The fallow period between Christmas and New Year is when I tend to review and rewrite business plans and this year has been no exception, although the brewery plan rewrite was rather overtaken by events.

Shortly after Christmas, it was announced that Steyning Threshers would be reverting to the direct control of Threshers. Up to that point it was under the control of another company that held the franchise. One consequence of this is that our beer has vanished from the shelves. Ironically, Steyning’s local brewery currently has no distribution within Steyning itself.

Although you can still buy our beer at the Threshers in Shoreham, it’s obviously a situation we want to correct. I’ve also wanted to get our beer into one of Steyning’s pubs for some time, yet they are all run through pubcos, and pubcos keep tight control on what beer is sold at their pubs.

Fortunately, Adur Brewery is a member of SIBA, the independent brewers association. SIBA runs a scheme called DDS that allows managers at larger chains to order beers centrally and then have them delivered directly by the brewer. Threshers uses the DDS scheme and we have now applied to SIBA to be admitted. If we are accepted (no guarantees), then the new managers at Threshers would be able to sell our beers again if they wanted. We’d also be able to offer our beers to at least two of the four remaining pubs in Steyning through the same scheme, which would be nice. I’ll be making sure that the staff in the local pubs and shops know about the opportunity. I hope we will see Velocity back on the shelves in Steyning the very near future. In the meanwhile Shoreham Threshers is looking forward to your visit and we will be at Shoreham Farmers Market on the 10th.

The other decision we’ve made is (as I mentioned yesterday) that we will be having a January sale of Velocity. We are brewing for the first time this year on Tuesday and the plan is to offer the entire brew at a drastically reduced price to local free houses. Of course we are a very small brewery so there are a limited number of casks available - around eighteen barring accidents. Four have gone already. It’s first come first served with this one.

Finally, I spent an interesting couple of hours at Horsham District Council this afternoon while the licensing officers there guided my faltering steps at the start of the maze that is our premises license. This is the bit of paper that will allow us to sell our beer over the internet, and trial our home delivery service (like the milkman - but better). Six forms, a public consultation period and copies to around eight separate departments around the council, plus West Sussex’s long suffering chief of police. I can see this one will run and run!

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Yesterday, Wetherspoons announced a significant price cut in one of the beers they carry (Greene King IPA). Today, the BBC carried an interview with Alcohol Concern stating that they are:

• a. Angry
• b. A charity

Apparently they are angry because you can buy a pint at Wetherspoons and drink it in a managed and safe environment, rather than buying something cheaper, alcoholic, and fizzy, from your supermarket and getting blitzed on it by yourself at home.

I took a moment to look through their accounts at the Charity Commissioners and I note that like a lot of ‘charities’ a significant amount of their money is extorted from taxpayers. According to the accounts to 31st of March 2008, 44% of their money came from the Department of Health. A further 30% came from ‘Project grants’. This is all on page 18 if you want to check. The word ‘grant’ is a bit of a giveaway here - my interpretation is that this was public money as well.

In other words, Alcohol Concern is more accurately a sockpuppet. When it says something you can see the government’s lips move.

Well, I think more pubs should be allowed to try this sort of thing and so Adur Brewery is having a January sale as well. I was going to wait until tomorrow to announce it - along with some other changes as well. However, if any publicans would like to give me a call on our usual number (01273-467527) in the meanwhile, I’d be happy to discuss it with them.

…and if you know any publicans who might be interested - tell them to give us a call.

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…was announced this evening. Matt Smith. Looks like a good choice - he appropriately doctorish hair although he seems to almost entirely lack eyebrows. Perhaps Alistair Darling has them.

I knew it. Alistair Darling is …. the Master. Explains a lot when you think about it.

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Very occasionally, I look at the statistics for this website. One of the more interesting parts of this is the phrases people have typed into Google to find the site. In our case, it’s astonishing how many people type in ‘Neil Morrissey’ and subsequently end up here. If you are one of those people - Hi!

Given a moment’s reflection, its not quite so astonishing. I’ve lost count of the number of people who - on learning that we started a microbrewery - have said:

Did you see that program, when that guy from Men Behaving Badly started a brewery ? What did you think ?

Well I thought a number of things. First of all, I laughed my head off during the programs. They really are very, very, funny. I know some people were put off by the swearing, but I thought that it tinged the air a nice shade of blue.

My second thought was that the journey the hapless pair made was very similar to the one that Dicky and I went through in 2008 and late 2007.

My final thought is that most people appear to have missed the point of the program. I’m speculating, but my guess is that despite the title ‘Neil Morrissey’s Risky Business’, most of the risk vanished the moment Channel 4 signed on the dotted line. The point of the program was to pay for their venture, Ye Olde Punch Bowl. More power to their collective elbow’s say I.

I haven’t tried the beer yet but I’ll certainly be trying the pub when I’m next in Yorkshire.

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According to the Telegraph. And there I was thinking (there I go again) it was all the Velocity and Merry Andrew I’d drunk over the holidays.

Hat tip to the Landed Underclass for this.

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One of the small mysteries of beer is that (for us at least) it takes a full day to make any beer - independent of the amount you make. When I made 25 litres a time as a home brewer it used to take a day. When we were running our 50 litre pilot plant, it took a day. Now we have an 800 litre brew length it still takes a day. Sometimes its a very long day, but we have managed it in as little as 9 hours!

Bottling is a different matter. In my homebrew days, I could do about 45 bottles in a busy afternoon. Inevitably ending with me washing the kitchen floor because of all the beer I’d spilt. The pilot plant used 5 litre stainless steel kegs and could often be done in a few hours. But bottling and then labeling 1000 bottles is a hugely labour intensive process.

Bottles are brought in from the stack outside, sterilized in dilute peracetic acid. Drained. Filled with beer, and a measured amount of sugar syrup to prime. Capped. Placed 12 at a time in a cardboard box. They then have to be warmed to a point where residual yeast converts the extra sugar into CO2 and a little extra alcohol. In warm weather this happens as a matter of course, but at the moment they have to be moved off site to a warm room for this to happen. Finally there is the labeling and delivery.

In the past, this has taken two or three people several days. Partly because sterilizing the bottles involved fully immersing them in the sterlizing solution, and then draining them. Even at four at a time there’s quite a lot of waiting for bottles to fill or drain. This new toy speeds that part of the process up a bit. The sink contains two hollow spikes - push a bottle onto one of them and the pump forces sterilizing fluid up into the bottle which can then be hung on a bottle tree to drain before filling.

No doubt we will be getting hold of other bits of equipment to speed bottling up, but in the meanwhile I’ve asked the Easter Bunny for a bottle warming room.

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As you can see, the decorations are up, and everything is ready for Christmas. There’s enough beer chilling in the cellar to sink the Titanic and we’ve had a spectacularly good first quarter of brewing. I’d like to thank everyone for their support, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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!!

I think this speaks for itself. It came from the ToryBear blog.

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I’ve been ill. Painfully ill. Just flu of course, symptoms have ranged from several sleepless nights with fever and hallucinations to my current much improved condition which is a more or less permanent light headedness - as if I’d had one too many Merry Andrews. And of course, everyone I know has been ill as well. My little boy has been sick, my wife has been sick, the ducks down the pond have been sick (judging from the packets of lemsip and used packets of kleenex lying around).

Thankfully, we are all on the road to recovery, but there are going to be knock on effects and one of them is January’s farmers market in Steyning. In general we are going to be at every Steyning market, and we hope at every Shoreham market in 2009. Each time we attend we have to fill out and submit a ‘Temporary Event Notice’. This is part of the 2003 licensing act, and as far as markets are concerned it is a staggeringly daft bit of legislation.

The act states that no more than 500 people can attend a temporary event, so we have to promise that only up to 499 people will cluster around our stall at any one time. The act also limits us (and our relatives, and our business associates) to no more than 50 events a year. I don’t think there’s a central register so a council will only be able to check that we’ve followed this rule in one particular area. It also limits any particular venue to no more than 50 events a year - and we’ve actually had a notice refused in the past since the particular village hall had been used for weddings etc. during the year.

Why 50? I don’t know. Possibly it was the number of rings round the minister’s bath when they were thinking about it.

To get a notice sorted out I fill out a detailed six page form that I then submit in duplicate to the council licensing officers, along with a cheque for £21. I send a further copy to the Chief of Police, who presumably has nothing better to do. Given the nature of the Royal Mail I typically send this 24 hour registered so the whole thing comes to about £30 in all.

Assuming I’ve followed the ritual correctly, the council sends me back a copy of the notice and we can go ahead.

Then what happens ? Well, typically nothing. In theory, various members of the busy body classes can demand to see either my personal license during the event, and the six page notice has to be prominently displayed. I wasn’t actually aware of that last point and so until recently, the notice was prominently displayed at the bottom of our cash box. Nowadays I tape it to the table. In fact no one has ever bothered us about either of these items. We do the market which is a lot of fun for us, and people seem to enjoy the opportunity to taste our beers.

But there’s the rub. The ritual takes no less than ten working days. Saturday morning I’m sitting up in bed trying to make a list of all the jobs on my backlog when I realised that given the number of public holidays between now and January the third, there are not ten working days available. The council officers who administer their end of this meaningless paper dance do so with as much grace and flexibility as they can, but the act leaves them very little wiggle room. They must have the details at least 10 working days in advance. If it’s late it can’t happen.

So, sorry Steyning. No market for us in January. We will be doing the Shoreham market on the 10th and I hope every Shoreham and Steyning market after that throughout 2009.

You can read more about the 2003 licensing act here (towards the end of the article).

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