of these over the next few weeks to deal with our expected output.

There are two internal features to the brewery that still have to be finished. One is the fermentation platform, a raised platform where the fermentation vessels sit. When full they are very heavy so it has to be strong. We are building a slightly complicated platform with some guttering so that we can easily collect ullage. It’s not yet complete but it is usable.

The second feature is a work surface with cupboards and a sink. Very useful indeed, but not actually integral to the process. We’ve already brewed once without it.

There’s a lot of pressure on us to start production for all sorts of reasons, both commercial and personal (I admit I’m impatient to begin). So we plan to fire up everything this week and brew at least once, possibly twice. The building work will be completed afterwards.

The brewery has been approved! Its operations certificate is on its way.

I’m frantically trying to get my ducks in a row to finish everything for next week.

I was alerted to this intriguing fact by the ever thought provoking Devil’s Kitchen (although it’s not actually Mr DK posting).

As part of the escalating war on drinkers, various pressure groups are keen for the government to reduce the legal blood-alcohol limit to practically zero. This is gesture politics and nothing more. There is no evidence that driving ability is impaired at the current 80mpg limit

Do go read the whole thing…..

We are building a platform to keep the fermentation vessels on, it’s made of hollow concrete blocks, filled with hardcore and will have a concrete cap and a gutter on it. It’s about 25 inches high.

I’m currently putting the hardcore in. A hard afternoon’s labour saw it filled.

To a depth of 3 inches.

Once a rocket goes up,
Who cares where it comes down ?
That’s not my department
says Werner Von Braun

- Tom Lehrer

The news is not good. Despite producing award winning beers, Cains is now in administration. On the face of it a brewery making real ale going onto the rocks is quite bad for the industry as a whole and particularly scary for those of us just dipping a toe in the water.

Closer examination reveals two interesting facts. First of all, Cains had expanded rapidly into the pubco business recently and it can’t be regarded as simply a brewer anymore. There are reports of widening losses - perhaps resulting from the general downturn that is hitting all pubs at the moment.

But the proximate cause of it’s demise turns out to be good old fashioned cash flow problems and in particular a disputed tax bill with HMRC. In fact it was HMRC that issued the winding up order. Cash flow problems can hit even profitable businesses and kill them off, in fact it’s the leading cause of death for businesses everywhere.

This is not just a standard tale of being unable to meet commercial commitments though, in this case it was the government in the guise of HMRC that lowered the boom on Cains. Whatever the ins and outs of what is owed to HMRC there’s little doubt that Liverpool will suffer if it doesn’t sell. Even if it does sell Cains may be still be shut down and the assets stripped.

There are 1000 jobs on the line in an area where historically unemployment has been high, and was still running at 11% in 2006. And now of course the economy is going into a downturn. The obvious
questions are, how much will HM Government be on the hook for in terms of welfare and benefits, lost VAT, and lost income tax ? How does this compare against tax owed ? Might it not have been better to give Cains more time?

If you look at an electoral map of Liverpool it’s a sea of red with many Labour safe seats. But nearly all of them have majorities smaller than Glasgow East, and that was also ’safe’. The loss of a well loved local brand and a substantial rise in unemployment due to the direct actions of the government does not look good. MPs in the area should be looking for a way out.

Update - we get 300 - 400 people a month reading this blog, if anyone can think of a way of getting this particular piece out to a wider audience, please let me know (andy@adurbrewery.com)