Student Brewer

What to look out for in 2012

2012-01-11T11:47:00.001-08:00

I've tried to steer clear of the cask VS keg argument. I'm a firm believer that good beer is good beer. The way to find good beer is try lots of beer. One of the best ways to do that is to go to a good beer festival. Hold that thought.

So what am I looking forward to in 2012, a

question I first asked myself after reading Mark Dredge's blog here. Now he knows his stuff, but I thought I'd have a go from over here on the Welsh borders.

1) Local breweries.

I'm blessed to be situated where I am. Breweries 'local' to me as operated by our local branch of CAMRA include (in no particular order)

Wye Valley - a strong 'family brewer' sized brewery. Key descriptive word: Consistent - Butty Bach has never left the bar, and I can't see that changing.

Brecon Brewing - the brewery may have just been established, but Buster the Brewer has certainly been established for years. Cracking core range, small, close and friendly enough to let me play regularly. I'm looking forward to brewing a house ale soon.

Otley Brewery - I'm not allowed to describe them as the Welsh version of a Scottish brewery, and to be fair that wouldn't do them justice. They think in terms of beer evolution, as opposed to beer revolution. I've just taken out Erdinger in favour of their O7 Weissbier on the kegs, and I'm deadly serious about putting their CreosO on instead of a Copenhagen beer if they ever keg it. The best thing about these guys is they really do let the beer do the talking.

So straight off, I've got 3 excellent breweries, each offering something different and each of which will be regularly available. I've also lined up regular beer tastings and variants, starting with Brecon in Feb, Wye Valley in March and Otley in April.

2) Better Service

Something I'm a stickler for when I'm a customer, and a huge factor in the Value for Money stakes. With trading conditions likely to remain difficult, the days of just plonking a pint on the bar without saying more than 4 words to the customer are well and truly behind us. I love the opportunities I get to drink in London as the pubs I visit, and go well out of my way to visit, are ones that get these simple things right. A personal recommendation to publicans who sell many different beers/ales - get rid of branded glasses, or get your own branding on glasses. We've done this for the last 3 years on ales, keg should be this year. Apart from anything else, when someone nicks/buys one off you, their advertising your pub for you.

3) Better Anti Alcohol propaganda

Possibly I haven't phrased that correctly, but a more realistic approach is something I think the industry could get behind. I've often laughed at the notion that more than a pint and a half is 'binge drinking' and the concept of units. The latest suggestion from government advisers isn't laughable either - ditch the daily recommended limits, which handily ignore the simple fact that alcohol affects every single person slightly differently. Instead recommend that people have a couple of dry days a week.

This sensible advice may or may not have anything to do with Alcohol Concern's Don Shenker stepping down after their funding was cut.

I'm going to limit myself to these top three, as I'd love to know what you think the future holds for pubs and good beer. And what do you consider to be the best beers out there at the moment, brewed in the UK?

Apologies for the poor layout settings of the blog, Blogger have decided to dick around with their editor taking out key features such as resizing pictures.

Bye-bye CAMRA

2012-01-03T00:52:00.000-08:00

Well my eyes have well and truly been opened recently.

There's been a few things going on over on the CAMRA forums, that I've decided to keep out of and not get involved in, but one particular discussion I've been following with interest has been regarding the AGMs.

The process to submit a motion

I haven't been to one, read about one or chatted to anyone about one, so I have no idea what goes on. From what I can gather from What's Boring, it seems that after a complex procedure to submit a motion, nothing much happens. This, to be fair, could because the communication from HQ is poor. One of the points made in the fit for purpose review.

Back to the forum, what did interest me was the suggestion that the AGM could be recorded, or even better involve web-conferencing. This would be ideal for me, as I don't have the time or money to travel to any AGM (I doubt I'll be able to make any more GBBFs for that matter as well).

The chairman, Colin Valentine, graced the forum with his presence and had the following response to this suggestion:

{extract}Anyway, back to the thread. Personally, I am totally against webconferencing although, as I said to conference in Sheffield, it is conference's decision and the only way to influence conference is to actually go there.

Just because someone is pathetic or dishonest enough to record parts of my address to conference (see you tube, search my name and join the other 845 views, 6 comments who watched 2 minutes 47 seconds of my (almost interminable) 16 minute speech) does not mean that we should record it and post it on the website.
Colin{/extract}

Now this grabbed by goat - I've read it back a few times and mulled over it for a couple of hours and still stand by my interpretation:

I'm not allowed to influence conference, specifically regarding access to it, because I can't make it to conference.

It's the final straw for CAMRA and I, so I'll be trying to get a refund on the remainder of my membership fee. The NE appear to be stuck in their own world, full of hypocrisy (during his speech Colin refers to the 'blogerati' in a derogatory way, yet admits in his speech he only reads Tandleman's) and poor communication. In this day and age, with blogs, tweets, emails, websites etc, there is no excuse for poor communication.

In the example above, be against web conferencing by all means, but at least have the decency to explain why!

In my view this further demonstrates that CAMRA is stuck in it's ways and the NE won't change. As I still feel with trade bodies, organisations that claim to represent their members should make it as easy as possible for their members to get their views across.

I'm not going to do a Brewdog and not sell any real ale in the pub - that would just be daft. But I doubt CAMRA will be around much longer - not because of 'craft beer', but because real ale has been saved - almost too much. There are beers and breweries out there that I won't put on the bar due to their quality and their attitude to the pub when quality issues are raised. There are a lot of good keg beers now that are far superior to these ales.

I also certainly know of at least one large beer festival that will be showcasing amazing beers, be they cask or keg, coming up this year.

Sound the bells, Cask has been saved.

Local Beer & Food Matching

2011-11-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

Just a quick heads up that we are again putting on a beer and food matching evening, with a little twist this time. Each of the beers will be from the newly established Brecon Brewing, and each of the dishes will involve cooking with beer (or cider in one example). The scary bit is I'll be cooking instead of taking part this time!

These events really have grown in popularity, and are likely to be at least monthly in the new year. The menu for this event can be found here, and those of you who made it to this year's Ale & Literature Festival can vouch at just how well that Ysbrid y Ddraig goes with Stilton...

We're a bunch of moaning....

2011-11-16T03:17:00.000-08:00

My word we're a bunch of moaning good-for-nothing sometimes. Publicans I mean. Obviously not all of us, but I really do despair of our public image.

I don't often read the Morning Advertiser website as every article lists the first line of comments made beneath it, and nearly every one is negative. I strongly believe in looking for the opportunity in everything, rather than the easy 'slag off and give up' approach that some appear to have.

Don't you just hate brands that produce elegant glassware

They recently ran an article about the now-legal 'schooner', or 2/3 pint measure, being shunned by 'pubs and pub-goers'. I could go on about how this would appear to be a non-story, given the data comes from an online survey of 300 CAMRA members. This isn't meant to be taken as against CAMRA, except for one thing, which is 300 is 0.00227272727% of CAMRA's membership. Just over a fifth of 1%.*

No, what really grabs my goat is the response from publicans on the forum.

'Whats wrong with a half pint glass'

'Who would want to drink any beer in less than a pint quantity'

'No surprise here, as no-one wanted them'

Come on chaps, lets look for the positive eh? For a start-off, lets give them a chance to get out there. Heineken are seemingly the first to get them out, and they've only just become available. I got my mitts on them yesterday, and they fit nicely in the hand, well weighted - exactly the same as the pint glasses, just slightly smaller.

Secondly, nobody is forcing you to stock them. I don't see what the fuss was about with the wine measures coming in. You don't need 3 different sized glasses for wine, you need one, unmarked, and 3 thimbles.

For the lagers, I'll probably keep half a dozen of each behind the bar (they don't take up much space as they're tall and slim). Where I really see the opportunity is with the ales.

As the majority of our ales are guest ales on rotation, we bought an amount of pint glasses branded with the pub - kindly sponsored by a couple of breweries who gave us a free firkin of ale in return for their name being on the back. We got the glasses lined at a third and a half, using them for our beer festivals as well.

Shamelessly stolen from A Good Beer Blog

What we haven't got yet are branded half pint glasses. What we'll do now is get some branded 2/3 pint glasses, lined at a half. Elegant, table glasses that bottled beers would also look good in. If I can get them nucleated then they'll do for the lagers as well.

It's so easy to be dismissive of something without trying it first - lets see if CAMRA festivals add another line at the 2/3 mark on their pint glasses and see how it goes. For stronger ales it's another selling point - for no extra work or expense.

Remember, it's not a problem, it's an opportunity. And it's not going to replace pints - pints will never disappear, ever. Having the leader of the free world enjoy a pint helps:

The guy in the background either really likes beer or really like the president

I would like to find a better name for them though...

Cheers

*This is an issue I have with many surveys and, more importantly, how their results are reported. Like I say, not CAMRA per se

Head down and crack on

2011-11-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

Firstly, a big thank you to the staff and customers for making the pub what it is. Thanks to them, we've been included in a new guide: Great British Pubs

Busy times at the pub for us, which seems to be becoming the norm I'm pleased to say. A new chef in situ, with some cracking menu and events ideas. If you're interested, have a look at his Christmas Menu and New Year's Eve buffet menu. Already we've got more bookings than last year, which I'm happy about. I'll be working with him to offer a beer & food matching evening, hopefully with the help of some friends from that there London as well as local brewers Brecon Brewing and Otley.

It's that time of year again where I re-assess the lines on the bar - Peroni has more than earned its place on the bar for another year, whilst expected price increases will see Carlsberg off for Amstel. At the premium end, Pilsner Urquell isn't shifting enough, so that will be downgraded to bottles only leaving me with a pump spare. Whilst flirting with the idea of going exotic, or a guest keg, a couple of lagers have caught my eye whilst in pubs where the ale hasn't been up to scratch. The first is Heineken, which will give me so great support if I install it alongside Amstel, and the other is one I didn't previously know, Dortmunder Union Pils.

In other news, the website has been updated, hopefully to a cleaner, more user-friendly style. We're going to add more local information to it, offering it as another online home for the people and friends of Hay on Wye. The pub is the social hub, so it makes sense for the website to be a local information hub. Any ideas or advice on this is greatly appreciated.

The kitchen has also been completely refurbished (god I hate taking down and putting up ceilings), and we're off today to Norfolk to pick up some fantastic tables for the new-look function room, which will then officially be finished. We can then offer conference/training facilities as well as private dining.

Personally, I've kept my online presence to a minimum recently (I note I haven't updated this blog in two months yet gained 3 followers, so presumably you lot like it when I say nothing). As well as being knee deep at the pub, I've been moving home and coping with an illness. Hopefully, normal service will be resumed shortly.

Cheers!

Summary of the Festival

2011-09-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

A week on from the festival, and there are few signs it took place in the marquee at the back. First of all, was it successful? Yes - less wastage, more beer sold and 2 fantastic beer & food matching dinners.

There are things I can improve on, and those are being taken into account already. With some very kind offers of help in different areas of promoting the festival, next year looks to be the one that really takes off. I hope so, I think there really is scope for this kind of festival.

Highlights
For me, these are quite simply the 2 dinners, the menus for which can be found in the previous two blog posts. I'm currently in the kitchen again, covering some staff holiday, and these two events have really got me thinking about the menus in different ways. Match of the entire weekend was a simple one for me - Ysbrid Y Ddraig, a whisky aged IPA, with Stilton. So simple, yet one of those combinations that improves everything about the individual ingredients.

The second highlight for me came towards the end of the second dinner, which Adrian has written up here. One of the guests had quietly spoken to me before the meal and had asked for a small glass of wine instead of the beers, as she was only there for her husband. At the end of the night, not a sip had been taken from the wine. It remained completely untouched.

I will certainly be holding these dinners again, and all that remains is for me to thank Pete Brown, Mark Dredge and Adrian Tierney-Jones for making the effort over August Bank Holiday to get to a small market town in the middle of nowhere. Should find something coming through the post shortly to you all.

For pictures and videos from the whole weekend, there is a Picasa album:

Beer & Books

Cheers

Beer Vs Beer Dinner

2011-08-26T03:23:00.000-07:00

Just a quick one from me - with the festival starting today I realised I hadn't actually blogged about Adrian Tierney Jones & Mark Dredge coming over for a battle of the beers over one of our menus. So without further ado:

Sponsored by Monty's Brewery

A chance to be talked through the wide range of flavours available in beer through different styles of beers alongside flavoursome fresh food

Stilton & roasted Shallot Rissoto

with fresh parmesan shavings

Rochefort 8 Vs Orval

Fresh Filleted Sardines

served with ratatouille

Jever Pilsner Vs Oxymoron 5.5%(Otley)

Beef Wellington

served with Dauphinoise potatoes & roasted Cherry tomatoes

Schneider Adventus 8.8%Vs Goose Island IPA

Chocolate Fondant

with Bucks Fizz Ice Cream

Ysbrid Y Ddraig 6.7% (Breconshire)Vs Porterhouse Blue 6.6% (Waen)

Please note Ysbrid Y Ddraig may be replaced with Boon Kreik

4 courses Inc. drinks £35

Beer Vs Beer

2011-08-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

A couple of pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place today. The beers have been ordered and confirmed, the menus written and the first event completely finalised. First of all we have the ales, which thanks to an amazing site called www.yourround.co.uk I can display nicely here for you:

I should come clean about this - one of the above beers won't be cask, but keg. I won't spoil the surprise just yet though.

The second thing I can confirm is the menu for Pete Brown's Beer & Food pairing event. 2 beers per course, the first an ale from the festival, the other a world beer. As I don't know how to embed a document here, I've just copied and pasted so excuse any nasty bits of layout:

Chicken Liver & Brandy Terrine

served with brown toast and red-onion marmalade

Glaslyn Ale 4.2% (Purple Moose) & Orval 6.2%

~ ~ ~

Haddock topped with Welsh Rarebit

served with Ratatouille

O7 Weissen 5% (Otley) vs Goose Island IPA 5.9%

~ ~ ~

Slow Roast Belly Pork

served with courgette gratin & creamed potatoes

Rhymney Export 5% (Rhymney) vs Trappiste Rochefort 8 9.2%

~ ~ ~

Summer pudding and clotted cream

Blackberry Stout 3.8% (Waen) vs Boon Kreik 4%

So there we go. Any queries/bookings get in touch

Cheers

Good Marketing

2011-08-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

With Mark Dredge bemoaning terrible branding recently, I was pleasantly surprised when a recent meeting with a brewery rep displayed every characteristic of a brewery taking their ales very seriously.

The rep was from the Otter Brewery, in Devon. Expecting the usual A4 sheet of paper with black and white thumbnails alongside the usual bland descriptions, a professional looking portfolio . There website is to the same standard - excellent photos, simple and easy-to-use site with tasting notes and quick descriptions of appearance, aroma and taste.

Talk moved on to product support, which normally seems to be a dozen branded glasses - something we have no use for as we use our own branded glasses. A choice of bar towels (suitable for country pubs such as ours) or those rubber bar 'runners' that would be more suited to a town centre bar for example. Did you hear that DIAGEO? A CHOICE of POS that allows pubs to keep their branding/atmosphere/look etc in keeping with the character of the building.

Sorry, slight bug of mine there - every Guinness POS we get sent through seems tailored for high st bars, not country pubs. Anyway...

A branded Angram pump handle was offered, and proper ceramic pump clips for any beers we took on regularly. And an elegant poster, framed and ready for the wall. This, coupled with a sensible pricing structure, meant I agreed on the spot to order one of each, and try them out.

They've all sold so well, I'm now on my third delivery of them. The reason why they've sold well is of particular interest to me though - that being my raison d'etre, to sell beer.

I've stolen this picture from their website and take no credit for it whatsoever

Looking at the picture above, the clips are elegant, simple and attractive to all. The names describe the beers, and the beers are the same colour as the clips (excluding bitter and presumably Head). Ladies, men, young, old, the entire spectrum of our customer base has talked about them. On the back of the pumps are simple tasting notes, which are a useful memory aid to staff working a bar where the beers change often.

In summery, I find everything about the beers accessible, and I think that's a key word to consider if growth of cask is to continue. The beers themselves are good, solid examples of the beer styles they claim to be. My personal favourite so far has to be the Bright.

This is how you do it. Lets see more breweries take this level of pride in their beer. Organising a beer festival for the bank holiday, any brewery without a website that at least listed their beers and an email address won't be present. Yet beers from Devon will constantly be available on my bar.

Cheers

To booze or not too booze

2011-07-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

I may be letting myself in for some trouble here, but we'll soon find out. One word I cannot stand is Booze. Every connotation that word brings up* is negative to me. Now I expect to see it used in certain places. The Daily Mail, for example, or a certain chain of off-license that advertises 'bargains' to it's customers.

But some places it's just not necessary - and a perfect example of this was last week in a program about what products contain fish. Kill it, Cut it, Use it was a BBC program hosted by Julia Bradbury explaining how parts of animals end up in different products, and in the fish episode she went to a rugby club and talked about 'booze' a lot.

To some people there's nothing wrong with the word booze, but with a media that is hell bent on keeping all alcohol under one banner, regardless of place of purchase, type of alcohol, production method etc, I don't feel it does ale** any favours.

Cheers

*no pun intended
**swap 'ale' for 'craft beer' if you like - I'm not getting into that one

The Dark Side of Social Media

2011-06-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Social Media isn't always beneficial to a business. Yes, having a twitter account for your business (or yourself if you front your business) can bring results - raising awareness of special events with the full details on your website for example.

However customers also have forms of social media that can damage business. My biggest hatred is of Tripadvisor.

I have no problem that allows for customers to review a business and for the owner to easily respond. Tripadvisor allows customers to be as vague or specific as they like. It doesn't check the validity of the review. And it allows the customer to remain anonymous. I'll copy and paste our last two reviews from the site to show you what I mean:

adi_armon...

london

4 reviews

“Expensive food, rude staff”

Reviewed 7 June 2011 - NEW

This pub offers an extremely expensive food. The staff was rude to us (shouting at us twice !).

less

Was this review helpful? Yes

Ask adi_armoni about Kilverts Inn

This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC Report problem with review

Mrgoffy

1 review

“Rude Staff”

Reviewed 21 May 2011

Whilst the location & setting of the pub are good, the general attitude of the staff is awful. If you enjoy being treated like a fool, this is the place for you. I get the impression that the lack of competition in this small town, has bred a level of customer service which wouldn't feel out of place at Fawlty Towers. That said, the range of beers on tap is excellent. Pity about the rest.

Now I have no problem with negative reviews. I think they are good for business - if things are going to well it's easy to start missing the small things that lead onto larger problems. My issue with both the above is how vague they are, and the damage they do to our ranking and stats that Tripadvisor uses. For example, MrGoffy rated our 'rooms, cleanliness and value' as 2 out of 5. By the sounds of the review, he didn't stay with us. It can't be said that he ate with us.

Given the time of the review, he may have visited during the Hay Festival, a busy time. Likewise for the top review - it's so vague I can't work to correct it. He may feel that the food is expensive (locally sourced, organic where possible and 100% home-made doesn't come cheap - staff wages are one of our highest overheads). Being shouted at twice - I'm sure I would have known about a member of staff shouting at a customer once, let alone twice. The only time over the festival that a customer was shouted at was when their toddler was climbing over the building site where the brewery should be built. Uneven surface, a spade, fork cement mixer amongst other tools were there. My dad shouted over to the parents, sitting with their back to the child. 5 minutes later, exactly the same thing happened - the parents weren't watching their young girl and she had started climbing over the site again.

But my experience trying to write a reply to tripadvisor has been less than fruitful. You can't suggest anything, you can't advertise (asking a reviewer to check details on the website for example) and if you feel a review is fake you get 250 characters to explain why.

I can't be bothered to try and get a response through tripadvisor's filters that I feel would do the Inn justice. With no chef and a busy bar, I've got enough on my hands. Hence the lack of decent blog posts!

Do you use sites like tripadvisor? How much do they make a difference to you? Is it right people who haven't stayed at a BnB/Inn/Hotel can review it on a site that is primarily about accommodation?

Cheers

Hay Festival Halfway

2011-06-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

We're currently halfway through the world famous Hay Festival, and trade has been unbelievably good. Now an event that saturates the town with up to 200 000 people in 10 days is bound to mean trade is good. But as our 4th festival, this has been the best by far.

Firstly, the kitchen. The new head chef walked out a week before the festival started, saying that he'd been offered more money somewhere else. So a quickly written festival menu was put together, with the emphasis being on speed of service, with an evening restaurant menu that focused on classic fine dining. At times in previous years the waiting time may have reached over an hour for food. This year, although I can't say I timed every meal, I feel comfortable saying 95% of the food served was within 25 minutes. Serving just short of 300 meals a day, I don't think that's bad going.

The bar is normally busy and more so over the festival, but the success story on it this year (so far) has been the cask sales. I've heard of 18s running dry quickly at beer festivals, especially when the awards are put up. I thought I'd be clever this year, as I was running the kitchen as well as the bar, and bought some guest ales in 18s to give the 9s time to settle and condition. Finding out that an 18 of Wye Valley's HPA went in just under 4 hours wasn't quite what I was expecting!

Sadly the till died on Saturday, so I don't know how many pints of ale we sold. The replacement till (a spare borrowed from another outlet in town) then died on the Sunday. But on Monday morning the empty storage space was full, and the vast majority of it casks.

With the end of half term weekend coming up, I'm looking forward to seeing how much more we can push out. It's one hell of a buzz to see empties coming out of the cellar that rapidly, and seeing that look of slight confusion on customer's faces when they were sure the last time they came to the bar 4 of the 6 ales where different.

Similarly we've had a few confused customers over the weekend. 2 of my favourites where 'what's the difference between the Lamb and the Salmon' and 2 customers discussing what to have to eat at the bar:

'What's in a suet pudding?'
'Suet'

We've also had an ale and cheese pairing event, live jazz on the lawn, and a completely packed out Open Mic session in the marquee out back. Hopefully I'll find time to talk more about those - there are some very exciting events coming up.

Cheers

Finding time to manage

2011-05-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks to some behind these scenes have been a waste. The new head chef has decided to take a job elsewhere, exclusively it appears due to better pay. This is less than a week until the Hay Festival - a time when Hay with its population of around 1800 sees nearly 200 000 visitors in 10 days.

I wasn't surprised. For some reason I get a gut feeling about chefs within a couple of days - and sadly I've been right 100% of the time. But one thing I really did appreciate with having a chef was getting time to do my job 'managing' better. By being able to delegate and work with someone running the kitchen, I've had time to train all the new staff in things as simple as Irish coffees, line cleaning, describing beer and tasting the bottled beers we have in. I'm sorry, but there's no way in hell you can sell a range of American, Belgian and Czech beers without having a small taste.

So now I have bar staff that are fully confident in checking a beer if it gets returned - recently the FastCask Bank's Ruby Mild turned sour and flat on day 2 of being on sale. I'm immensely proud of the staff being confident enough to say 'you're right, I'm not happy selling that, let me turn the clip around and get you a pint of something different. Would you like to try a taster first?'. That happened yesterday. Today, whilst in service, a shout came through 'the Bank's mild has gone'. 'Clean it and get Dorothy (Goodbody, May Queen) on' I said, happy in the knowledge that because I'd had the time to show every aspect of changing a barrel and the line cleaning process, they would do it successfully. Quizzing them afterwards, they had.

This may sound like nothing special, but in the past the beer would have stayed off until I finished in the kitchen, at which point instead of taking an hour off I'd be line cleaning and getting the new beer on. In my hour off today I got to see my son for 20 minutes - that's clearly a good news story in my book.

This also ties in with a bigger issue I see facing the trade as a whole - finding good staff. I'm a firm believer in hiring the attitude and teaching the skills, but it's getting harder and harder to find someone willing to do their job. I don't even mean going the extra mile - a KP who will sweep and mop the floor for example, rather than drag a dirty mop behind him on the way out. A barman who will check the toilets have enough towels in them and are presentable every hour without being asked.

The team I've got at the moment are wonderful - I'm genuinely proud of them and tell them so. I also tell them when they've got it wrong. And they tell me how they think we can improve - it's fantastic to write up a menu and have one of the kitchen staff offer a better way of doing a dish, and one of the runners ask for one of the desserts to be swapped for a better seller. I've even got bar staff choosing which guest ales come on now - and nearly everyone who works here wants to be involved with the beer and food matching meals coming up. You can't pay for keenness, you can just try to nuture it when you see it.

But to see it you need to spend time with the staff. And that's practically impossible when your day is full end to end of laptops, fryers, cellars and supplier reps. Finding time to manage, I feel, is one of the most important aspects of a good publican.

Cheers

Which goes best with cheese?

2011-05-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

I know it's a question you've all asked yourself - out of 3 local breweries, which of their beers goes best with a strong Welsh Cheese and a stinking Stilton? There's only one way to truly find out - 6 beers, 3 breweries, 3 brewers, 2 cheeses. Voting done from the crowd, brewers not knowing which beers their competitors are using (already 1 surprising entry!) and as a final challenge, which of the bottled beers currently available in the Kilverts' fridge and cellar goes best with a cheeseboard.

The brewers in question:

Nick Otley, Otley Brewery
Buster Grant - Breconshire Brewery
'Tucker' - Wye Valley Brewery

Wednesday 1st June, 9pm, £6 a ticket includes cheese & beers
at Kilverts, Hay on Wye (www.kilverts.co.uk)

Full details will be launched next week when tickets will be £8 each - this is a special offer for readers of this blog. Contact me through ed AT kilverts DOT co DOT uk to take advantage of this offer this week.

Radio Silence

2011-04-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

I've snuck away for 5 minutes to update this. Having moved house (alright, technically I'm still moving house as the home-brew kit and a few other odds and sods are still to go) I'm without internet or even mobile signal at home, meaning the only internet I can get at the moment is at work.

Work's too busy for me to have internet time though.

It feels like all the hard work is starting to pay off - although it's still hard work now. Good staff are hard to come by, and the small crew we've got are bloody good. We need to expand though - with bank holidays, the Festival, summer and off course our Ale & Literature festival it's a busy time ahead of us. But good beer is serving us well already.

I've been lucky enough to keep at least 4 of the ales on over winter, raising to 6 at weekends. I'm currently on 6 ales all of the time, with the guest ales often changing within the second day, if not the same day they go on. Supplemented by about 100 bottles of European or World beers each week, beer certainly seems to be taking the edge on wine. Winning Silver in the local CAMRA Pub of the Year has helped - the big surprise was being outright winner of their Cider Pub of the Year which was nice, considering I don't do much (read: enough) to promote our cider offer (2 scrumpies, Stowford Press and a range of local bottles)

We'll be looking to further that cause in the near future, with monthly beer and cider events - currently we've got those busy boys at Otley Brewery coming up on Wednesday 1st of June to match some of their beers to a buffet being put on by our new French Chef (more on him and his food later). Then towards the end of June or start of July, we'll have Adrian Tierney-Jones going head to head with one of the nicest wine blokes I've ever met. Details on that will be out next week after the bank holiday, but it's a cracker of a 5 course meal complimented by 2 very chatty blokes who know their drinks.

Onto July and I've only got the outline of what we're doing and how, because we're looking at doing something American and Supersized with Melissa Cole in the garden marquee. Then August sees our supersize Welsh Ale & Literature weekend, from Thursday 25th - 29th, the Bank Holiday. Already confirmed is Mark Dredge, talking us through his explorations of the world with beer in hand.

We'll also be seeing more of the terrible twosome of Adrian Tierney Jones and Tim Hampson, and hopefully Pete Brown will have picked out a shirt for the weekend shortly, amongst others.

And something for me, that I've always wanted to be part of, in September, the month of my birth. A murder mystery weekend at the Inn, but this is currently in the 'I've just thought of it' part of the planning stage.

If anyone has any ideas for what they'd like to see us put on at Kilverts, let me know. We're talking with a theater group to put on some Shakespeare in the garden, we've got Jazz-on-the-lawn, a live Jazz band on the garden to compliment your Sunday roast, and of course the constant Hay on Wye beer festival known locally as Kilverts' Bar.

Cheers

It's not a good time for pubs then?

2011-03-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

After my last blog a couple of people suggested their experience of pubs in today's climate isn't quite the nirvana I was suggesting. Whilst I appreciate it's hard to see the positives when several of the pubs in your local area have got boarded up, I still believe there's never been a better time to be a pub-goer. When you hear the news of a new pub company has opened 5 sites in the last year and is looking forward to the future, I can't help thinking that today's licensee has got to work harder than ever, but more and more are.

Mudge has got a poll going on his blog at the moment, asking which year you'd enjoy drinking in the most. I'm certainly in the now crowd, apart from the fact I wasn't alive in 81 and my fake ID didn't work when I was 5, or indeed 15.

But there is something that worries me. I've mentioned before that if every licensee stuck a couple of casks on, that then didn't sell, you'd end up with a situation where cask beer is available everywhere, but quality hugely hit-and-miss. This would undoubtedly turn off the casual cask drinker back onto keg. If your going to spend £3 a pint, you want to know your going to get for your money, quality wise.

The thing that worries me now is a blueprint for currently successful pubs being taken up by the majority. The blueprint I mean is:

Minimalistic bar design. Exposed brick, scrubbed wood tables, floor that has had the carpet ripped up and then swept. Limited, uncomfortable seating. Punk IPA on keg. Jaipur on cask. Dark Star on cask. A London 'micro-brew' on keg. An American hop-bomb on keg. Beer served in dimpled jugs. Beer at £4 a pint. Shiny metal pipes around the place.

There's more to a good pub than just lots of beer

The thing that started me thinking about this was a recent trip to that there London. The Euston Tap especially - for the first time in a 'bar' I felt I was in a supermarket pub. Tiny space, join the queue, pay for your product and move away to make space. No banter. No chit-chat with the tired and fed-up looking staff. And a beer list that heavily featured Brewdog.

Whilst this may suit some - and all power to the guys running it - I think I'm developing my simple idea of what makes a good pub. It's so simple, yet seemingly hard to find:

Can you walk in, by yourself, and be made to feel comfortable, whether being left alone with a paper or perched up at the bar for a chat?

At one end of the scale pubs are still closing in large numbers. At the other end we have a selection of 'craft' pubs that almost verge on being cold, in that 'too cool for school' sense. And in the middle a broad spectrum of pubs, bars and clubs. As long as wherever that pub fits in, it remembers the basics, it should do well.

Clean
Presentable
Choice
Quality
Value for money

(not in any order I hasten to add)

Cheers

Golden Age for Pubs

2011-03-07T01:24:00.000-08:00

A comment on the Publican forum saw me write a brief response, but I wanted to discuss opinions here on it. The commenter suggested that with the duty escalator, smoking ban (4 years old...) and the other usual suspects for the demise of the pub trade would mean at some point in the near future we'd end up with 1 bland, soul-less chain of pubs.

I disagree. I think we're entering a golden age for pubs. Don't get me wrong, it's not all plain sailing, but that makes it all the more rewarding. Think about it for a minute. A few years ago, with the exception of the Cask Ale Pubs, if I may make such a sweeping generalisation, most pubs would offer the same type of beers, alcopops, soft drinks, bottled ciders etc. Entertainment was either sky sports, darts, sometimes pool, or a karaoke/dj night.

Look at where we are now:

Pubs gaining stars and awards for their food.
More brewers now than at any time in the past 70 years*.
More variety and quality cask ale
'Craft' beer pubs**
Cinemas in pubs
BEER and food matching
Wii games in pubs
More pubs with decent accommodation
Post offices and deli's in pubs
Brewpubs...

The list goes on - publican's are coming up with more and more diverse ways of keeping the doors open. Hard work, but rewarding. As customers we now have more choice in the style of pub, the contents of the pub, half-decent to restaurant quality food, great drinks when we get there. Talking points, USP***s aplenty.

The other weekend I was in a pub in Essex, for a Wine VS Beer food pairing evening. I arrived about quarter to 6 on the Friday night, and walked in to a busy bar - a few around the bar billiards, a couple at the bar, and 3 groups looking at the menu and specials. Greeting the landlord, he explained that they don't actually open until 6pm. Yet 15 minutes early, the place had a good number of customers and a great atmosphere. Later that evening, the function room full, the bar full, the dining room over half full. All people enjoying themselves.

What makes this a little more remarkable, is the map below. It shows you the location of the pub and the surrounding areas:

View Larger Map

1.5 miles is the nearest village, with a population around the 1500 mark. Everyone in that pub had taken the effort to drive, get a cab, get a baby sitter, just to go to the pub. So hardly a failing pub, and hopefully it continues to do well.

The next day I went down to Stoke Newington, to visit a pub blogged and tweeted about. Again, around 6pm and the place was heaving. It was so busy, I decided to go into town, try a couple of other pubs and come back. 11pm and the place was even busier. A hasty 3/4 pint of Jaipur thrown down my neck and I beat a retreat to my hotel - every 30 seconds you had to move. The bar had about 8 ales, 3 ciders and half a dozen keg products with none of the usual suspects present.

The Sunday I came back, to find that we'd had a bumper weekend at Kilverts., with great food sales, drink sales and most of the rooms booked out.

So in 1 weekend 3 very different pubs in very different locations were all doing well. But are some of us forgetting the basics of good pubs?

I'm currently writing an example Code of Practise for members of the Society of Licensees to agree to, and it got me thinking. A pub won't do well on one thing alone. You can have the largest screen to show the football, but if your lines aren't clean and staff not well trained, as soon as the match is over most of the customers will go. Same with food - have an excellent menu, well cooked, but if the decor isn't up to scratch and front of house staff lazy it won't work. As I found out in London, you could have a range of 'craft' beers from around the world, but if the pub is cramped, cold and soulless and staff look a bit brassed off with everything, I'll go elsewhere after one pint.

Earlier this week I was in a pub about 5 miles down the road. Small bar, 3 ales on, all under 4.5% and the 'usual suspects' on keg. I prefer this pub to the Euston Tap by far. The biggest difference wasn't the range of drinks on offer, it's the warm welcome you get from the staff, every time you walk in. Happy to chat at the bar if your own your own and pulled up a pew, or to leave you be should you take a table by the fire with friends and pull out a deck of cards. Its clean, warm, comfortable and the beer is kept well. The food is basic and home-made, and priced accordingly.

So although I'm suggesting we're entering a golden era for pubs, with more choice and quality than before, we have to remember that the basics are just as important as ever. A good pint of Pedigree in one pub can be much better than an average pint of Brewdog's latest offering in a glorified supermarket of beer. We as customers and critics need to remember this. I had written a follow up post about this subject, that as customers and licensees we need to spend more time celebrating the good pubs, the good beer, without degrading the sector as a whole by constantly comparing to what we perceive as bad pubs and beer. But as he beat me to it and a little better worded than my offering I'll link to it here rather than post my own:

Pete Brown on beer snobs and focusing on the positives.

Cheers

A brief catch-up

2011-03-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

So many things to blog about, so little time. There was a period this week where I didn't even tweet for a whole day, shock horror. Quick run-down so we're all up to date:

New chef didn't turn up to work. Found out he took a job elsewhere and didn't tell us

I'm therefore still fully tied to the kitchen. Brewery on hold, again

Tiling kitchen very slowly progressing due to bloody old building = wonky walls

Society of Licensees website will soon be live - now I've worked out how to make a members area and integrate the forum I just need to tidy it up and we're away (ETA next Friday)

Ordered in a load of new weird and wonderful bottled beers - the idea was I could focus on matching them with the new menus aforementioned chef was going to write. Still doing this, but with my dishes (with a lot of help from friends on twitter).

Slight faux-pas on my part last week meant we had 1 lunch service without a Welsh ale on, which has broken my 'professionally' new years resolution...

Craft beer pubs blog post is on the back burner - I really wanted to get the next blog out there while the fire burns bright in my heart about it

Cheers
Ed

A weekend away

2011-02-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

As a bit of a break from all the website and forum building, email sending, food cooking and doing Dad stuff, this weekend I booked off for a bit of a pub tour. Primarily, Friday night was a Beer Vs Wine food pairing evening at the Thatcher's Arms in Mt Bures.

I'm not too good at reviewing pubs and beers, as if I try to take notes I end up ignoring others around me (I can't multitask at all) - I found it fascinating how the journalists around the table could write notes and keep chatting with us. Needless to say for an in-depth report of the evening have a look at Pete Brown's blog or the Thatcher's blog

What I can tell you is that I was over the moon to meet Fergus Fitzgerald, the Head brewer at Adnams. I'm a little keen on Broadside, the first ale that I can remember really enjoying. I also now know I'm awful at bar billiards, that my food and drink matching is poor (the 2 courses I was absolutely certain on was met with disagreement from those sitting around me, so I quietened down a little) and that I've found yet another Brooklyn beer that I love - the Chocolate Stout.

I also got to try a beer brewed about 3 months before I was born, a royal wedding celebration ale in 1986.

I have to say, I've been inspired to do something similar at the Kilvert's. Whilst the beer festival is over August Bank Holiday this year, and should hopefully have a couple of beer and food matching events, I'm hoping to get one of these done during the Easter holidays, so stay tuned.

Onto Saturday, and one of the most painful starts to a day I've had in years. I'm obviously not a wine man. After taking about an hour to eat a sandwich and bowl of chips, I headed into London. I'd booked a budget hotel that offered free wifi and car parking, alongside 'heating' according to their website. Shortly after checking in I was in the Jolly Butchers, a pub that had been recommended and was kind of on the way home. I suppose you'd call it a craft beer pub, with a wide selection of cask ales, ciders and keg beers. On the keg side I tried Punk IPA - I presume the newer version as it didn't have the hops I recall enjoying last time (or at least not as strongly). Standing at the bar (the place was rammed from the time I got there, sadly including a group of adults too busy chatting to stop their children running around and up-and-down the stairs) I was intrigued to hear a woman walking up and down the bar asking every bloke if they were 'Ed the student brewer'.

Briefly I was tempted not to answer, but then I remembered a twitter conversation I'd had earlier with someone recommending the Kernel brewery on a Saturday as they open up to the public. Once I'd realised I was going to miss their opening times, @thehappybat offered to pick me up a couple of bottles and meet me at the Jolly Butchers. This was her, and I had a great time chatting to her and her friends about an assortment of things.

I'd like to just highlight something here. This is one of the things that makes me enjoy twitter and good beer together - someone I'd never spoken to on twitter or 'in real life' before recommending somewhere for me to go, then when I can't make it offering to pick up some of their beers and meet in another pub later to pass them on to me. So friendly, so helpful and an enjoyable couple of hours chatting away with people I otherwise would have never met.

So after paying them for my bottles, I decided to head into town and find some of the pubs I read about in blogs, the papers and on twitter. After debating which pubs to visit, I fancied a trip to the Euston Tap and then a wander around to see what tempts me.

Perhaps it was the long drive followed by long drinking session the previous day. Perhaps it was the expectation of something like the Sheffield Tap. I don't know, but I really wasn't impressed. The following blog will go into details, but after a quick pint I didn't fancy any more risks and got straight back on the tube and back to the bustling Jolly Butchers. A swift pint of Jaipur and off to bed for a decent kip before the long drive home.

Cheers

A publican's trade group

2011-02-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

Recent musings in the trade press here and here have asked us when are publicans going to get their voices heard. Previously I've suggested that the British Guild of Beer Writers may be the answer, with Melissa Cole's quest to spread the word about ale to new audiences, and Pete Browns constant critical eye on mainstream press stories and health lobby releases.

I've personally developed a lot this year - and now I think I know the answer. Lets have a group for licensees made up by licensees.

I'm thinking on my feet here, but as a way of getting things started here's a few ideas:

The group will be the voice of licensees only. Not a mix of brewers, pubco directors and publicans, and not a group of licensees just targeting one issue affecting the trade (eg smoking ban or the tie).

The group's aims will be primarily the promotion of the pub as a responsible, socially acceptable venue for alcohol to be sold. Highlighting the value of community pubs, and distancing itself from pubs not interested in the basics

The basics - publicans will have to sign up to a code of conduct - to keep their pub clean, tidy, well-organised and 'responsible'*

Being realistic, the majority of discussion will take place on a private forum. This will allow openness between publicans and encourage an atmosphere of offering help without fear of reprimand from the public or campaign groups for the way you run your pub. Originally the group will set up as 1 nationwide branch, and have an aim of a meet-up (perhaps agm, perhaps purely social) a year at least. Depending on uptake, regional branches may prove more useful and realistic.

All members will be regularly canvassed for their opinion on key issues affecting the trade. Part of the private forum will be a survey, perhaps used bi-yearly, so that when a release is needed or asked for, it is an up-to-date reflection of the member's views. No release or comment should be made public in the name of the group without it having the support of the majority.

Some of this will be relatively easy - I can set up a private forum that would suit the needs of the group. Some will be harder - deciding on wording is never easy in a group, and verifying licensees before allowing them access would have to be carefully thought out. To begin with there will be no subs - an atmosphere of support and donation would have to suffice, mainly that most expensive commodity - time. But as the group grows, it may be suggested that a small annual fee could help us spread our message more effectively. But as with everything, it would have to pass the majority test first.

I hope this is food for thought, and that something may come out of it. We've talked about it for years - lets actually do something. Lets show respect for other licensees, even if we don't agree with their priorities, and lets use our authority as the only group that only speaks for licensees to get our point across clearly. And lets do it democratically, honestly and above board. The time for the tide to change is now - and nobody else will work for our livelihoods.

Cheers
Ed

More on the Rhydspence

2011-02-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

Having asked the questions I did in the last post, and having a couple of less-than-impressed comments passed to me among a few more supportive comments, I was not impressed to see Hereford CAMRA's public response on the forum:

STATEMENT FROM HEREFORDSHIRE CAMRA:

We will be sending a detailed report of our findings in due course to Herefordshire Council Planning Department. This information will then be in the public domain for all to see. Regrettably, it is felt inappropriate to share this information with a wider audience at this juncture.

This report will contain detailed evidence, including fully attributable sources, to support our claim that the marketing of the property has been inadequate. However, in so doing, it is not our intention to pass judgement on the owner for his actions.

The matters raised will then be judged by the planning authority on their respective (planning) merits.

Those who disagree with our views are free to make their own submissions to the planners in Hereford.

ENDS

There are two parts of this that got me even more angry with them:

'Regrettably, it is felt inappropriate to share this information with a wider audience at this juncture. '

This is the kind of response you expect from a big company trying to hide something, not from a group being questioned by its own members.

'However, in so doing, it is not our intention to pass judgement on the owner for his actions. '

No apology for it though. This just comes across as stuck-up - more marketing speak that suggests we are not worth bothering with.

I was going to post this a couple of days ago, but I had a surprise visit from the owner of the Rhydspence who wanted to give me some information he thought I'd find interesting. The most interesting things that came up in our chat over a coffee were:

He'd owned the pub for 25 years, and has been trying to sell it for the last 12. After the millennium he found trade dropped rapidly, and at one point he offered the freehold for a figure around half the current asking price in a private sale, and still nothing came from it. I was surprised to hear this, and he ensured me he still had the solicitors letters from the time. And the pub hasn't turned a profit in 10 years.

My impressions of the man? A gentlemen who bought a beautiful Inn (it is mainly food and accommodation it has to be said), had around 15 years of good trade and then, as trade started dropping off, he looked to sell up and move on. Now he's had enough, and would like to retire, using free time to do those things publicans don't get to do. He's tried for several years to sell it as a pub, and after no interest at all now he wants to sell as a private house, in the belief it is more likely to sell as such.

My views on the conversion? I'd rather a respectable publican was allowed to bow out gracefully after years of service to the industry, than have his name dragged in mud by a local, but large and very active branch of a campaign group. What I'd truly see is him have is application refused, be forced to sell at a dramatically reduced price, to see the next owner continue to have no trade and apply to change in a years time. That would truly be salt in the wound.

I haven't sat on my arse and just blogged about it though. I've been getting out where I can and chatting to people about the pub. Finding the feelings of the locals, most of which appear to be that he's had it a long time, times are hard and it hasn't got much going for it, so the owner should be allowed to do as he wishes. And this evening I wrote an email and sent it to all the email addresses I could find on the Hereford CAMRA website. I've pasted it below, but most of what I've said in it I've covered in this blog anyway.

And don't worry, I'll actually blog about Kilverts and The Hay Brewery (not to mention the 2nd Hay Ale & Literature Festival) shortly.

Cheers
Ed

---
Dear All

I've taken a couple of days to compose myself, because I have not been impressed with the branch's public portrayal of the Rhydspence Inn recently.

Having taken the time to dissect the release on the main CAMRA forum and receiving no meaningful response but several messages of agreement, I hope that someone can answer some questions I have. After all, what does it say about a branch when they won't answer questions from one of their own members?

The questions I have are simple:

1) You state: 'The pub has been on the market for a number of years - at an asking price steadfastly in excess of £750 000 freehold. That is an astronomical amount of money, and it is unlikely that any licensed establishment in Herefordshire could justify this asking price.'

Having spoken to the owner, I can tell you the property has been on the market for 12 years, with prices ranging from £350k to just under 1 million. Nobody interested during that time at that range of prices says a lot. As for the prices of licensed establishments in Herefordshire, I know at least 1 that was sold for over £1m and another that wasn't far off.

Because of what I know to be fact, I asked who your sources were ('Our view that it is vastly overpriced is shared by others in the trade') and your response was unbelievable - that you were unwilling to say until it was too late to do anything. This is the kind of response I'd expect from a Pubco trying to hide something - not a consumer organisation answering questions from one of its members!

2) When did the branch last have a meeting or an official trip to the Inn? And how many members have scored it over the past few years? 'We cannot allow such an important pub, with such history and potential, to be killed off like this'. How much support did you give the pub whilst it was open - as it's such an 'important' one.

3) Is encouraging members who haven't visited a pub to write in to support your view completely acceptable? How can anyone say with authority what the pub is like unless they've visited?

4) Do you believe that CAMRA should pass judgement on a licensee for 25 years, who hasn't made any money from the business despite having a good local reputation for the past 10 years? At a time when pubs are closing in record numbers, allowing those with the least going for them to bow out gracefully would be a much better display of CAMRA ethics than to make spurious claims without backing them up, and insulting an experianced licensee whilst at it. Suggesting that the owner doesn't show any TLC, a warm welcome or encourage his locals to visit is extremely insulting to people in the trade at one of the most turbulant times for us.

I look forward to your honest responses, as do others that have made an effort to get in touch with me.

Yours
Ed Davies'
--
Kilvert's
www.kilverts.co.uk
01497 821042

Who should decide if a pub stays or goes?

2011-01-31T01:20:00.000-08:00

Something came through the post that made me drop my coffee last week. Now recently I've done a bit of CAMRA bashing, but after this I really am doubting how much I want to stay involved. I've been asked to help organise one of their beer festivals, which is good fun, but I'm finding myself disagreeing with them on more and more subjects recently.

The Rhydspence Inn is a local coaching inn - a lovely looking black and white tucked off the main road from Brecon to Hereford. It's not in a town, village or even hamlet - just four houses are in the area.

The owner has been trying to sell it for several years, with very little interest apparently. Having reduced the asking price several times, he's now decided to apply for a change of use to a private dwelling. He's just had enough of the trade and wants to retire.

The following letter came through regarding this at the end of last week from Herefordshire CAMRA:

EDIT: I've now had time to re-type my main points throughout their letter in blue:

The Rhydspence Inn is on the main A438 Hereford-Brecon road, just beyond

Whitney-on-Wye. It is one of the most historic inns in Herefordshire and

the UK, with parts dating back to 1380. The pub's website suggests

it has been a hostelry continuously from day one, and at one time would

have been frequented by the sheep drovers who passed through this part

of the world. Have a look at the pub's website at

www.rhydspence-inn.co.uk and you

will get a flavour of what this pub is about. Two images have been

posted into the 'Photos' section of camrawm Yahoo!Group site.

This Grade-II listed timber-framed building has many charming original

features, including fine fireplaces and settles, and has always been a

landmark pub of great character and distinction. It enjoys scenic views,

and commands a great position on the main A438. Located nearby is the

fashionable and popular town of Hay-on-Wye, with its

internationally-renowned festival.

But now its owner has submitted a planning application to Herefordshire Council

seeking to convert the Rhydspence Inn into a private dwelling. To

justify this, he states that his business is no longer financially

viable and that no-one has expressed an interest in buying the pub,

despite it being on the market for a number of years.

VIABILITY - HIS BUSINESS MIGHT NOT WORK, BUT WHAT ABOUT OTHERS?

With these strong attributes in its favour, it is our view that it is

not credible to suggest that the pub is not viable.

So a consumer organisation knows more about the viability of the business than the owner? The guy who's been running it for years, with access to GPs, turnovers, general trends? In the 4 years I've been in Hay the price of a pint of Butty has raised from £2.60 to £3.10 - that's just one example of the big changes that have taken place in the last 4 years. You've also just called the landlord a liar ('not credible').

Whilst it should be

acknowledged that the present owner's business is no longer viable

(probably not helped by his personal circumstances - the impact of these

can be seen by looking up the inn on the Trip Advisor website), we

believe that a new operator could make a real go of the business.

Having checked the Trip Advisor website, 7 out of 10 reviews recommend the place. The first negative review was from a gent who sees no problem arriving 40 minutes early for food, allows his self-confessed blind mum order a fish dish full of small bones and doesn't send back a rack of lamb that must have cost £15 at a bare minimum. I could believe most CAMRA members wouldn't have an issue sending back a £3 pint of ale they weren't happy with.

just needs some TLC, a warm welcome and updating to tap into lucrative

markets such as out-of-town fine-dining, and accommodation for the likes

of the Hay Literary and Brecon Jazz festivals. The locals' trade

that has been allowed to die off can also be re-invigorated.

You do it then. Put your money where your mouth is - you make it sound so easy. It comes across as bloody dismissive of the hard work all the licensees in the area (and further) put in just to keep their doors open. As for the locals trade, have a look at this google map that shows you just how many 'locals' the pub has.

View Larger Map

I'll give you a clue, it's the same as 2 couples...

EFFORTS TO SELL THE PUB NOT GENUINE

The pub has been on the market for a number of years - at an asking

price steadfastly in excess of £750,000 freehold. That is an

astronomical amount of money, and it is unlikely that any licensed

establishment in Herefordshire could justify this asking price.

I know of at least 2 pubs sold in excess of this price. Given the original asking price was around the £900 000 he's reduced it a fair bit so far. But this just shows how little research has been done to find out other pub prices in the area. Speaking of which:

Our view

that it is grossly over-priced is shared by others in the trade, and

will be highlighted (with full supporting evidence) in the CAMRA report

to the Herefordshire Council planners. Doubtless this unrealistic asking

price has deterred potential buyers, thus the owner claims "no-one

is interested in the business." This does not constitute a genuine

attempt to sell the business or justify converting the pub into a

dwelling.

Who are these 'others in the trade'? And by saying 'others' do you consider yourself to be 'in the trade'? Now your telling us as a matter of fact that this asking price is 'unrealistic' - your yet to prove it. The final sentence is missing a few words: In CAMRA's Opinion

QUESTION NEEDS TO BE ANSWERED

We must make sure that before consideration is given to an alternative

use for the building that it has been genuinely marketed at a realistic

price. CAMRA believes that this has not been done, therefore to grant

planning permission would be highly inappropriate. We need to ask the

Council planners whether they believe the pub has been marketed

appropriately to attract a buyer.

But you've made it perfectly clear, presenting as factual, that it hasn't been marketed appropriately. So you don't need to ask, you need to them that in your highest-of-high opinions 'to grant planning permission would be highly inappropriate'.

ACT NOW!

If there was only ever going to be one time in your life that you were

prepared to write a letter (or e-mail) to the Council planners then this

should be it. We cannot allow such an important pub, with such history

and potential, to be killed off like this. If we lose the Rhydspence Inn

then a precedent might be set meaning that none of our pubs would be

safe from speculation in the future.

How you can help?

* If you get the opportunity, please visit the Rhydspence Inn -

it isn't far from Almeley, where we have our next branch

meeting on the 26th January.

Ah, about this 'important' pub. How many times has Hereford CAMRA arranged a trip to it? How many of their members have submitted NBSS scores on it? Surely such an important pub is worthy of a CAMRA meeting? Nope...

* Please write to or e-mail the Council stating that you wish to

object and your reasons why. You must include your name and address

for your objection to be valid. If you can relate to times you have

visited the pub, then that would be useful. You do not need to say

you are a member of CAMRA, but you can if you wish. Whatever you

write it doesn't need to be long, but please do USE YOUR OWN

WORDS.

That would be useful? Surely visiting the pub is essential to prove how important it is? The council wouldn't accept a load of emails saying 'we've never been, but...' would they?

* Send your e-mail to Phillip Mullineux at

pmullineux@herefordshire.gov.uk , quoting reference DMN/103369/F.

Alternatively, you can write to:

Herefordshire Council Planning Services, PO Box 230,

Blueschool House, Blueschool Street, HEREFORD, HR1 2ZB.

* To view the application and make an online submission visit

the Council planning website -

http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/plannin ... plicationI\d=103369&FullAppId=N103369/F .

If this link does not work then

navigate to the `View Planning Applications' page and input

the reference 103369, or postcode HR3 6EU.

RESPONSES MUST BE SUBMITTED BY THE 9TH FEBRUARY 2011

[/end]

I fully dissected this on their forum, to very little response so far. My locals went in Saturday night to see the landlord, and because of the way he's been portrayed in this release he wont be opening again in the near future.

I haven't the time to go through the many reasons why I hate this piece, I'll do that later. But one idea I do want to leave you with - if CAMRA believes so strongly that a pub should remain open as a pub, they should stump up the cash and run it themselves. If they really think it's so easy at a time when over 30 pubs a week are closing, in an area saturated with pubs (and destination pubs at that) then they are being bloody rude not just to the licensee, but to all licensees working their arses off to keep their businesses going.

Minimum pricing in Supermarkets

2011-01-18T02:58:00.000-08:00

I'll warn you now, this is something I feel strongly about...

Today it's been announced that there is a minimum price on alcohol - mainly aimed at the supermarkets. The government had been asked, mainly (it would appear) by supporters of the on-trade (pubs) to ban 'below-cost selling'. Now to any sane person, below cost selling is selling a product for less than you bought it.

Not the supermarkets though. They have successfully campaigned and had 'cost' defined as Duty+VAT. No 'cost of production' involved.

As always with something they don't agree, CAMRA have managed to alienate people from the pub:

	Government allow supermarkets to carry on selling cheap booze

Why am I so annoyed? Because they are just as bad as the Daily Mail. Click the link, and the last line is this:

So supermarkets can carry on selling beer below the cost of bottled water.

Which bottled water? And which beer? Peroni against ASDA smartprice water? Or Evian against ASDA smartprice 'lager'

But the main point I want to make is this. If Jack has £1 to spend on alcohol, at the moment he'd go to the supermarket. He can't afford the £3 in a pub. Put the prices up in the supermarket to £1.50 - he can't drink. But he still wouldn't be spending money in a pub - so how the hell does reducing disposable income of customers help pubs?

What it comes across as is 'We, champions of pubs, dictate that if we have to pay £3 a pint, so should everyone else.'

Bollocks - apart from anything else we're a completely different trade. Yes, both pubs and supermarkets sell alcohol. But that's where the comparison ends. We also sell a service, we sell drinks for immediate consumption, we provide clean drinking vessels and a clean, warm place to enjoy your drink. Beer should be more expensive in pubs than supermarkets.

I'd rather see all the effort of 'levelling the playing field' done to reduce the cost of beer in a pub. PBD has helped in regards to cask ale. Lets see a lower rate of VAT for on trade. As the simplest example I can think of - in a pub you pay VAT on a meal. On anything else, businesses can claim back the VAT on what they spend. But food isn't VATable - so nothing for the publican to claim back. Lets have a nod of appreciation for the responsible retailing that we do and cut something somewhere. Lets not raise the prices of everything else to be comparable with the on-trade. We won't win any support doing that.

And the other thing - let's get rid of the myths around binge drinking. But thats another blog post

Cheers!

Pork Scratching Poker

2011-01-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

I seem to have a habit of saying things after a couple of drinks at CAMRA beer festivals. Silly things. Like 'I can organise a beer festival that does more to promote Welsh Ale' or 'Christ, those pork scratchings are big enough to play poker with'. Sadly, due mainly to my upbringing, I feel a need to stick to my word. Hence the first Welsh Ale & Literature Festival. Which reminds me - the second one is going ahead. Still in the garden at Kilvert's, but this time at the more warming and seasonal weekend of the August Bank Holiday. Further details will be coming shortly, but at the minute that's all I know. O, and all the ales will be Welsh again, with the possible exception of a new bar featuring 'speciality beers'. That's right, not just ales, but beers. This is still in the 'just thought it would be nice, could it actually happen' stage of my planning though.

Anyway, Pork Scratching Poker. Texas Hold 'em, with chips* and pork scratchings. At the moment the idea is that a Pork Scratching(tm) will be worth the most - leading to a valuable question players will have to ask themselves. Is it worth more as a token in the game, or as an accompaniment to this beer I'm drinking (more on those later)?

The date has been set - January 23rd, start time around 8pm. We'll have a bit of dinner first, a chance for my #2 chef to come up with a menu with beer matches (no pressure). Rooms are available at special prices as well. If you'd like an invite to this prestigious event, which will be followed on the Monday by a brewery tour (either Wye Valley or Breconshire) and 9 holes of golf (I've never played before, so the rules may be slightly altered on the course), just ask. If anyone has any ideas how we can improve the game, or suggestions on a better lay-out of the day, feel free. It seems most people will be arriving around 4pm on the Sunday, so I may find some mild entertainment to keep us going until dinner.

EDIT: Exciting news pork scratching poker fans! The event is being sponsored! Midland Snacks have agreed to sponsor us some of their different pork scratchings - so we will now actually be playing with scratchings as chips! But that's not all - there's more: The winner of the poker game doesn't just win a load of pork scratchings, they get a prize money can't buy! A tour of Midland Snacks! I'm going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut at beer festivals!

So a huge thank you to Midland Snacks for this - I'm looking forward to trying different flavour pork scratchings - I've only had the plain ones before!

Cheers!

All change here please

2010-12-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

A little while back I wrote a piece asking how much has changed in 2 years - for me personally, for the pub, for the pub industry and indeed the drinks industry as a whole. I came to the conclusion that actually not a lot has changed.

Well now my personal life has. I'm currently working my 3 months notice at Kilvert's, which will see me finish at the end of February. Then in March, all being well, I start a 3 month brewing diploma with brewlab, up in Sunderland. I suppose I'll have to get a shirt made asking barstaff to take the sparkler off to save me getting a sore throat every time I go out. Then, once that course is finished find a flat in Nottingham and go work for a brewery.

I sent my CV and cover letter over to Castle Rock brewery - the reason I sent it to them is 2-fold, and actually has nothing to do with them winning CBOB this year.

1) They are brewery growing, and as a business grows the people in the business can grow with it. I'd hate to feel like I've got myself into a job where I can't grow and learn more.

2) I didn't think they'd be interested in me for brewing purposes. They have a good team working under the Head Brewer, and I wasn't sure that they'd need someone else on the brewing side. However, they do have a portfolio of 22 pubs which could offer an alternative way of working with the company. Having studied in Nottingham I loved the city, so that was a main attraction for me. The second bit was getting a job I love - in the pub and ale industry.

I've just got back from meeting the team up there and doing a tour of the brewery, seeing their new 40BBL kit in action. It was just an informal chat, get a feel of how they do things up there and what they are looking for, and for them to get a better idea of what I was looking for. I'm happy to say that I should be back up for the SIBA fest in February to talk in more detail with them.

I'm also sending out my CV to a few other companies, mainly near cities as that's quite a big pull for me. I don't know what I'll do if I don't get a job sorted by the end of Brewlab course - probably have another damn good chat with myself and get it together.

I've got to say I couldn't have done all this without the support of one person in particular, who made me realise what I've done and what I'm doing, whilst good, isn't all I've got. I can go further, develop in different ways through new experiences. I want to keep learning - there's so much going on in this industry and I don't believe it's dying. I believe it's finally updating and restructuring. I want to be part of that, to study the details and maybe look at them in a different light. That's why I'm giving up so much - a family business, a family, and friends. And this one person helped me when I most needed it, so thank you.

I love the countryside, and often laugh at the London-based national news. I recently asked on twitter why the fact it's snowing in winter has made the headlines 2 weeks after it started. The response came swiftly - because it's snowing in London. The idea that an underground strike is national news also made me laugh. London has buses, cabs, underground, overground and pavements for those that like to use their legs. That 1 day without 1 form of public transport is worthy news over here where we get a bus every 2 - 3 hours (someone else on twitter asked if this was because of the snow - nope. This is 'public transport' as we know it) and the service stops at 6pm is madness. I'll miss it though. Every day when leaving the house I look over the Beacons and think 'that's beautiful'.

I'll come back - I'll always have family over here and a group of friends that I could well imagine still being friends with in 40 years time. If this weather keeps up it'll also be an affordable snowboarding holiday as well. Sorry for the poor joke - I've decided to try and keep 'personal' bits out of the blog from now on, as the written word can often be misconstrued and I don't want someone to think I've missed them out or aimed something at them when nothing could be further from the truth.

I'll write shortly about some of my highlights from the past four years - I've had some wonderful experiences that I really don't think I would have got anywhere else - possibly similar, but the detail I can still remember them in speaks volumes. And my life ambition still remains the same - a country pub, home-made food, micro-brewery out the back, livestock in the garden and somebody else to do all the boring bits. Well, we can dream, can't we.

In the mean time, you'll have to excuse me from blogging duties. The festive season is upon us, and I've got a lot of strong beer to sell before the VAT increase.

Cheers

Get Connected (Orange phone shop)

2010-12-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Please, do not use this company:

A little over 8 months ago, I took my phone into the store I got it from, explaining that the battery lasted about 4 hours on standby - no calls, messages, internet, anything. I left the phone with them, they told me it'd be sent off to be repaired and back to my house in 7 - 10 days.

2 weeks later I went back to find out where my phone was. Really sorry, came the reply from the different member of staff, you should have been told 2 - 3 weeks. Pissed, I accepted this and left.

5 weeks after the phone had been sent off I went back. At this point I should highlight it's a 60 mile round trip to get to this store. I wanted the contract ended - I use the phone for work and paying over £30 a month when I don't even have the phone wasn't good enough. O, by the way, it was a different member of staff again. I'll save time here - every time I went in it was a different member of staff

The person behind the counter offered a speedier resolution. I take out a new contract, a business one, and they would buy out the remainder of my contract - £200. All I'd have to do is wait for a form to be sent out, fill it in, wait for my first bill, and send the two off. 4 weeks after that I'd have a cheque in my hand for £200. Simple.

The form never came. For the past 7 months, every month, I have gone in. I've had to explain the whole thing each time due to the aforementioned different member of staff there each time I went in. Each time they apologised, spoke to head office, said it was being sent again and they would call me to make sure I'd received it. The form never came, and the phone calls never came, except one. This was the area manager I'd spoken to, who said it was taking a little longer than expected and he'd call me a week later. The second call never came - from the area manager!

The last time I went in, the member of staff again apologised, explained that she was there for the foreseeable future as they had had a lot of complaints about the store. I told her this was the last time I'd be coming into store - if I didn't get it this time I'd be informing trading standards and expect the contract cancelled immediately. A shame because Orange have actually been very helpful each time I've had to call them. A couple of clicks on the computer and the form I needed was printed out. I was speechless. All the time I'd wasted, driving in monthly to be lied to when they could have printed out the form instantly. I signed the form in front of her, went home, got the first bill and sent it off.

Needless to say, nothing has come back, no phone call as promised, and when I called the store it was the same lady. She wrote it in her diary to call me but we haven't got to that page yet. If I really wanted to go ahead anyway I'd have to deal directly with head office. Call the number and press 6 when the options were being read out. I did this. There is no option 6 - it starts the options being read out again. Lied to - again! All the other options just ring and then ask you to leave a message.

So please, by all means use Orange - they've been very helpful every time I've called them since I've been with them 4 years ago. But the store Get Connected can Get Lost.

Cheers

CAMRA support the Supermarkets

2010-12-01T06:13:00.000-08:00

Originally posted on the CAMRA forum, but C&P'd over here so everyone can have a gander:

And CAMRA have supported this! I certainly won't be renewing my membership now.

How many beers under 2.8% can you name that are available to pubs in the UK? I can think of 2 - Carling C2 and Brewdog Nanny State.

Camra is supporting this because (Mike Benner) However we are pleased that this widely expected increase will be counterbalanced by a tax cut on low strength beers. Reduced tax on low strength beers is good news for pub goers at a time when 29 pubs are closing every week. This move will incentivise brewers to invest in producing new low strength real ales packed full of flavour."

It won't incentivise brewers at all. I can tell you now, having chosen ales for the bar for just short of 4 years now, ranging from Hobson's Mild at 3.2% to Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin (18%, Bottle), the most common strength beer asked for is between 4 and 5 %. Whilst some people, especially at lunch time, ask for the weakest beer, the vast majority choose something higher. Often coupled with a suggestion that weaker beers taste like (insert animal urine here).

So primarily, there's just not demand for these weaker beers. Secondly, small brewers who benefit from PBD will not benefit from the reduction in duty - they already have that reduction. Family+ size brewers would benefit, but why would they if demand isn't there?

There is one group who would benefit from this though - the supermarkets. Tesco lager 2%, ASDA 2.8%, Sainsbury 2.6%

So well done CAMRA. At a time when winter warmers are on the bar and European strong beers in the fridge, you accept this, giving the supermarkets exactly what they want. They want 'cost' to be defined as 'duty+vat' so as to not sell below-cost. Now they've cut that 'cost' and CAMRA having stood by clapping as it's done.

I also expect this to be the thin edge. It won't work - binge drinkers who don't want to pay a bit more for their super-strength lager will switch to cider, wine or spirits, which don't attract this 'super-tax'. As it won't work, next year they'll lower the threshold to 7%. Then 6.5%

And by condoning this action you've also supported the Neo-Pros, who at the next argument will point out that CAMRA supported a move to increase prices in order to reduce binge drinking.

I'm so angry at this!

Cheers indeed

All Change or No Change?

2010-11-15T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've recently been musing a lot about the past couple of years. Throwaway comments make you stop and think: 'where has the time gone?'. How much time have I lost due to a digital screen as opposed to living real life. I posted months ago about not having time to play rugby or get on my mountain bike. I still don't - I spend more time staring into a 2" blackberry screen then I do watching my son grow up.*

What's changed over the past couple of years? I've got more unfit, more grouchy and drink more at home.** I'm not sure if these are linked, buy the repetitive nature of life has taken it's toll on me. We still haven't got a receptionist. We still haven't got a chef. I still haven't got a brewery. We still have the same discussions. For every step forward there's a step back.

In the wider trade, the same old debates are still going. Sparkler or no sparkler? CAMRA right or wrong? The beer tie. Yawn, quite frankly. I appreciate that to some, some of these debates are extremely important. But as an example, I haven't read the Morning Advertiser website in months. If the story isn't about the tie, you can guarantee the comments will be.

Perhaps it's the time of year, but once again I find myself looking at facebook and thinking 'if I click that delete account button I'm free'. This time I'm actually going to do it. Rather than tell others about my life or comment on theirs, I'm going to go and live mine.

How far have I got in my life in 2 years? It feels like nowhere. I've learnt a lot, I can promise you that. What I've learnt a lot of, at the moment, I couldn't tell you. So I'm going to start making a few changes. I really enjoyed my time in London recently, attending an event with the British Guild of Beer Writers. I learnt a lot about beer (mainly that I really like a strong dark beer that I still can't remember the name off despite being told several times by the people I was drinking it around, and that London, as the capital city of England, dies a death at midnight). I'm keen to get into brewing, to explore the science around it - I find it fascinating that such seemingly innocuous variables can make such a difference to the finished product.

I think I've developed as a manager. I'm certainly more aware that different people have different ways of seeing things, and to get the best out of your staff you have to be flexible in teaching and directing. That's not to say that some days I don't have an overwhelming urge to bang my head against the wall.

But I want to end by sharing a fantastic story I read last week. I'm sure it's been doing the rounds for years but I hadn't heard it before. It gave me a clear idea of where I want to get to:

A visiting dignitary approached the man sweeping the floor at NASA.

'What is it that you do around here?' asked the official

'Sir - I'm helping to put a man on the moon' came the reply

Whether true or not, or how twisted from the original I've got it, it's a lovely sentiment.

Cheers

*By the way this isn't neglect - he's in nursery 5 days a week and gets home around 6ish, by which time I'm back in work.

**As in I rarely used to, and if I did it was just a bottle of ale. Now I find myself as often as once a week having a beer at the pub and taking advantage of the take-home cartons.

Brecon Beacons National Park

2010-11-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've spoken before about my frustrations with these planning people. Having been told I could go down to an open surgery to discuss what I wanted and get advice on what they were looking for, I went and found the bloke very unhelpful. So unhelpful, in fact, that all his advice could be summed up in 2 words:

'Full Plans'

After trying to think of different ways I could get the ball rolling for the brewery, I started looking at industrial units around and about. One was next to an engineering factory - the smells would have tainted the beer. The next closest was over the border in England - about 5 miles over the border.

After actually giving up at one stage - I had the phone ready to tell a few brewers to put the word out I was selling the kit - we noticed something so obvious I'd missed it. We had that rickity old shed, the one with rats underneath at some time in the past, and woodworm and rot running all the way through it. The reason we'd ignored it was the brewing vessels were too tall for it. Taking pictures of the kit for ebay was when the obvious thing dawned on me. They had over 18 inches of leg that could be cut down.

Then we did the stupid thing. Everyone I've spoken to about this, including architects, has said I should have just done it. We were going to replace the shed with a brand new one - and had emailed the authority to tell them we were doing it, under the rule of an existing building can be replaced like-for-like.

They didn't like this, which is why I've had to take it apart and repair it rather than put a new one in. The reason I've re-capped all this? This program was on BBC1 Wales earlier this week, a half hour show highlighting just how poor the BBNP are. (The program is available on Iplayer here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/vnwf1/ until Tuesday evening). But a few stats it brings up:

69% of applications are dealt with within 8 weeks

A side note - when we were doing the work that started this blog, knocking through a main wall and extending the bar, something came to light about this. Their target is 8 weeks, otherwise you can start work if they haven't replied. When Dad had sent the form in, we heard nothing for 7 weeks 6 and a half days. Then they told us the wrong form had been filled in - we'd have to re-apply with the correct form. They kindly sent out the correct form - exactly the same one we'd originally filled in! Doesn't sound like a major problem, but we'd booked builders and prepared to shut the pub so the work could be done during the quite season. But the time they responded, a further 8 weeks, we were coming into season and couldn't shut. They delayed us for a whole year for no good reason

60% of appeals against their decisions were successful

Which to me suggests that they'd say 'no' within 8 weeks - hitting their target, but after an appeal (paid for by the person wanting to do the work) it would appear their answer was wrong 6 out of 10 times. In business results like that would lead to some heads rolling. Indeed Price Waterhouse Coopers slated them for it.

The Welsh Audit Office described the management as 'ineffective'.

The National Park is taking the Welsh Assembly to the High Court - cost so far £25 000 (taxpayer's money)

They lost an appeal, decided by the Welsh Assembly, so now they're taking them to court. Financed by you!

Last year the Park Authority cost taxpayers £800 000 and dealt with 350 applications

Compare this with Snowdonia National Park: £400 000 (Yes - half the cost!) for 440 applications

Hopefully this explains why some days I'm just not in a good mood. By the way, these officials aren't elected are are accountable to nobody.

Cheers indeed

Alcohol's Role in Society

2010-11-02T03:37:00.000-07:00

With the recent rubbish from Dr Knutt, a quick read through the comments brings up some interesting points worthy of further discussion. One that particularly sticks in my mind is the idea that if alcohol was discovered today it would be banned, and why are other drugs banned when, side by side with alcohol, they appear less harmful.

Now I like alcohol, I like the fact that whether celebrating or mourning, fancying a quiet one after work or a couple more at the weekend, there is a range of products and outlets all providing the same drug. Its versatile. In trying to keep this as factual as possible whilst conveying my point of view, I'm going to stick with just my experiences.

Firstly - I've never touched other drugs, with one exception being a puff of a spliff. I didn't get any real affects from it that I could tell, and I thought it tasted foul. Whilst my friends would puff and share, I'd prefer a couple of beers.

Part of this could be my Dad used to work in an institute - I've never asked details but it usually comes up when somebody on the radio suggests legalising cannabis; you'll hear him say something along the lines of 'they wouldn't say it doesn't do any harm if they'd seen what I've seen'. Whilst a valid view point, I'm sure someone who had never tried alcohol worked with full blown alcoholics they might have a similar point of view.

I can't comment on other drugs - I've never been to a club where everyone's popping smarties or taking their credit card to the bathroom.

I've never seen a pub full of people comatose from drinking too much either.

I've seen the heavy drinkers, the ones wanting to know what time you open for alcohol (we open at 8 for breakfasts) and asking if it's double up for £1 on Bells is there an offer on trebles? There's a stereotype image but that's not for me to comment on. I've seen old boys sit on their bar stool for 6 or 7 hours steadily drinking the day away chatting with other customers and the bar staff, seemingly without any affect at all as long as their drinking their regular drink. A different story when you've got Old Thumper on as a guest - normally the top half of their body gets off the bar stool leaving the bottom half behind. I've seen young groups come in wanting 28 shots of sambuca and a lighter. I've even seen some of them get served.

But the majority of what I see is people enjoying themselves, and using alcohol as a social lubricant. Business meetings, family get togethers, a holiday treat with the partner, a weekly catch-up with others in anti-social jobs*. It's a form of release - just like any drug. But it's one that's widely known, and the effects of it widely known.

This is the important bit - people are afraid of the unknown. Other drugs have a bit of PR to do before the vast majority of people start thinking about them differently. Alcohol has a lot of PR to do before the minority ruin it for everyone. I believe it has social and personal benefits, and I believe people should have the choice of how much and when they drink. Its other social issues that are the problem. Alcohol, in my view, doesn't cause anything, it exaggerates emotions and makes them more apparent. It may bring up things that people have been keeping bottled in. But it, in itself, doesn't do any harm. It's how its used.

This is the message that should be sent out about alcohol - if someone wants to drink to forget, let them. If you want to do something about it don't blame the alcohol - work on what they want to forget and why.

Otherwise we'll all be driven to drink...

Cheers

*I mean those that work 'anti-social' hours, who get a chance to catch up on a Sunday afternoon for example

Managing reviews

2010-10-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Nowadays there are several places to publish reviews on a place like us. Tripadvisor immediately springs to mind - one of my least favourite sites. The reason? I'm allowed to respond, but the rules stipulating what I'm allowed to say are quite restrictive. I gave up on one review who complained the room was small and filled with second hand furniture - nothing like how it was described on our website. This was back when our website only had pictures of two rooms, one of which was the one he stayed in which clearly had in the description 'furnished with period furniture' (this was the website we inherited, a fair bit different to what we have at the moment).

In my response I included a link to the page showing the picture and description to highlight that no, the room was as described on the website. It wasn't published as it linked to the website. Fair enough, I removed the link and just put that 'on the website' the picture and description served the room truthfully. Not published - I was encouraging people to go to my website. After 3 or 4 various attempts with assorted reasons for not publishing my responses, I gave up.

Recently we've had a cracker of a review from a young lady who stayed with us recently. I'm very carefully writing a response that tripadvisor will publish, but to vent my frustration with the system I wanted to clarify a couple of points:

'We only stayed one night!' - final sentence with an exclamation point. Completely true - they only stayed one night because they only booked one night.

'Hairs in the bathtub... noisy and drafty' - Now I'm not saying that we're perfect but hairs in the bath are something we've explained to housekeeping is something we won't tolerate in any shape or form, and we've had no complaints since doing this. Including this customer - no complaint was made about hairs in the bath, or the room being noisy and drafty. So how the hell am I meant to verify the complaint? Not an issue for tripadvisor though - published straight away without worry.

'The owner's son is especially rude and aggressive' - I'm impressed. I'm impressed that the author is so sure about this fact she's happy to write it on a public review website. I'm impressed they've published it. Why I'm impressed is because I have never met this woman. They checked in whilst I was taking down a shed in the garden - I even ate and drank in the garden, not coming in until time to pick up my keys. I had the night off, and they'd checked out before I arrived the next morning. So I'm pretty damn impressed overall.

'The rooms smell' - now this is the one issue that started this whole onslaught of our business. The woman had come down and complained that the room smelt of chip fat. Dad went up, nope, no smell (which the woman then confirmed). She then said the smell was outside in the corridor. Again, both went out and agreed there was no smell. Nevertheless, Dad offered her a different room that she declined. She then started patronising Dad, saying that she felt 'possible aggression' from him and that he should calm down. Dad asked her to stop being patronising, and that if she really wasn't happy with the room that she just confirmed doesn't have a smell in, or another room that was offered to them, would she like him to find her accommodation somewhere else in the town.* This again was declined.

So I think it's fair to say we offered everything we could. By the sounds of it, and we see a couple of these every year, I think the woman was trying for an 'earner' - getting a discount for the room. The clues are the same - offered another room but turn it down, strange smells that vanish when a member of staff investigates. It'll be interesting to see what I'm allowed to write due to tripadvisors rules on replying. Although apparently they're getting sued. I for one would be happy to see tripadvisor taken down a peg or two - allowing a customer to anomalously call me rude and aggressive without ever meeting me (I didn't even take the booking) is a step too far.

But there are other ways of reviewing. This 'review' could have been published on BITE or pubsgalore.co.uk, where I could have commented freely and instantly. It could have been sent in to the Good Pub Guide, that quality annual book that takes pride in getting the facts right. A guide that, from now on, licensees will have to fork out £200 to gain entry. This instantly make the guide useless to me - as soon as you have to pay to get into one, it's not a true, unbiased report. It's biased to those who can afford entry or those substandard venues which are offered entry as the good ones have all said 'no, we're not paying'. What a shame that an arrogant, lazily edited guide may slowly slide down the pan.

Another place to review is on a blog. Indeed, for ale reviews Pete Brown is now doing video blogs. Have a look, because most of the beers he describes we have on the bar regularly. Of course, it also means that customers can blog about their experience. It's useful for me to see, as if I'm out of the bar for a service I can find out from a customer's point of view what happened. On Monday we had a terrible service - the cook's head wasn't in the right place, with the checks from the previous night still up on the ticket spikes at the start of service. So he starts cooking food from the previous night, which comes out to tables that didn't order it, and now are wondering why it's taking so long for the food they have ordered to come out.

I can't talk any more about that for the minute, but needless to say if a review is bad but truthful I won't shy away from it. If I didn't get bad reviews from time to time how would I know what to fix? Just because I like something doesn't mean my customers will.

Just A Few Thoughts

2010-10-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a long weekend. It started with taking my pick-up over to a local quarry to find if they had what I was after. For some daft reason, if I go to the local builders merchants and ask for sharp sand they offer me ballast. Now I'm no builder, but at least over in Norfolk doing jobs for my dad like picking up a few bags of blue circle and sharp was no problem. Here, everyone wants to know what its for before they decide what's best.

So to make sure I got this right I went over, pointed to big piles of various-size stone, told them the size of the area it was for and got it all delivered. Easy peasy. I now know that 'pre-mix' (sand and small stone, just add cement for instant concrete) over in Norfolk is called 'Hereford stone' or something similar.

What got delivered was 10 cubic metres of various stone, each bag weighing in at around 1.6 ton. So yesterday I focused on getting the rockery built, which started with 4 bags of in-fill and 1.5 of 'pea gravel' on top. I'd show you a picture but I've forget to take one. It looks nice though.

Other news - we allow children in to eat. All jokes about what they taste like will be frowned upon unless genuinely funny. Today we had a family in the lower bar, with a young child wandering around the small room at the end. I walked over and asked him to go sit with his mum and dad, at which point the dad came over and asked if there was a problem.

No problem, I explained, but our policy is that children have to be seated whilst in the pub. As an example, I pointed to the wicker screen we had up separating the room from the one next door, and told him that it wasn't secure it was just there so people couldn't see the refurbishment going on behind it. If his son had knocked into it and it fell on him, I'm sure the father wouldn't be impressed.

"O, my son doesn't touch anything he's not supposed to" he informed me. I defaulted to repeating that the house rules are that all children have to be seated. The fact he completely missed the point says it all really. I was also intrigued as to how he knows what his son is doing when he's in another room out of sight. Sadly, when we have to point out to parents that they have to look after their children, this kind of response is all to common - the parent happy to chat to his friends and let the child entertain him/herself.

In other news, one of the irregular locals came in this afternoon - a bloke who is well known in the town but rarely comes to the pubs, and this afternoon was one of those where he was all too happy to let us know why:

'The problem is, you see,' to the few regular locals and myself 'that all the pubs in Hay are expensive now. They used to be full all the time, a good laugh, and no problems. Now, all the pubs are half empty and the town's dead. *Insert a small village pub's name here* is selling Guinness at £2.50 a pint and ales at £2.10 a pint, and it's rammed, all the time. The food's not bad too - he does home-made chips'

A couple of points I'd like to raise. Overheads in a popular tourist town are likely to be higher than a small village pub with a lower turnover. More importantly I'm a big believer in value for money over cost. I believe a pint of ale in my pub is worth £3 a pint. The amount I sell suggests that customers also think this is value for money. I'd rather (and have done) throw away a few pints of ale than sell them at a reduced price - this devalues the brand. Sorry for the marketing talk - it's the only way I know to describe this theory.

On the chips front - I love home-made chips. Hand cut, cooked 3 times, the works. But when your serving the amount of covers we're looking at that's going to take a spud rumbler and a chipper - let alone the staff time to twice-cook the chips before being ready for service.

I can't explain why all the pubs, and the town itself are quiet. It's 4pm on a Sunday afternoon at the back-end of October. But I believe a pint is worth what I charge for it. Otherwise I wouldn't charge it. Profit for sanity, Turnover for vanity and all that. I agree price is a factor, but there is a lot more going into the marketing mix.

A final thought.

It's the small details that make up the whole.

That's why when a guest staying with us for 3 nights told us that she was a vegan, we prep'd up to 6 dishes for her. What she didn't expect was for me to get in a vegan beer for her...

Cheers

Categorising Beer

2010-10-19T04:00:00.001-07:00

Having experienced my first Guild of British Beer Writers Seminar last night it got the create juices flowing. The seminar was on styles of beer, ranging from 2 (top fermented and bottom fermented) to 138 that the Americans use. And one of those categories is effectively 'any other beer'.

I don't think categorisation is a good thing for beer. I think what you need is a pub, beer and knowledgeable staff.

Put it this way (as IPA seems to be the common example), Jaipur and GK IPA. Completely different, but could be put in the same class. To a customer, that makes the class useless. What works for the customer is the interaction with the staff - the customer explains why they don't like about the sample you just gave them (too hoppy). So you can guide them towards a beer less hoppy. This conversation is vital when it comes to selling bottled drinks - £4 plus is a lot to spend on something you may not like.

By giving categories to staff they can get lazy. It's an IPA. It's a dark beer. It's strong. By having no categories they have to interact with the customer, giving them a better experience and more likely the best beer for what they want.

We also have to bear in mind how many customers care what a beer is labelled as? The vast majority just want a pleasant drink - seemingly judged (at lunch especially) on A.B.V. The 'category' we sell most of at lunch time is split 'most popular' or 'weakest'. So whilst we can debate to our hearts content whether a particular beer is an English Style Dark Mild Ale or an English Style Brown Ale, customer x y and z want a nice dark beer with a bit of a bitter bite.

It comes back to the most important thing in a pub. The staff. And finding staff genuinely interested in learning enough about ale to convey the subtleties to a customer who knows their stuff isn't easy.

Cheers!

Development of the Brewery! (Part 2)

2010-10-16T02:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week. The weather has held off, meaning that I've managed to take the sheds down. It's not been easy to keep them in good nick - every single piece of wood had rot and woodworm. EVERY PIECE! To take it down I put in 2 props, took out all the uprights holding the roof (complete with 3" soil & plants) then tapped the props out. Worked like a treat: But, now it's down, the wood cleared away and a nice large space ready for foundations to be dug out. Some of the digging had already been done, and part of the shed already had foundation laid so a couple of days at the most should see it ready for concrete. What this means is that, depending on the weather, I could have the brew house up by the end of the month. I'll have to dig like a demon though - sump pump, drain and water line all go through the garden and need to be buried. I'm sure it's going to be worth it.

In other news, we're in the Publican this week, who have done a feature on the ale and literature festival. I've started thinking about next years - everyone seems happy to come back and do it again, and I've had offers of more writers and the help of a festival organiser for next year! First priority is definitely the brewery at the moment though.

Cheers!

Another Pub Guide

2010-10-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

Today the Morning Advertiser landed on the bar amongst the post. Normally, after a quick scan confirming that most of the stories are about the beer tie, I file it. This time, however, I saw the Good Pub Guide had a 2 page spread celebrating it's new edition, complete with the headline that I'm foolhardy for increasing my prices.

I don't get on with the GPG. Whilst I was happy enough to be in it, when I started looking through it a bit closer I was surprised at what I found. Most noticably a pub that had been shut for a while before being re-opened 2 years ago as a antiques shop was in it - picked up by the local CAMRA branch. Something else made me email the editors of it though. A local pub - very good pub, food led, with 2 good beers well kept (no guests) had earned the badge signalling an award for excellent real ale. I have no qualms with this whatsoever - I've enjoyed the ale there many times.

We didn't have this badge of honour, and whilst not over the moon that I didn't have it, my first thought was to email the publication and ask what the criteria was for these awards. Whilst I can't find the reply in my email, it was what you expected - well kept ale, a good selection etc etc.

I replied, enquiring if there was any reason I hadn't got it as I offered 5 ales, including guests, all of which had recently passed the cask marque assessment for the second year running. The reply to this was that the person reviewing the pub hadn't been impressed enough to warrant the reward. Needless to say this is where I fell out with them. And I wasn't surprised to find out the following year we were now a 'lucky dip' pub.

Fast forward 2 years, and we're still 'lucky dip' material. The same basic mistakes are still there - this time another pub in the town apparently has new owners. This was news to me, and it turns out, to the owners, who have been there longer than the four years we've been in Hay. Our page (all the current information I've found from their website) only had a couple of minor errors on it - we have 8 handpumps, not 5, and dogs are allowed on the patio out the back, just not on the lawn.

But it got me thinking - this book is basically an out-of-date version of tripadvisor, or beerintheevening (I would include pubsgalore but this seems to be a good site, sensibly moderated) - opinionated reviews putting things out of proportion. Reviews are sent in by members of the public. Yet the editorial team seem to enjoy slagging off pubs as a whole - The piece in the MA focused on 'foolhardy' licensees who put their prices up. Same as last year - when no mention was made that duty went up to cover the reduction VAT would have made.

I've found a category for this type of literature. From now on, I'll hold it in the same regard as the Daily Mail.*

Some people may think this is because we're not a full feature in it. It's not - I don't want to be. What upsets me is guides like this can help make or break some pubs. With such basic mistakes on pubs details (you really should check with the pub before going to print stating the ownership has changed) and an editorial team that neither know or care about the finer points of the pub trade, what else have they got wrong? For some pubs, it could be the straw that breaks them.

* I apologise in full for naming this paper and therefore in some small way advertising it. It won't happen again.

Friday 24th Sep

2010-10-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

About 8am I'm at the festival. The coolers haven't leaked - my main concern. Checking most of the ales they seem ok - a couple still have a haze but by Saturday all but 2 have settled completely. The last banners advertising the sponsors go up and about 11am I realise everything is done - I can't do any more.

The first guests arrive around half 12, ready for the Association of Welsh Independent Brewers meeting. The meeting goes well except for one major factor - recently an independent report was sent to the Welsh Assembly, including a list of recommendations regarding alcohol production in Wales, effectively listing ways the W.A. could support the industries - could they encourage farmers to grow Welsh barley and hops? Could a form of 'made-in-Wales' quality control be introduced and marketed? Could a more uniform approach to planning permission across Wales be looked at?

The minister had replied. No, it seems. Not really interested in any way. Don't want to support Progressive Beer Duty as it clashes with one of their aims with a fancy title along the lines of 'Inappropriate Mis-use of alcohol and controlled substances'. We'll be taking them to task on that, but lets not get side tracked - one of the few suggestions they did 'approve in principle' was a Progressive Cider Duty scheme to aid small cider producers. I'm sure the collective sigh and shaking heads was felt through-out Hay on Wye.

Moving on from the meeting - there's certainly another blog post's worth there for a later date - we started the trade show. One of the things I wanted to make sure of was the quality of the ales, it's a difficult enough looking after multiple ales, but 50, outside, is something else. Having a selection of the brewers all keen to quality control was a bit of a boost!

By 5pm we were ready to open to the public - guests had arrived and the Chair of the local CAMRA group was on hand to open it officially. A low key affair, but within an hour people who were still finishing work had made it over and we got onto the tutored tastings, with Buster Grant of Breconshire brewery talking us through the Champion Ales of Wales (or wAles).

This was followed by Vernon and Peter Amor from Wye Valley Brewery giving a tutored tasting of their ales, which were available in the bar. Peter took us through the Dorothy Goodbody stories, which was great fun! It seemed when they launched the Dorothy Goodbody as a brand to save them just calling an ale 'stout' (Dorothy Goodbody's Wholesome Stout is what your after - now available in draught til end of January I believe. Try it and thank me later) they developed risque stories about the fictional character. Of course they later got into trouble over the pump clip as somebody suggested it was using sex to sell ale. She may have not been wearing any underwear you see. I have it good authority that there's no 'may' about it!

Adrian, Pete & Tim

With my usual skill for getting lost enjoying the events and tastings as opposed to watching the time, we merged the last two events into one - and I must thank Pete, Adrian and Tim for their flexibility. Questions for the audience (which famous Belgian lager marketed as French is actually brewed in Wales? with a prize of a bottle of the brew in question) and the 3 authors talking about a few of their favourite Welsh ales. All of which went down extremely well.

The night continued with some excellent music provided by the Mad Hatters, and by half 11 the few of us who remained decided it was the perfect time for extensive tasting of Ysbrid Y Ddraig, a 6.5% whisky aged ale from Breconshire and Otley O8, an 8% barley wine. This developed into an ale & curry matching after midnight, and shortly after we all retired.

Summary of the festival

2010-09-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

The festival has been great fun - and I've learnt a hell of a lot to bare in mind for next year. I'm still writing the full report of the festival, but to give you some idea:

1) It turns out the beer list will change regularly. All those beers that weren't available when you requested suddenly are. And the one's promised to you, absolutely guaranteed, won't turn up. And those that do won't settle. All part of the fun.

2) It also turns out that a certain CAMRA branch, a large one with very active social life which you told about the festival over 4 months ago, and agreed to take a supply of their quarterlies to put out in your pub, and whose beer festival programme you took out a full page advert in, will send 1 person. With this quarter's magazine to distribute. He'll have one drink.

3) It also turns out that one of Pete Brown's books has a typo. But he didn't find out halfway through reading a passage from it in front of an audience. And he certainly didn't express his feelings into the microphone.

4) Melissa knows food and ale matching. Match of the Day for me went to Honey Fayre, a subtle honey ale, matched with Sticky Honey & Sesame seed Mackeral on a bed of Cockles & Bacon.

5) Zak has some weird and wonderful beers. Truly wonderful.

6) Adrian has the most amazing vocabulary when tasting ale. An ale that tastes like something on an electric heater anyone?

7) Tim Hampson knows more about Stella than anyone really ought to.

8) Buster will do it tomorrow.

9) There is now a picture somewhere of me with my nose in a glass of ale. You know the type - that default icon picture for anyone who talks about beer.

10) I can't wait for next year...

Here goes...

2010-09-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it all happens this week. Everything has been made and installed - the stillage, bar, lights, hops. Sadly the hops have really dried up, which surprised me as I thought those in the warm bar would dry out quicker. But at least there's something up - it's not just a marquee full of beer. Although when I read that back, there's nothing wrong with a marquee full of beer anyway.

All that's left is to pick up the cooling system, kindly supplied by Wye Valley Brewery, and install it on all the beers. All that happens tomorrow - 52 beers arrive (1 of which is a pin of a Brewdog beer I'm sticking in the cellar as a thank you to all the staff). I'll be honest, I've got no back ups. All 50 (I'm presuming 1 won't clear/will be off/won't be useable) will go on sale Friday 5pm. They're all in firkins. So if everyone drinks the same 3 beers Friday night, once they're gone they're gone. I'm going to try and reserve a bit of the beers that the Ale & Food pairing requires. Seeing as it's sold out, it seems reasonable enough to ensure the beers Melissa Cole picked are still there.

I've also changed my mind on the pricing. It's still £5 to get your glass, but that includes the programme/beer list and £2 is refundable, making it a very reasonable £3 entry fee. The ales were going to range from £2.70 a pint up to the Otley O8 at £3.60, but the debate over tokens VS cash was going round in circles. So all drinks will be £3/£1.50/£1 (pint half third). Life will be easier all round. To speed things up, we'll have a change desk where customers can get £1 and 50p pieces. Because there's going to be no change given at the bar - correct money only. The reason for this is I just don't know how busy we're going to be. The weather forcast is cautiously optimistic (calm down, we are in Wales, that just means the rain might stop for 5 minutes!), and with the line up we've managed to book we could have a few hundred thirsty people turn up at once for a beer. With somewhat limited staff (about 8 per shift) service needs to be as quick as possible.

The same is true on the food front. BBQ each day and evening, selling home-made burgers and fantastic award-winning sausages from Abergavenny. The pub will be serving a simple specials menu of fish & chips, selection of sausages and mash, wild mushroom risotto and probably our steak & kidney pudding. Again, it's all in the name of speed.

Beer & Book Matching

Highlights of the festival? Well for me the having visited a couple of pubs in London with them and seen their natural banter, Tim Hampson Vs Adrian Tierney-Jones on which is better - North Vs South Wales brewing, should be extremely entertaining (no pressure gents). Friday, 8pm. On Saturday it's a bit of a tie for me - Zak Avery talking us through some more unusual styles of ale (straying slightly from Wales it has to be said - but then I struggled and failed to find an IPA on draught!). It's something I've been trying to educate myself on since learning that there is such a thing as an IIPA (google it and buy a bottle, you won't be disappointed!). Melissa will be doing her thing with the Ale & Food pairing, which stupidly I've sold all the tickets for without making sure there was a space for me. So the highlight that I'm going to make sure I'm free for is a bit of book and beer matching with Pete Brown. Since actually being able to find and buy his books, I've had my nose buried in them. It's amazing just how much of a fantastic history Britain especially has with beer. Yet when I studied the industrial revolution (9 bloody years ago) the fact that brewing was the second largest industry to cotton wasn't mentioned. At all. Similarly I now know where the phrase 'taking down a peg or two' comes from and why companies have 'brands'. So at 4pm on Saturday you'll find me taking a break for 20 minutes or so.

I keep getting asked if I'm worried about the festival. I need quite a few people to come and spend quite a bit of money to make it break even, but then it is the first year. Next the marquees would have already been paid for, for example. Given that I've already got half the line up of authors for next year, I'm not overly worried.

You'll have to excuse me, it's time to carefully take down a shed that's rotting away and repair it. I can't replace it as that would need planning permission. So every piece of wood will have to be 'repaired'. Amazing the world we live in.

Cheers!

Exciting Times

2010-09-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

I love hops!

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks. I've been taking advantage of the 'off peak' season starting, which has seen busy trading times at the most random times. A quiet Tuesday lunch followed by the place being rammed by 3pm with drinkers - not a bus load, but couples and a family. Friday night is normally a quiet night for food for us - yesterday we did 50 meals in the evening.

What this means is I'll have a look, make sure the kitchen are prepped up, then get outside and put the marquee/lights/hops etc up. Every now and then I'll be called back into the kitchen to help if we get a bit of a rush on, but the staff have really pulled together and upped their game recently, so this was relatively rare this week!

So now the stillages have all been built, capable of comfortably holding 52 firkins but with space for more (just in case). The concrete step has been made, the lights and hops are up in the marquee, and the second marquee has been cleaned and prepared, ready to get put up on Friday (its going on the lawn so we're leaving it as late as possible).

The orders have been sent for the glasses and the beer, although worryingly I've just realised I don't have enough taps. I'll sort that out Monday. The cooling system will be ready to pick up the day before the ales arrive, which is handy. And the website www.yourround.co.uk has really impressed me - we've got an account for the pub, which shows the ales on at the moment on the website, and one for the festival. So if you click here, you'll get a nice graphic showing all the ales we've got coming. Hover your mouse over the ale for the tasting notes. Really am happy with that.

The website is being updated thanks to the excellent customer service provided by queensborough group, who hosted, designed, maintained and everything else the website, and also provided the booking system we use for the rooms. Having received a bill, Mum called them up and enquired what the bill was for as it wasn't very clear. Apparently asking that question is, in their view, offensive and rude, and they said they'll be stopping our service after 7 days. 2 days later they cut us off - the website showed a white page, the booking system wouldn't let us log in and no emails. A phone call to find out what happened informed us they'd changed their minds and shut us off early. No access to any of the bookings made, to the emails, anything. With Mum in tears I spent the rest of the day learning how to host, build and update a website. I'm currently designing a new site from scratch to replace what I've thrown together to keep our web presence.

Whilst on the subject of awkward arses, Brecon Beacons Planning Authority. They want full plans for whatever we wanted to do to accommodate the brewery in the car park - a roof on an existing out house, a new build, anything we could think off needed full plans. But yesterday Dad came through with the best birthday present I got - a way in which the brewery could be in place in time for the festival.

Its not a bush, its a tree!

If your replacing an existing structure like-for-like, you don't need planning permission. So 2 worn out, useless sheds tucked away behind the Mulberry tree could be taken apart (a day's work) and a single, new 'workshop shed' put in. Large enough for the vessels, access to water and electric, drains, room to store malt and hops, everything I'd need. So a pleasantly worded email was sent to the planning authority, stating that although we don't need plans to do the work we wanted to keep them in the loop. I went off to celebrate in a great mood.

This morning, with a slightly cloudy head I turned up to work and found Dad not in the greatest of moods. They'd replied to his email saying we couldn't replace the sheds without full planning permission because we are a commercial site. Complete rubbish, it's just replacing a shed!

The staff accommodation had seen better days...

So although not ideal we've found a way around the problem. We'll repair the existing sheds. Not replace them, but repair them. We'll repair all 4 walls, the roof and the floor. So over the next 2 weeks you'll probably find me in scruffs at the pub, clearing out all the stuff that gets dumped in a worn out shed (2 beer engines, 2 flash coolers, 4 keg lines including cellar bouys and taps, a glasswasher we took out of the pub the first week we took over nearly 4 years ago, several garden umbrellas and a can of brasso). Sadly I can't cut back the huge Mulberry tree to make my life a little easier because we're in a conservation area. I need permission. From Brecon Beacon's Planning authority.

To end on a good note, the festival is really coming together. I'm nervous, but looking forward to it. The tutored food and ale pairing has sold out twice, but due to cancellations there are now just 4 tickets left. Interest is huge, and with a graphic displaying all the ales that will be on offer in the bar the locals are placing bets on which sell out first!

Time for an ale, or 2.
Cheers!

Development of the Brewery!

2010-09-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

The whole point of this blog - the brewery! Whilst it's been nice to think about the pub, the way it's going, where it's come from, I have sorely missed thinking about the brewery. That's a lie - I have been thinking about it but in an almost subconscious way. But now that Bank Holiday is over (honestly, a weekend selling 250 pints of ale a day followed by all of 55 pints of it on Tuesday!) I can step out the kitchen a little, falling into the current role of telling the chefs and cooks what jobs I'd like doing and leaving them to it, checking at the end of the day. It works - and means that in one day I've managed to tick off a huge list of important jobs like finding beds for all the guests at the beer festival and the minor factor of ordering some drinking vessels for it!

But the brewery. My brewery. I've found myself going into where it's currently stored, sitting on an empty firkin, day-dreaming of it operational, the hum of the pump, the bubbling of the boil, the smell of the bag of whole-leaf hops upon first opening the silver bag of dreams. The hops are extremely in my mind at the minute - I've got the vine ready to go above the bar tomorrow morning. Apparently spraying it with hairspray will allow it to keep it's colour as it dries out, but it feels wrong, in the same way finishing the Christmas menu the day after August bank holiday feels wrong. Ale is natural, and I'm lucky enough to be situated in an area of hops, spring water and grain. Adding a spray to preserve part of this natural product - no. I'd rather let it age gracefully, greying throughout the year. I've already got plans for a hop festival next year over the last week of summer holidays - getting the school children involved and other such things. As with most of my thoughts, the details won't be there until the day of the festivities.

Back to the brewery - again! I've been thinking hard since meeting with a couple of people. Person #1 was a planning officer in Brecon at an open surgery, giving advice about planning permission for different types of building and what not. Turns out, for the huge process we'd have to go through to gain a brewhouse so huge it would take up 2 car parking spaces in the car park, we might as well put in planning for something a bit bigger. If we did the planning process and all went well, I'd have an operational brewery by the end of December. At the earliest. Part of the business plan was me using the quiet period after summer to spend more time in the brewery, developing ales and practising the techniques. But back to that business plan in a minute. The point is, I wanted the brewery 2 months back. It's rare I get impatient for something these days.

The second person was a lady at an open surgery for new businesses. It's a great idea - the Welsh Assembly has a pot of grants (somewhat diminished recently but still there) and found that not a lot of people were applying. Someone suggested that instead of expecting self employed and soon-to-be self employed to spend a vast amount of time drudging through tedious websites with no clear idea of what grant may be available, they get on the road and tell people 'you can have a grand to help you develop your website'.

Talking with this lady about the grants available, she asked to see the business plan. It had a best case scenario (so, so tempted to be silly about this), worst case scenario (made me grow up quickly) and an expected scenario. It stated the expected cost of production in a generic form (£x a firkin) gathered by helpful brewers around the area. And how much I thought I could sell the stuff for - and to how many places. And a load of other things - time taken, marketing spend, etc etc.

She read through the 3 pages and didn't laugh. She did, however, floor me with 1 simple question that looking back I should have asked myself.

'Where do you see yourself, and the business, in 5 years time'

I know why I haven't asked myself this question - I don't really like the answer. Pubs are home for me - always worked in them, love socialising in them, just feel completely comfortable and relaxed in them. In 5 years time would the family still have the pub? Would I have it? Would I want it? Would I have another, or would I focus entirely on the brewery?

I've always dwarfed myself with what I do. I don't do halves. Sell ale? Stick 3 or 4 handpumps on, get a different ale from 4 local breweries, don't change them. Make life easy. Sell bar food? 6 mains on a chaulkboard, changing depending on cost and freshness. Make life easy. Beer festival? 20 beers, local band, hose the barrels down with cold water and stick a jacket on them. Make life easy.

But no, I want 10 handpumps selling ale, cider and perry, guests changing after each barrel. I want a menu made of forgotten classics - all those dishes you can buy ready made and just reheat - proper steak and kidney pudding, made by hand and steamed properly. 50 beers, full cooling system, Phil Bates and Co playing and a line up of guest speakers I never dreamed I'd be able to offer.

How will this transpire. Apparently, given the amount of background research I've done, building up a potential customer base of other, local pubs, offering more than other local breweries, the business plan of developing sides to the brewery, she thinks the business could be more of a success than I wrote as the 'expected' part of the business plan. I pointed out that I currently haven't brewed an ale entirely by myself, but that seemed of little concern to her. Apparently it's the way I think - I put the beer festival webpage on the the brewery website purely because I had complete control over it, supported by google. As opposed to the pub's website with which I have to send updates to an email address that take up to 4 working days to come through. So the 500+ people that have looked at the festival site have seen we have a brewery.

Interesting times ahead. Apparently that's a Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times. But with a couple of industrial units available from the end of September, I may be just in time to release a beer full of mixed spice.*

The end of the meeting with the lady from the WA was very positive. They'll help with the business plan. They'll help with funding for capital equipment (she didn't look too happy when I said a shiny fully copper brewery would look good). They'll help after 12 months with an expansion grant. They'll help me every step of the way. And news like that, after weeks and weeks of 'no, not like that' and the such, is music to my ears. Time for a beer to celebrate.

Cheers

*Don't worry, I won't.

Growth of the Pub

2010-08-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I mentioned on another blog that it must take some doing to just open a pub with 10 handpumps and a load of unusual beer on keg. We're averaging just short of 800 pints of cask a week, the thought of doing twice that terrifies me - the cellar isn't big enough as it is!

But it seems we're developing into one of those places. And the nice thing (I think) about how we're developing is the customers are coming with us. The regulars that still, and always will, drink Butty Bach are starting to ask about the guest ales - especially if they see a stout or wheatbeer on cask. A free sample, and then sit back to watch the show. The first sampler of a wheatbeer we had on recently quite loudly proclaimed he didn't like it. And that anyone who did must have something wrong with them.

Just as he finished that second sentence, the one next to him finished off the sample and, just as loudly, told the bar that he didn't think it was too bad and needed another sample to make sure. This developed into a healthy debate about ale between the two that lasted a good 20 minutes - a couple of phrases I'd heard before popped up ("But it's cloudy!" // "Drink with your tongue man, not your eyes!")

And the other thing about the way the pubs developed over the years is it's been very clear that we're an ale house. But we haven't left a lonely Carling tap sitting on the back bar - we've brought the lager drinkers with us - always happy to give them a free sample, and gradually upgrading the lagers. Undoubtedly we lost a hand full of drinkers when we changed from Fosters K1664 Carling to Peroni Amstel and Carling but what I was surprised with was how many gave the Amstel or Peroni a go first. Many of whom carried on drinking with us, talking about the different lagers and what they liked and didn't like about the new ones.

Recently we've changed again - Amstel proved not popular enough compared to the other lagers. It seemed most of our customers either wanted the 'entry level' lager or Peroni at the top end. Hoegaarden was also changed - again it sold, but not enough for what I wanted. Everything on the bar has to earn it's place and if it doesn't sell, it gets changed or removed. After speaking to customers, suppliers and other people in the trade I found an alternative that should see us selling more. Erdinger. We've had in bottles for a while and it sold well and it appears to be doing well on draught. Brooklyn in for Amstel hasn't sold as well as I'd hoped, but it's a grower. I'm positive it tastes different on draft than in bottles though. Fruitier - more orange flavour.

The reason I keep tweaking the offer is because I'm looking to the future. Pubs are going to have a hard time in the next couple of years. Taxation is going to be looked at, not like a cash cow (see the past government) but it's going to be tweaked, and there's only so much you can take before putting your prices up. In the next 6 months we've got the PBR, VAT increase, suppliers increase and the budget to look forward to. The pub of the future will be offering drinks that return a good GP - be it cash or % - and convey value for money at the same time. Mega brands, found everywhere, just won't cut it in 18 months time. Fast forward a few years, and I honestly don't think we'll be drinking pints any more.

Drinking in pubs will become so expensive that the next move is to offering halves of flavoursome, strong beer. So £3 won't get you a pint of ale, but it'll get you half of Leffe blonde on draught, for example. Just something I wanted to throw out there.

Brewers of stronger, full of flavour ales, be they hop bombs or rich strong stouts, will see their beer distribution grow. Instead of 18s, it'll be in 9 gallon firkins. And instead of 9s, it's be in pins, 4.5 gallon containers the height of a child first chair.

I just hope it doesn't happy too soon. I'll be raising a pint at my son's 18th in 15 and a half years regardless.

Cheers!

I've found the corner bits of the puzzle

2010-08-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's seems the brewery has been going through that stage of nothing apparently happening whilst lots of little things fall into place. And over the next couple of months I feel it's going to come together very rapidly. I feel like I've found the corner pieces and started filling in the edges. I've only got a vague idea how pieces there are though.

Obviously all the focus recently has been on getting the beer festival organised. If you want the full listings for the festival you can find them here. It's one hell of a line-up, and it's working out quite nicely - people volunteering to work the bars, man the glass stall etc.

The brewery has been simmering nicely behind the scenes though. The first plan for the site of the brewery fell through, but recently there's been a bit more consideration to it. The business plan is for the first couple of years to develop a range of ales and sell them through the pub - a core range of 3 ales. Nothing fancy, just quality ales that sell well. The core of the brewery is going to be quality, and with that I hope other ales will organically come about. I've found it happen in the kitchen when cooking - I'll be prepping the same food each week and then one day something clicks and I'll try something a little different and develop that into something good.

I should find out more on Tuesday after attending an open surgery with a couple of ideas for suitable brew houses. From a couple of phone calls I gather this is going to be one of those surgeries I turn up to, explain the idea and what I'd like, and they'll tell me which grants are available, how to keep the EHO/Building Regs/National Park happy and point me in the right direction. Makes a change - I'd almost given up on wading through all the crud just to find out if I may be able to get a grant. I sometimes wonder if really there's just a nodding duck spinning on a turntable on 33 that occasionally hits the enter key on the laptop. But I digress.

In my spare time I've been studying. Reading the characteristics of hops and their yields, malts and recommended mixes. And I'm starting to imagine what the result of that mix, with that yeast and those hops added just then will come out like. I'm well aware this is just impatience - I want to get started and fully immerse myself in this warm and slightly damp world of brewing. But, at the back of my mind, there's the knowledge that just possibly one of these mutations of an idea may work. Stranger things have happened - this big yellow ball of fire was in the sky a couple of days ago...

A matter of Perspective

2010-08-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

It's not every day I feel the need to write a blog at 1am. But tonight has been a little bit special for me.

Firstly, everything for the beer festival has been sorted. Quite literally I'm just waiting to hear back from a couple of the beer writers doing tastings as to which beers they'll be talking about. To be honest it's a huge weight off my mind. Now I just have to order the beer, sort out the stillage and staff the festival. Easy (said with a shaking head)

I went out for a drink with my dad tonight. Now, dad and I don't always see eye to eye. He lets me run the bar as I see fit, and he's happy with the result. In the kitchen, occasionally he'll over-rule me a suggest I do a special in a different way, or with a different sauce. But on the whole recently we seem to be agreeing a lot more, which is making life a bit easier for both of us and work a bit more fun.

Coming back, I found out my sister has come for a visit. Again, in the past we've had our differences but as we sat down at 11pm, a drink each round the large table by the bar, the staff quietly excused themselves and left us to it. And we chatted about the bar, the changes, whether we're changing the lagers too often (I see their point but it's not every day you get the chance to but Brooklyn lager on tap). Overall a great evening.

Coming back into my room I find @marktharparms and @richardmackney tweeting about a meteor shower. I did GCSE astrology back at school (never took the exam but glad I took it up as a hobby) and so could find a couple of constelations, and was surprised when I looked out about midnight to find a perfectly clear sky. We're in Wales after all, perfectly clear skies happen as often as a meteor shower...

I counted about a dozen. Standing in the beer garden, shivering like a cold 23 year old in a beer garden at midnight, I watched as more and more stars came into my field of vision, the result of me walking away from the motion-flood lights and my eyes adjusting. And then came the show. I was only out for 10 minutes, silently sipping my Leffe blonde and staring up. First 1 shooting star, so feint I thought I'd turned my head too quickly and just seen a blur of a star. But then they came thick and fast, bright and clear, proud as anything. I cried.

I haven't seen my son and partner in a week, the pub has been so busy I haven't had time to unwind and being in the position I'm in I find myself regularly feeling lonely. That's why the chance to catch up with other brewers and publicans at events like the GBBF appeal to me so much.

Seeing these shooting stars, on a night when the sky was literally filled with stars, just made me think, why worry. At the end of the day, we're here for a few years. Those shooting stars were visible for 3-4 seconds. Beer, staff, work, brewing, none of it really matters. The important thing is having people around you that make life enjoyable. And I do. Realising that some people don't have that basic need is quite moving. I'm not religious, I'm firmly in the science camp. But as humans we're social creatures. Hence why the pub is so important. Anyone can drink at home. Either alone or with their family, but having a couple of drinks in a pub full of people, whether you talk to them or not your enjoying the same experience. And that's the important thing. Sharing experiences.

So this week, I'm going to take my partner out for a meal. Take my son swimming, and my sister out for a drink. And enjoy every minute of it.

Sometime's it just gets to you

2010-08-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

This is one of those long rambling posts that is more for me to get stuff off my chest then a well-written blog post. If you can, stick with it because it gets there in the end, and it's a very honest post. I haven't re-written it at all.

Things have been getting harder at the pub. Summer trade is up, but staffing levels are down. I've chosen a bad time to try and organise a beer and literature festival! The pressure is on now to keep the progress on the brewery going, get the beer festival truly finalised and advertised and get a Christmas Menu written (yes, already) whilst running the bar and kitchen, and often now the hotel side as well whilst Mum and Dad pop over to Norfolk to keep an eye on the building work that's being done there.

I know I've stretched myself too thin, but I can't see a way out of it at the minute. We've advertised everywhere for a chef, but every one that sends in their CV needs accommodation providing, something we haven't got the space to do. So even though I'm batch cooking 40 portions of Steak and Ale pie or Steak and Kidney Pudding, it's selling out every week because I only have time to batch that many in one go, before covering staff days off etc.

I'm extremely annoyed at myself over the celler. My pride and joy, always spotlessly clean and always presentable should someone want/need to go down (Cask Marque assessor or BOC gas man for example). This week I noticed a couple of bar flies down there. Since I've been here, I've never had any form of animal life show itself to me down there. Obviously not the end of the world, but a sign that my standards are slipping, and the cellar is the one place I'd promise myself I'd always look after.

Some things are going very well - last week saw us sell 775 pints of ale Wed - Tuesday. This week is looking to be higher. Food sales are climbing, which I'm hoping is a result of the consistency and high standards I've demanded in the kitchen. We've started doing weekly specials, on the basis I can get a better deal from my suppliers and we can then type them out once a week rather than constantly updated a blackboard, which it seems nobody can write neatly on! I'll have to train the staff somehow - God knows how, I learnt from having to re-write the boards until they were up to scratch but we don't have time for that. Sadly this week we sold out of every main except lobster salad 3 days into the week.

Obviously all the above comes at a cost. And it appears to be my family life. Working every day from 10am (I rarely have to cook breakfasts now which is a relief) until 10,11,midnight, 1am means I don't get time to see my partner and son. She's stopped work at the pub now, in order to get a part time 9-5 job that will mean at least she'll be there for mini-me after nursery. The last few weeks, even when I've been home I've been on the computer typing up stock reports/specials menu/rotas or emailing guests for the beer festival. And Saturday night took me to my limit.

I was nervous - I'd really pushed the boat out with specials including scallop skewers, lobster salad and Dover sole. Nothing too challenging, but expensive food to get wrong. And before anyone points out, we are a pub, not a gastro or the sort. Fresh fish is a gap in the market around here, and the customer base we've developed don't mind paying more for quality - that's always been our mantra, we don't do cheap, we do quality. Service was going well, specials flying out, and then something tiny happened that started problems.

One of the tables had ordered steaks, and when the steaks went out they then asked for Stilton sauce. We do ours fresh to order, and as we were in full flow with all 3 of my chefs busy I came off the pass to make the sauce. For those that don't know, the pass is where cooked food is plated and given to the waitresses. At busy periods I'll have all my chefs on stations and I'll stand at the pass, plating the food and checking that everything is cooked right.

Whilst I'm making the sauce, the next check goes to the pass, is plated and a quick 'this all good?' comes from the chefs. A quick glance, nothing missing, everything in the right place, send it. I send my sauce and get back on the pass.

The meal that I sent out without checking properly was the scallops main course. And they came back - quite clearly over cooked and dry. Send the waitress back out, very sorry, can I re-cook the order or offer them something else? No, they've lost their appetite.

After a long, busy week, an excellent service and great reports back from the waitresses, I didn't want to send the penultimate check out poorly. A real downer.

The last check was two veg lasagne, a popular dish that night. So popular in fact, that the dishes we serve them in were all out. Nothing I could think of, short of putting the lasagne straight on the plate like you'd get in ASDA cafe, would work. I sent waitresses out to clear tables and look for these dishes, my head waitress to the table to apologise for the wait and that it'd be with them shortly.

By the time we'd got two dishes, they'd been waiting 45 mins when the waiting time was 30 (and they were told 30 at the bar when they ordered). They asked for their money back and left by the time I was able to send.

After cleaning down the kitchen, I went to the bar to clean a couple of the lines that had run out and put new ales on. After that, some nutter who had walked out of the pub just down the road started walking over threatening one of our customers having a cigarette out on the patio. Mum stopped him (always send a member of the opposite sex to diffuse a situation) entering, so he started picking up the chairs and the bin we put out on the pavement and throwing them at the other customers! A quick 999 and all was sorted (I'll talk about this more in a later post about the government's ideas to charge pubs that open late more).

So a crap end to a busy week where I'd really over-stretched myself. And it hit me hard. I stayed up til about 3am that morning, just replaying parts of the week, good and bad, in head. I'm taking 2 days off this week - I'll be in London for the GBBF on Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, I think I'll have to look at renting a place just to get a chef in. I can't keep going on like this, neglecting my family and putting my hobbies (Rugby for the local club and MTB-ing) on hold, whilst not being able to do the things I really want to do like get the brewery up and running and give the cellar a bloody good clean.

And in case you were wondering, I do it because I love it. The pub, the job, the people I work with, the people I meet. Seeing something grow over 4 years because of what you've put into it, people sitting at a bar that you built, drinking drinks that you've brewed and looked after in the cellar, eating food that you've come up with and cooked. There's nothing like it. I'd like a couple of extra hands around to help though!

Cheers

8 Weeks and Counting

2010-07-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

The marquee went up without a hitch, thankfully noticing the canvas was upside down before the mammoth task of pulling it over the frame. I should add that we've now put the sides on the far side and either end, and it's looking good. The lights have been ordered, and the next stage is to get the stillages built.

I'm thinking good old scaffold bars will do the job, but seeing as after the festival we'll have a marquee, bar and stillage for ale, we'll be advertising an outdoor bar service, specialising in real ale but I've also got a flash cooler with a few taps. With this in mind it's going to have to look a little neater. As for the bar itself, we'll probably use scaffolding boards (those thick wooden planks) on top of a metal frame, then staple something on top to make it look like a bar.

The beer list has been nearly finalised, and can now be seen here. Sadly I don't think I'm going to have time to brew any myself - the pub is just too busy (A nice problem to have - I'm not complaining!).

The events that have now been confirmed include:

A ladies tasting session with Melissa Cole. We're certainly seeing more ladies drinking the real ales, especially since introducing the Wye Valley stemmed half pint glass and the Marston's conical third pint glass. Sadly for the festival we'll only have the branded festival pint glass, but marked at a third and a half.

The difficulty of conveying taste with Zak Avery. I certainly struggle to describe flavours in beer at times, and seeing the poncy description on wines really turned me off wine (I just buy the 2nd cheapest, but wine tasting with Marstons has helped a bit). So I'm looking forward to this, not just to improve my own knowledge but I enjoy bringing customers with us in what we do. I'd love to think that the festival can get people thinking about ale in different ways, trying new things and so on.

Something with Pete Brown. Details are still being worked on, I was hoping something with IPAs would work because if you want to hear someone talk about IPAs you want it to be a man who took 3 months taking one to India the old fashioned way. Wales doesn't appear to do many IPAs, unless I'm looking in the wrong direction. Barley wines all over the place, but I've only found 1 IPA so far.

Beer and Food matching evening with Melissa Cole. I've never been, done, or even thought about one of these before. But the function room has been booked, and now the beer list is nearly complete we should soon have an idea which foods are being matched. I'm extremely nervous about this because until we find a chef who doesn't need accommodation I'm running the kitchen alongside the bar and now festival. I have a feeling Saturday night I'll be in 3 or 4 different places at once.

Mike Jenkins reads some of his work. Mike has written some prose but is well known for his excellent poetry, not least as Cardiff City's unofficial poet. He'll be reading some of his work and then chatting about poetry in an informal workshop.

Reading and book signing with David Lunt. It was David who gave me the idea of developing the Literature side of the festival. He has recently been published and will be giving a reading followed by talking about getting published and recounting his recent experiences.

An Interview with Buster Grant. Buster is the Chairman of the Association of Welsh Independent Brewers as well as brewer at Breconshire Brewery. It was talking with him whilst down at the GWBCF that the thought of a specific Welsh beer festival first formed. He'll be talking about the history of brewing in Wales and what the future may have in store for us.

Meet the Brewers. Whilst I'm still waiting to confirm when most of the brewers will be arriving, I've invited every brewer who has a beer on the bar to come down and mingle, talk about beer and generally get in the way. So far the gents from Otley will be down, as will Breconshire, Rotters, Tudor and Kingstone.

If anybody would like to get involved in the festival, I'm now working out staffing needs. Volenteers are more than welcome - get in touch with me and I'll give details. It will definitely include beer and assorted pig bits each morning.

It's getting a bit scary now...

2010-07-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

I've run beer festivals before. The first solo one was 10 ales on handpump out in the garden over Hay festival, which went reasonably well (lets just say we had a good stock of Steak and Ale pie after the festival).

Then last year I went for 20 ales but actually got round to advertising it a bit better. It made a small profit, and certainly made people aware that every year at the end of September we'll be having a beer festival.

But this year, well, it's a bit bigger than I expected. And it's all the fault of the Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival.

I went down as the guest of Buster from Breconshire brewery, working a couple of shifts and a chance to meet other brewers and find out more about setting the brewery up. On the Friday we went down, after hearing the results of the competition (Congratulations to Otley for their winning beer O-Garden) we had a couple of drinks.

It was some time in the evening that, completely unintentionally, about half a dozen brewers and myself were going round, looking for beers we hadn't heard of or tried before, and discussing them casually. I was surprised at how many just weren't impressive - be it under hopped or not mashed enough at the brewery, or the lack of condition and slight cloudiness at the festival.

Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of beers were lovely, but although I'd read and spoken to people who seem to find for every excellent microbrew 2 or 3 not so good ones, but I'd never come across it myself. The guest ales we sell occasionally have a duff one in their ranks but on the whole I consider myself lucky. So to have a small run of poor beer was a bit of a disappointment.

The other thing was, with a name like the Great Welsh Beer and Cider festival I expected a real emphasis on Welsh beers. Again, they were there, but they weren't particularly highlighted (they may have been in the programme, I didn't get my mitts on one). To me, they were just mixed in with beers from across the country.

Now this may not be a bad thing, and there may be very good reasons for the layout of the festival, but it got me thinking could I do it? Could I really promote Welsh ale in a way that screams 'We're proud of what we brew'.

20 Welsh beers, a couple of Welsh bands and a couple of Welsh brewers to do tastings and talk about their beer. That was the initial plan. Then, after an evening of quality control at the pub (including double checking) the idea of showcasing as many Welsh breweries as possible came up, supporting the microbreweries etc etc. So I had a look at this page on the AWIB website.

The beer list currently stands at 50 beers. Over twice the number I'd originally considered. I googled each brewery, found in most cases a list of their beers, although how current these are in some cases I don't know. 50 beers is quite a sizable festival. Just getting firks is about 3500 pints of ale. So, the thinking continued, I need to draw people in. Hay on Wye has a population of 1800 people. So if every man, woman and child came to the festival and drank a pint, we'd have only sold half.

I'm a big believer in if you don't ask you don't get. The worst that'll happen is I get ignored, or turned down. I've never really worked out which is worse, but you certainly don't loose anything. So I emailed a few names I'd heard of in the beer world, most of whom have published books. I have been amazed at the generosity, friendliness and helpfulness of these people, either in agreeing to come and do an event at the festival, or in providing direction by recommending other people to ask, beers to look out for, places to go for funding.

The current line up of confirmed guests includes:

Pete Brown and The Beer Widow
Melissa Cole
Zak Avery
Buster Grant, Chair AWIB and Head Brewer Breconshire
Peter Amor, Chair SIBA and founder Wye Valley Brewery
Nick Otley and Co, Otley Brewery

I'm hoping to be able to add more and more Welsh brewers - all of which are welcome - to mingle and talk to the customers about their beer. But my mind didn't shut off and say 'that's enough', which I'm wishing it had as I'm currently a one man band on the organisational side, albeit with excellent and valuable support from brewers and family across the UK.

It's the Beer Widow's fault - I read here that for the first Stoke Newington Literature festival they had managed to get 3 writers to talk about beer. So I thought about getting beer people to talk about writing. I then thought about getting Welsh people to talk about Welsh writing at a festival of Welsh beer. It made sense, so why not.

So we have a local who has just finished his novel which is as yet unpublished who will be doing a reading. We have David Lunt, who just happened to be walking past as I was pitching the idea to the man with the purse strings, Dad. He was staying with us in the hotel, and is now going to be doing a reading, talking about and book signing his first published work (it got published last week I think), the first in a trilogy. We've also got Welsh author and poet Mike Jenkins doing a reading, and Zak Avery has agreed to do a book signing. I'm in touch with a few more authors but none that I can confirm yet.

I've sorted a provisional website out, which is still work in progress but gives a good indication of what we're all about. O, and the profits from the festival will be going to next years festival, which already has a couple of people that couldn't make it this year booked. Have a look, and as always, any and all comments and feedback welcome - it's the first time I've done something this big and help is always appreciated!

www.thehaybrewery.co.uk/festival

Cheers!

A suitable metaphor?

2010-06-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Iphone got released recently. Well, the latest version of it. Something my little sister said made me think of this:

Imagine your 16. You've been saving your wages from the pub you work at all summer.

You want an Iphone. Your current phone has failed on you after years of good service, and you fancy a change. Everyone who has one seems really happy with it. So you decide to go and have a closer look.

The store staff are really helpful, explaining all the features and how they will always be there to help you if you have any problems with the phone. You ask about the price, and the result gets you thinking:

You can walk away with it today for a downpayment of £150. You'll then be charged £40 a month, and you have to use the carrier they say. You have to do this for a minimum of 2 years.

You can buy it outright, and choose who to buy your minutes from. But this will cost you £500, plus you'll have to sort out your own tariff and insurance. Whereas the first option includes a phone number you can call if you have any problems with it whatsoever.

What do you do?

There is a third option. You could have a look at other phones - Blackberry and the latest Nokia for example. After looking around, you think the best thing to do it leave it and think about it. It's a lot of money to buy it outright, then the added cost of sorting everything out - and you'll have to work hard for a while to pay for the tariff, although it would be a cheaper tariff than the £40. But you really want it now, £150 means you have change from your savings to go out with your mates for a couple of weekends. But £40 a month is expensive, and doesn't get you as good a deal.

The third option is to wait for all the bugs to be fixed - to make sure they're not going to bring out a better phone straight after you've picked this one up. To make sure your happy with it, and will be for a good couple of years.

We went for the 3rd option - took our time, looked at a few phones, and found one that did everything we wanted at a basic level, but one that we could reprogram and improve ourselves, so that it was always as good as the top phones. It cost a lot to buy and set it up, but the money saved by the cheaper tariff helped pay for the new programs that keep it running well. We've had it over 3 years now, and if everything goes to plan by the end of year 5 we'll have programmed it to update itself to keep at the top level. How great does that sound!

Then all the years of studied programming books and learning how every little piece of it works will be worth it.

The times we've dropped it, and spent 6 months running to keep still.

The times we've thrown it in a drawer, promising we'll leave it alone and get someone else to do it, only to take it out in two weeks time and look at it from the bottom up, in a new light with a clear head.

All the times we've annoyed the crap out of our loved ones, missing Christmas and Birthdays because the phone needed our attention.

The times we've turned down a holiday abroad and gone to Norfolk instead, using the money saved to buy a new part to improve it.

All those times will be worth it. Because then I can stand back, look at it, and know that I deserve to let it run itself. And I'll be able to say to myself, this isn't just any old phone. This is MY phone.

Knowing me it'd be about 6-9months before I picked up another phone, one with a completely new operating system I'd never heard before, and one where all the programming had to work differently to get the same result.

Ran away with my thoughts a little there, but sod it. It's too hot to worry about if the end of the blog relates to the beginning or not...

The Plan Sep 24-26

2010-06-20T03:44:00.000-07:00

Last year we put on a beer festival over the last weekend of September, not a major event, just 20 ales.

The festival took enough to break even and then a little more, but the level of interest was remarkable. It turned out that the Commonwealth of Hay were executing Richard Booth, the King of Hay, on the Sunday of the festival, which brought in a lot of extra people.

This year I've spent a lot more time thinking about it. And I think we're on to a winner.

Hay is known as the town of books. The Hay Festival, sponsored by the Guardian, brings in approx 100 000 people over 10 days. Hay has a population of roughly 1800. It attracts big names - Clinton, Clarkson, Clegg, as well as people with names that start with other letters. You can find out more about it at www.hayfestival.com

This year, more than just a couple of people, guests and locals alike, have mentioned that it doesn't seem to have much emphasis on literature any more - which is how it started. A prime example is what they call it - it used to be the Hay Literature Festival, now it's just Hay Festival.

I was chatting with a couple of people down at the Cardiff beer festival (don't get me started - grrr) and the idea of 'beer and books' came up. When I came back, the organisers of the 'execution' that took place last year told me they were doing it every year now, with the honour guard, and they would like to link it to the beer festival. The idea of the execution last year, and repeating it every year á la Guy Fawkes, is to promote the town of books, in the same way Richard did nearly 30 years ago when he pronounced himself King of Hay, his horse the Mayor, and issued Hay Passports to the people of Hay. Daft - but it worked!

So we have a beer festival. We have an annual promotion of the town of books, which would like to be linked with the festival. And in the last week I've confirmed 3 published authors that would like to be involved with what one of the called 'The Real Hay Festival'. Personally I don't like that - I'd rather keep it separate to the main event in May. I'm not competing with them, the idea is to promote new and upcoming authors, alongside a great selection of beer and cider, with local live bands looking to get some audience time.

I've spoken with the Association of Welsh Family Brewers, and they are happy to help, so expect tutored tastings and a damn near 100% Welsh beer festival, ranging I hope to between 40 and 50. I can't say it will all be Welsh - Wye Valley produce some damn fine beers and as their on the doorstep, and very supportive of the pub and it's push on real ale, we'll be showcasing hopefully some rarer cask ales from them.

So the initial programme would appear to be:

Friday - festival opened, authors interviewed/book signing/reading a chapter. Live music in the evening.

Saturday - more authors, winners of the poetry competition announced and poems read out, Open Mic Night, tutored tastings and meet the brewers

Sunday - If they've recovered, more meet the brewers, the execution of the King of Hay, Hog Roast, Jazz on the lawn, meet the authors

Monday - drink the bar dry.

If anyone has anything to suggest - I'm open to anything. Last weekend of September - perhaps a conkers competition. Any authors, preferably up and coming but I won't complain if *insert famous author here* wants to turn up and sign books. Any beer writers, brewers, anyone connected in some way with beer and books, point them in this direction.

Cheers!

Beer Snobs are alive and well (sadly)

2010-06-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I like to know as much as possible about whatever I'm doing. So after a while of running the bar and taking a couple of courses to make sure my knowledge was up to scratch, the next thing to do was to find out more about brewing.

I'd already done a tour and cellar course at the Wye Valley Brewery, and found it (this is in no way meant to be a complaint!) very industrialised. When your brewing 80BBL a day consistency is key, something which other brew-blogs have mentioned. Indeed, the White Shield Brewery is only a 5BBL plant, but mixes 4 brews in a 20BBL FV to aid consistency.

The other obvious brewery to have a look at was the Breconshire Brewery just down the road from us. I went down and asked if I could spend a day watching a brew, from start to finish. Although this request got me some funny looks, it was arranged, even including a night on the brewer's couch, which was greatly appreciated at the end of the day. We arranged to do this every 4-6 weeks, and each time got a little more technical and I got a little more involved.

I'm still learning. Right now I'm learning how much of a pain having a listed building in the Brecon Beacon's National Park is. I just want to put a roof on the outhouse which used to store the bins, until I moved them to make way for the brewery. The amount of forms, plus architect's time, is really starting to make me consider renting one of those industrial warehouses on the outskirts of town, but I really, really wanted to have the brewery on the site of the pub.

A piece was recently written in the Publican about craft beer pubs, how there was a gap in the market for pubs selling weird and wonderful beers from around the world. Now I know my customers well - it's why the line up on the bar changes so frequently. At the moment we've got Amstel, Peroni and Hoegaarden on draft, alongside Carlsberg. Peroni has been on for a while, and we still get people surprised to see it on draft. Hoegaarden is the same, and whilst they may not be craft beers, they are certainly a step ahead of the usual suspects found on tap. We've found that they sold very well compared to other, more common, brands we used to sell. I wrote a comment on the Publican stating this - that Peroni and Hoegaarden had certainly added value to the bar.

I didn't expect to get a beer-snob's comment thrown my way for it:

michael-j said...

comments on The Publican's site are often amusing, like the way that someone can read that article (and the comment above them about cooking lagers) and then write with no irony about the success of replacing Grolsch with Peroni in their pub... (source here)

Don't get me wrong, I've heard of James Clay. I've spoken to them, and found they don't deliver to my area. But the amount of pubs I walk in and see Carling/Grolsch or Carlsberg/Export or Fosters/K1664 suggests to me that a pub selling Peroni on draft is a bit more specialised than most. The idea behind the comment was to suggest that pubs didn't have to rip out all their pumps and install 16 beers brewed in various sheds across Europe to take advantage of the 'craft beer' scene - that well known brands that aren't readily available still fit into this category.

Clearly Peroni on draft is too common for michael-j to class as a craft beer. But for those that don't have a clue what all these different beers are, it's a start. As Cooking Lager pointed out (see link above) it's all very well having all these beers on offer, but if the staff aren't knowledgeable enough to guide you to a drink you'll like, you'll loose some of your customers. If the guy running the bar doesn't have enough knowledge about the beers, your really onto a looser.

So whilst there is a niche market for craft beer pubs, there's also a middle ground available for the taking too. Brands on draught that aren't so obscure to scare your customers (and potentially staff), coupled with a few unusual bottles (currently Anchor Steam Beer, Brooklyn Lager and Erdinger Weissbier) can see the bar develop. And maybe in a couple of years we'll have a range of obscure draft beers on offer. But we would have developed that offer, and taken the customers with us.

As long as that's all right with the beer snobs...

Cheers

Ah, it's over!

2010-06-08T01:01:00.000-07:00

Well that's it. The Guardian Hay Festival has been and gone fore another year. Hay on Wye has a population of approx. 1800. Over 10 days people come from far and wide to see and listen to famous authors such as Nick Clegg and Stephen Fry, with the occasional celebrity thrown in. If you look hard enough, you might actually find some real authors. But I sometimes wonder how good they are at public speaking. I've never been to an event, but just because your very good at putting words on paper doesn't mean your very good at speaking to 1000 people. Perhaps that's why the literature part of the festival, the reason it was created, seems to be sidelined more and more each year. Just my musings, that's all.

Anyway, the beery bits. Best day for pints sold was almost a draw between the Saturday and Sunday on Bank Holiday. I haven't got the figures right infront of me, but Sunday was an even 360 pints of ale and 60 of scrumpy, slightly less on the Saturday (about 354 and 58 I think). Perhaps I had been a bit cocky, but locally we have a good reputation for always changing the guest ales. Occasionally I'll buy 2 firkins of something, if I think it's going to sell really well or it's on an extremely good offer.

I'd kept to this over the bank holiday. I knew we'd be busy, but Butty Bach and Kilvert's Gold are the two best sellers, so I thought nothing of lining up the ales and having in stock what I thought would be a good week's worth of guest ales.

Saturday was the best day we've had since taking the pub on. Food flying out, occasionally the waiting times got up to an hour (for half an hour every check had either fish or scampi on it creating a bit of a backlog). In the evening, the restaurant was full and we were turning tables like nobody's business. In the bar, we ran out of glasses. We then ran out of the back up glasses. We then ran out of the emergency back-up glasses I'd got in just for festival. 4 people behind the bar, serving. I know this doesn't sound like much to some people, but normally I'd have 1 bar staff on. 2 on at weekends in summer. So 4 + a glass washer person and running out of glasses was a big thing.

The festival started on Thursday. By Saturday night each guest ale pump had had at least 3 guest ales on it. My entire stock of Kilvert's Gold had been depleted. So Saturday night I called the Head Brewer down at Breconshire to see what he could do for me on a bank holiday Sunday morning.

Monday morning I took the picture above - except for Butty Bach (which thankfully I'd ordered 18s of, and plenty of them) every pump was a Breconshire ale (the Boondoggle had run out). A big, big thank you to Breconshire brewery for helping out so willingly.

I had a couple of casks of Fast Cask EPA - I wanted to do more research on the Fast Cask system and try out a relatively new ale (whether it's a re-badged ale from years gone by I have no idea - to me it was new!). The Fast cask system let me down. After half an hour particles of yeast were still in any beer I poured out the cask. It did drop bright after a Brecon ale had come to the rescue, and tasted fine - more on that in another blog.

The rest of the week was a bit more manageable. Ale's matched sales of lager, and I bumped into Francis Pryor.

Such a nice bloke, relaxing with some BBC people with a couple of pints. I came out the kitchen to be told by bar staff there was 'some bloke with a beard who's a brewer who really likes Kilvert's Gold'. Intrigued, I went out to find out more. Now, I don't watch a lot of T.V. or have an interest in celebrities in general. In all honestly, I rarely get enough time to spend with my family or friends, so I didn't have a clue who this bloke was. I can't remember much, being absolutely shattered, but he used to work in a brewery in London on the tasting panel, checking each gyle was the same as the last. He certainly knew his stuff, and it was only when somebody asked to take his picture with he new book I twigged he was in Hay to give a talk and made the effort to find out who he was.

One thing is for certain though. I won't be running the kitchen and the bar throughout festival. It's just to much. By then I should be running the bar and the brewery, and leave somebody else behind first bench from 7am til 11pm each day!

Right, I'm off. Got to get ready for a weekend in Cardiff, starting with an AWIB meeting and continuing with a certain beer festival. If it's on, having seen a couple of things that really opened my eyes!

Anyway, Cheers!

Hay Festival

2010-05-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it's upon us. A cellar literally bursting at the seems with beer, a kitchen fully stocked, and a couple of new staff which has helped ease the burden on the bar. Sadly still just two of us and a kp in the kitchen, so we've had to call time on the bar menu in the evening and just offer the restaurant menu. We've also changed our policy on children - none in past 7pm. It's just too busy and the last thing a waitress needs is little Georgie running into her legs...

There's a few things I wanted to blog about but haven't had time, but the next few blogs once these two weeks are over should be about:

Fast Cask

Beer Snobbery - My hackles really got raised by a recent comment on another blog about craft beers for the publican trade paper

The pub of the future

And, dare I say it, The Brewery moving along a bit!

See you in a couple of weeks

Cheers

The unofficial #twissup quiz

2010-05-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of blogs about #twissup, so apart from a brief overview of my experience of the day I thought I'd keep this blog a bit light-heard by presenting the unofficial #twissup quiz.

Firstly, a big thank you has to go to Coors and their representative for the day - kristym809

Apart from arranging accommodation, a tour of the maltings and a tour of the White Shield brewery with head brewer Steve Wellington, she also put up with a group of 'pongy ale drinkers' discussing certain aspects of Coors' lager operation all day, and indeed all night. She also provided plenty of entertainment, including a debate on coconuts being a fruit or a nut.

Also thank you to Steve, who took the time to come in especially to show us the brewery, answer questions and ensure we had a few free samples with the buffet. As a bonus, when I asked one of the brewery tap's staff if there were any bottles of P2 available to buy, he went off to find out. 10 minutes later he comes back, sadly no bottles available but there is a little on draught. Happy days indeed!

The day was brilliant, with us starting in the Cooper's Tavern which had opened early for us. This was followed by a tour of the Maltings tower, and this followed by a tour of the White Shield brewery and a buffet lunch in the brewery tap. I must admit I was surprised by the tap having the appearance of more a gastropub than a traditional ale house though.

The evening was then ours, with a couple of pubs visited before returning to the tap. I think I'm right in saying that everyone enjoyed themselves fully.

Now, on with the quiz. I must warn you, this is aimed at the people that went, and probably won't be appreciated by those who didn't - sorry about that!

1) Which is the *best* lager, and for how long has it been the *best*

2) What is Home Draught going to do?

3) The name of a drink served with orange in it

4) Worthington E used to be exactly the same as another drink - what was it?

5)When a bit tired, and not sure if your hungry or not, what do you do?

6) Who is the human raisin?

7) Which drink did Grolsch replace in one particular establishment?

8) How do you prevent the Burton Snatch?

9) What did I mention to get Dave a little worked up?

10) Why is Cobra perfect with a curry?

Tie Breaker:

11) How many of us were there?

Enjoy!

Cheers!

Marston's Fast Cask Part 2

2010-05-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've got to say, I'm impressed.

I'm going to keep this as analytical as possible.

The cask was delivered about 8:30am on Wednesday morning. As with all casks, I left it for two days to chill to cellar temp before racking it. In the space of 5 minutes I rolled it around the cellar, racked, vented and tapped it. I then poured it, straight away, into a glass:

That's not a trick of the light, that's how clear it came out. You can clearly see the gold caps of the Bulmers behind it, as well as the dark writing of the Corona box.

It smelt fine, had a loose head (straight from the cask) and tasted slightly fresh. Not hugely noticeable, but to a regular Pedigree drinker I would expect them to notice it wasn't quite perfect, if not exactly that it was a little 'green'.

On Friday evening, after about 13 hours with a soft peg, it went on sale to the regular Pedigree drinkers. The previous barrel of Pedigree ran out after 3 of the 4 had had a pint, so the 4th was given the Fast Cask straight from the barrel. I asked if it tasted a little fresh, and they all tasted it. Absolutely fine was the response.

The one in the pint glass is the last of the 'traditional' Pedigree. The 1/3 pint glass one is the Fast Cask, from a swan neck without sparkler.

Saturday, I had the sparkler on, and the lacing and head retention was spot on. Again, regular Pedigree drinkers were happy with the pint.

This morning, with the barrel well tipped, I thought I'd test it a bit more. So I shook it up:

Unfortunately I wasn't thinking clearly - the jug I poured it into is a little old and cloudy. So I went and grabbed a pint glass and this was the result:

Again, the clarity is second to none.

The taste, for me, was spot on from the second day. I couldn't fault it, in any way. None of the customers commented.

The thing is, I feel like a cheat. Traditional Pedigree takes a few days to settle, and a few more to condition fully. This Pedigree I would happily rack, vent, tap and sell within minutes.

So from me, a huge thumbs up. It saves me time and space, is just as good as the original, and to top it off is suitable for vegetarians. No downsides.

Would you drink it though - if you knew?

Cheers

Fast Cask Part 1

2010-05-07T04:35:00.000-07:00

In the blogging world, it appears Fast Cask made little impression.

It was announced by Marstons (through Pete Brown's Blog post here) that a revolutionary new form of cask ale was now available - Fast Cask.

Part of the theory is simple - the beer is brewed as normal. Before racking, all of the yeast and sediment is extracted from the beer. The beer is then racked, and yeast beads are put in each barrel. So in the barrel is beer, and yeast. The yeast beads are heavy, and therefore the beer is constantly clear - no little particles forming hazy beer are available.

I trade with Marstons, and regularly meet with my BDM. He reliably informed me that it still conditions in the barrel, but not in the cellar. That the beer can be racked, vented, tapped and sold instantly. It won't taste green, and under-conditioned. But it's not bright beer either. This bit really confused me.

~ ~ ~

Completing cellar training with Vernon Amor at Wye Valley Brewery

From day one, the first firkin I prepared for sale to the one's I racked this morning, it's always been the same:

Accept delivery>leave to equalise with the temp of the cellar>rack>vent>24hrs>tap>24hrs>check beer>sell/hard peg/soft peg until in peak condition>sell within three days.

I really struggle with the idea that a beer isn't bright without it conditioning for at least a day in the cellar. Even my first definition of cask ale, given to me by the nice people at inn-dispensable training at a pub I'd love to remember but can't (about 30 pumps, victorian, strange style of shutters on the bar, vast cellars, next to a dual carriageway just north of Birmingham) included the phrase 'that has it's secondary fermentation in the cask in the cellar'.

~ ~ ~

Pedigree, in my opinion, is a lovely beer, when kept well. I've had some terrible examples of it - many when checking it in the cellar at the pub before it's ready - and I've always found it ages well.

It can spend a week in the cellar before I'll sell it - 2 days cooling off, rack and vent it, the following day tap it, and check it twice a day after that. Sometimes 4 or even 5 days to condition fully! It'll then go on sale, being hard-pegged every evening and soft-pegged every morning before service. In the middle of winter I once got my timing horribly wrong and had a firkin which had been on sale for 5 days. Day 6 I checked it, as I do every day, and found there to be nothing wrong with it. At lunch, one of the locals came and found me in the office.

'Is there anything different you've done the Pedigree today Ed?'

Crap.

'Not particularly' I replied, 'why do you ask'.

'Well, it's a good pint normally' *Crap Crap* 'but today it's absolutely spot on. Best pint of it I've had in ages. If you ever get Bass in, do whatever you've done with this Pedigree to that and I'll drink the whole damn barrel myself!'

So it would appear the secret to a good pint of Pedigree is to vent, tap, forget about it for a week, then sell.

So how the hell did the half pint I poured from a barrel of Pedigree that, in the space of 5 minutes I had racked, vented and tapped, pour clear as day, with good condition and a good nose?

I won't say excellent - except the clarity - but the true test will be tonight. My regular Pedigree drinkers are in, and I'm not going to tell them it's fast cask. I'm not going to tell them I rolled around the cellar like a man possessed before I racked, tapped and drank from it. If the barrel I've got on at the moment is still on, I'll serve them a pint of that followed by a pint of the new one straight from the barrel.

Not a true test I know - one from the barrel and one through a pump. But I'll be intrigued to see what they have to say.

From a cellar man's point of view, I'm in love. If this passes the 'locals test' then I imagine all my Pedigree will be fast cask from now on. Some may call me lazy for it, but it's a practical solution to a serious problem I have.

For anyone who has been in the pub, the cellar is slightly smaller than the part of the bar with the oak flooring. This is the amount of storage space I had at the first hay festival, before the cellar refurb but with 5 ales on.

8 handpumps, already down from 10, are installed on my bar. I have space for 14 stillages - 15 at a push. Butty Bach, even in Kilns takes up 4 of them. Kilvert's Gold takes 3. Pedigree 3. Leaves me with 4 stillages for 5 ever-changing guest ales. Being the sensible man I am, I accepted I didn't have the cellar space for 8 ales on at one time - I don't like spears (I find them wasteful and therefore expensive) and even if I did use them, there would be no space in the cellar for the firks waiting to be racked.

So 6 handpumps for ale, 3 ever-changing guest and 4 stillages to service those pumps. So although this bank holiday, as a perfect example, saw the bar loaded with 6 ales, a scrumpy and a perry on hand-pump ready to go, I could replace one guest ale immediately after it sold out, but the 2nd one to run out left me with an empty pump for a day and a half whilst I waited for the new ale to drop bright.

If I could have Pedigree using just 1 stillage, and as soon as it runs out take the empty off, stick the next one on, vent tap and sell, I'd have 2 more stillages for guest ales, meaning all 6 pumps can be on constantly over summer.

I'll update with a new post tonight - and add the pictures I took this morning to it, as I've left my camera at the pub.

Cheers!

PS, if you wanted a reason to comment, answer this question. If you knew that an ale was Fast Cask, would you choose another 'non-fast cask' ale because it was Fast Cask? I have it on good authority that Mr Protz enjoyed a couple of pints of Fast Cask down at Lords a while back...

A few beers

2010-04-30T01:40:00.000-07:00

Seeing as it's the Bank Holiday weekend, I thought I'd let the beers do the talking for once! This weekend's offering starts with:

Copper Fox, 3.8%, Mayfields Brewery in North Herefordshire

Columb-O, 4.0%, Otley Brewery in Pontypridd

Kilvert's Gold, 3.7%, Breconshire Brewery, Brecon

Station Porter, 6.1%, Wickwar Brewery, Gloucestershire

Silver Lining 4.2%, Wye Valley Brewery, Herefordshire

And off course Butty Bach, 4.5% Wye Valley Brewery, Herefordshire

Sadly my Blackberry battery died so please imagine a photo of a really nice burnished gold ale here

Cheers!

Why why why?

2010-04-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

I've been questioning my values and expectations a lot recently. Spending so long at the pub, not seeing my son awake except for the occasional 5 minutes if he's awake before I leave in the morning, and the only time I see my better half at the moment is at work. I haven't done any improvements to the home - the new floor for the bathroom is just sitting there, staring at me every time I walk past the bathroom - and I can't remember the last time I got home and cooked a proper meal for myself.

Even at the pub, standards have slipped a little. I haven't scrubbed the cellar in over a week, and the Butty Bach is flat as a pancake at the minute. Tastes fine, pours well with a sparkler, but poor head retention and dull on the palate. I called it off a couple of times. I've checked the glasses, the washer, the lines - all I can think is I'm not giving it the care it needs in the cellar, and that beer is going on a little green. Recent reviews on the two websites I try hard not to look at regularly - one for beer and one for accommodation - have picked up on the little things not being done which in turn slightly tarnishes the upmarket offer we're trying to, well, offer.

At lunch, the first table for Sunday roast complained when the waitress cleared the table, saying that the food was flavourless, cold and over-priced. I asked Mum to speak to them, find out why they were so unhappy when most of their meal had been eaten, they were happy half way through their meal when service-checked and everyone else who had the same meal was more than happy. They'd left - when the older staff had taken their order, service checked them and everything else they were fine. When the waitress who works a few hours at the weekend and when on holiday from school clears their table, they let rip, tell her that they don't want a refund and then leave before an older member of staff can make amends. Gets my goat a little to say the least.

So after lunch service we spoke to the two guests we had and agreed to close the kitchen for the evening. I came home to see my son and actually play with him for a couple of hours before bed - he's forming sentences now and his rugby tackling is impressive for a two year old!

Tomorrow will see me spend the morning down in the cellar, working hard and reminding myself why I love this trade. The cellar is the place I go when I need to clear my head a little. I can't take out frustrations by hammering the bungs home in the empty firks. I can plug my headphones in and spend an hour scrubbing the walls and floor down. Now I've worked out how to use it, I can think out loud with my Blackberry set to record, and see what I come up with that might work. And I can give the Butty Bach the TLC it needs!

This leads on to the title of the post. Why do it? I'm can be stubborn at the best of times, when I really want something. And I've got a vision for the pub. Thankfully it's in line with the vision my parents have - a range of good beer in good nick, including a couple brewed myself, alongside a wide selection of malts, wines by the glass and ciders/continental lagers/other drinks. 2 menus - simple meals served in the bar with fancier food for those that want it in the restaurant. Fully refurbished rooms, a landscaped garden with barbeque and petanque, the brewery up and running and all the staff fully trained and self motivated.

EDIT: Blogger decided not to publish the last two paragraphs, so I've re-written what I can remember!

So every time the pub gets me down a bit I remind myself of this vision. The best bit is I can actually see the path to get there, which is 90% of the battle. One day, in a couple of years, I'll be able to sit in the garden with friends, family and locals, enjoying a pint that I've brewed, safe in the knowledge that the pub can run itself for an evening, and that my family and I can feel that we've earned it - we grafted hard for years and it was all for this moment. That's what I keep in mind, although I know myself well enough to know I'll want a new project as soon as this one's finished...

So what keeps you going?

Cheers!

A bit hectic

2010-04-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

This post wasn't meant to turn out as a long getting-things-off-my-chest post, but that's how it turned out. I was debating whether to publish it or not - but I have done in the hope that one day someone thinking 'I'll take on a pub, it doesn't seem that hard' might find some use out of it. Normal blogging will return as soon as I find a couple of staff who can take some of the work load off me.

It's been an annoyingly hectic couple of weeks. The new chef who was on trial has decided we're not the right place for him - on Saturday morning when preparing for the launch of the new summer menu which has about 40 mains on it (mainly fish and grill). So finding myself with just the KP to help I set about getting as much ready as possible. The first check came in at midday which got me slightly angry as we don't open til half past, and without a 2nd in the kitchen it would be a struggle to get open on time as it was. I agreed that the few guys who wanted to order could order as long as it was clear I wouldn't be starting to cook for another half hour.

The 'few guys' turned out to be a party of just under 20 people. So straight away there was going to be a half hour wait on food. With a another dozen or so orders straight away at half past, we ended up with waiting times up to an hour. A couple of people got very stroppy and demanded their money back as they'd waited 2 hours for their food - in this particular case they'd waited 50 minutes and their food arrived as they were asking for their money back.

Now I can understand being frustrated at waiting so long for food. I can understand wanting your money back. I can't understand wanting to have your money back and leaving when your food is ready. If you leave and order somewhere else you'd then be waiting again for food - why not eat it now it's out? Anyway, each to their own I suppose. I was (and still am to be honest) more angry at myself for a) allowing the situation to get so out of control - I should have stuck to the opening times - they are there for a reason after all - and I should have simplified the menu. Hindsight eh?

It must be mentioned that the rest of the customers were lovely - fully understanding and a lot of 'worth the wait' comments which helps calm my self-loathing. I think this is partly because they can see it is a family run place - Mum and my better half helping on the bar and waiting, myself in the kitchen and Dad floating around, keeping the peace and helping where needed.

After closing down the kitchen I wrote a menu for the evening - restaurant only and dishes that I knew I could prep and serve to restaurant standard. It actually worked remarkably well - the two most popular dishes were the fillet steak with sauteed potatoes and asparagus and the Seabass stuffed with ginger, lemon and spring onion served on creamed leeks. About half past eight I sneaked out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air and found the restaurant full of people dining and the pub full of drinkers, with a great atmosphere in the snug where the two meet. So acting out of neccessity I think we may have stumbled across a better way of working on Saturday nights - rather than have a large bar menu and a specials menu for the restaurant, just streamline down to a few dishes only served in the restaurant, where a mixture of good prep in the kitchen along with my better half staggering the tables and orders nicely meant everyone was served in good time, the food was good, the wine sales were up and the tips were good (although the family don't take tips - so the KP and waitress were happy!)

Yesterday gave me a little warning though. I have low blood pressure and low blood sugar, which means I occasionally go very weak and light headed. 3 weeks of Easter with minimal staff and myself doing the amount of work we'd normally expect 3 people to do in the kitchen took their toll on me. So last night I was under orders not to work in the kitchen and take the night off after lunch. This morning, after placing all the kitchen and bar orders I had a pleasant surprise - my family and the staff had arranged full cover for me for the day and I've been sent off for some R & R! I'm not allowed to do any work in the brewery, kitchen, cellar, anywhere! I'm not entirely sure what to do with myself now I've written this - I think I'll go and find out!

Cheers!

Quick Update

2010-04-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, and as with other bloggers it seems compulsory to apologise for that and fill everyone in. Firstly, the brewery has started moving along - the architect has been round to measure up, so I hope to have the drawings very shortly, and get the application for the roof sent off. To celebrate, I made up the crappy table that had been lying around without legs for a couple of years and formed the 'office'.

Now, the 'chair' was my better half's idea of a joke, but as it happens to be the right height it's staying put for the minute. The office also has plenty of natural light, at least until the roof gets built. The brewery also has doors now, although slightly drafty.

Also tied in with the progress of the brewery, it turns out Google gives you a free .co.uk website for two years, obviously as long as nobody already has that domain name registered. So I'm happy to say that www.thehaybrewery.co.uk is now live, although I haven't had time to play with the templates and actually design it.

Back in the pub, due to a couple of staff shortages (on one day 3 members of staff let us down!) I've been finding myself looking after the kitchen more and more, which has tied me up a lot more than I expected.

Today we shut down the kitchen to knock down an annoyingly placed half-wall, which has now opened up the kitchen no end. Hopefully this will be a step to getting waiting times down during busy periods by giving the chefs more space to work with.

Night all,

Cheers

Delay to the Brewery (#1)

2010-03-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

The brewery is being installed in the old bin store. It was wasted space, having just one industrial bin and two glass bins in it, and ended up being filled with random bits of kit that would 'one day' be repaired. But now it has a purpose, and the brewery fits (I may need to loose some weight though), and most of the junk is out. The bits that are left in may well come in useful in tarting it up - like a door and a table with a broken leg, for example:

Obviously a roof would be handy, and it just so happens that a building across the road has the low-cost solution I was looking for:

A simple corrugated roof, with a window at either end to let some natural light in. The height of the roof would allow for a simple yet effective grist case. The idea is you pour your malt into the grist case, which is a big metal funnel, which mixes the grist (the malt mix) with water at approximately 65C. You can regulate the flow of water and grist to ensure the correct consistency is made (thick porridge - if you take a measuring jug, fill it and stick a thermometer in it, the thermometer should slowly fall over. Without a grist case you need a big wooden spoon and a good stirring action...

The walls need to be clad - I was looking at stainless steel sheeting which I could pick up from the same people I got the brewery from. The idea was simple enough - waterproof membrane (visqueen) against the wall, construction-grade batons screwed through visqueen into wall, insulation and clad in stainless steel.

Playing the 'better safe than sorry' game I emailed Brecon Beacons National Park to see what they had to say. Building Regs was the answer. It's a small project, less than 3m x 5m, shouldn't have any issues. So today I went down and spoke to the building regs bloke in a meeting that took 4 minutes. It's for a business, so full plans needed.

So, the labour would take a couple of days (to get the roof on), but before that I have to get architects drawings done, the forms filled including how and by whom the electrics will be done, and send it all off where it will more than likely sit in an inbox for 3 months before someone looks at it and says 'he only wants to put a tin roof on it - approved'.

But, this is all about learning, and this is my first venture fully self-employed, so it's learning how to play the game. One of the locals, upon hearing about this, suggested that it's by far easier to apologise than get permission, which I could well believe. But I only want to do the job once, and that means getting it right from the start.

Now just to find an architect within my budget. Funnily enough, as I type that last line I look up to see my 2 year old son colouring in with wax crayons...

Cask Ale Week Launch Party

2010-03-30T05:56:00.001-07:00

Well, that was one hell of an evening! It's National Cask Ale Week this week, and as with everything I've thrown as much into it as possible. Last night was the launch party, and I'd invited a couple of breweries to send a representative, the local Camra branch, and as many of the locals as possible. Obviously it was open to everyone who walked in as well. Whilst a slow start, by half past 8 the pub and snug were full, and we started.

Buster, the head-brewer and my brewing tutor spoke briefly about the Welsh brewing scene, followed by Peter Amor, the creator of Wye Valley brewery and indeed the Dorothy Goodbody's. Peter told a story about Dorothy Goodbody, written when the brand was first created as a promotion. I've been emailed all the stories by the lovely people at Wye Valley, and I'll be putting them up on here over the next few blog posts.

Thankfully the bar had had the last part of the refurb done, and so now looks a bit more how I had it in mind:

Before the lager taps were tall - just tall enough to cover your face if you were standing in the wrong place, ideal for mishearing and not seeing customers properly. Now they're low level, and although shiny don't look too out of place. We are looking at ways of boxing them in wood, so that the drip trays that sit on the bar, in front of the pumps look more in keeping.

The other thing we've had done, which was a pleasant surprise, was have another 3 handpumps installed (you can just see two of them in the bottom right corner). Although planned for later in the year, I didn't expect them to be in one plinth (I expected 3 separate pumps). 3 separate pumps wouldn't fit on the end of the bar. 3-in-1, so to speak, do. So now we offer 6 ales and 2 ciders!

Ales for Cask Ale Week

2010-03-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

These are the ales in the Cellar ready for Cask Ale Week

Breconshire Brewery
Kilvert's Gold, 3.7%, traditional Welsh Pale Mild (House Ale)

Red Dragon, 4.7%, Ruby ale

Rambler's Ruin, 5.0%, Champion Old Ale (National Winter Ales Fest 2010)

Otley Brewery

O-Garden, 4.8% Clear Wheat Beer

Columb-O (04), 4.0%, Pale Golden Ale

Wye Valley Brewery

Butty Bach, 4.5%, Burnished Gold Premium Ale

HPA, 4.0%, Pale Ale

Dorothy Goodbody's Golden Ale, 4.2% Golden Ale

Mayfield's Brewery

Copper Fox, 3.8%, Copper coloured session ale (NEW BREW)

Naughty Nells, 4.2%, Best Bitter (soon to be retired)

Ducking Stool, 4.4% Golden Ale

Rhymney Brewery

Export Ale 5.0%

Brains

Rev James, 4.5%, Premium Ale

Titanic Brewery

Black Ice, 4.1%, Mild

Hobsons Brewery
Mild, 3.2%

Town Crier, 4.5% Golden Ale

Twisted Spire, 3.6% Vibrant Blond Beer

Bragdy Nant

Mwnci Nel, 5.9%, Dark Winter Ale - Champion Old Ale at Welsh Winter Ales Festival

Jennings

Snecklifter, 5.1% Strong Ale

Cumberland Ale, 4.0% Golden Ale

Golden Host 4.3% Seasonal Ale

Vale Brewery

Gravitas 4.8%, Pale Premium Hoppy Bitter (3rd in Champion Beer of Britain 2008)

Thwaites
Lancaster Bomber, 4.4% Chestnut coloured ale

Wadworth

Bishop's Tipple, 5.0% Golden Ale

Last year we sold 21 different guest ales over the week. This year I'd like to sell all 24 found above. Sadly we only have the 5 Handpumps, rather than the planned 8, but I'm still positive!

Enjoy, and Cheers!

A quick bit of maths

2010-03-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

Right, time to work out duty increases in real terms. So lets take a 4.5% ale - Pedigree, for example.

The current duty rate on beer is £16.47 per hectolitre per cent of alcohol in the beer (source).

1 Hectolitre = just under 176 pints.

So the duty on a pint of Pedigree would be:

16.47 * 4.5 / 176

As long as my understanding of that phrase 'per hectolitre per cent of alcohol' is correct.

So a pint of Pedigree has 42pence of duty paid on it.

Now for the landlord maths. Taking 42p as the duty of a pint, a firkin contains 72 pints. So thats £30.24 duty on a firkin. But I work my costings based on 68 pints - allowing for 4 pints of wastage/tasters/ullage/oversized glasses. This I'll be reviewing shortly, going off barralage reports from Marstons and what the till tells me I've sold. Plus a pinch of salt. Anyway, back to the maths:

£30.24 paid, 68 pints sold. That's 44p duty a pint. I currently sell Pedigree at £3 a pint (more on that later). At £3, VAT = 45p. So on a £3 pint, 89p is tax. Without thinking of NI or any other taxes.

So duty has now gone up 5%. 16.47 * 1.05 = 17.29

17.29 * 4.5 / 176 = 44p

44 * 72 / 68 = 47p

or £31.68 a firkin

I won't know how much extra Marstons will charge for Pedigree, but it's fair to say it won't be the £1.44 increase in duty, because NMW, NI and fuel duty has all gone up. But assuming the worst, given I haven't increased prices when the VAT came back up, nor on the other products that have had brewery increases, lets say I follow CAMRA and put 20p on a pint (again, I'll talk about actual price increases in a later blog)

So now a pint costs £3.20. VAT on £3.20 = 48p

Duty = 47p a pint

A pint at £3.20 sees the customer paying 95p in tax, again without NI or other taxes being covered.

To summarise, the duty on Pedigree will increase by 3p a pint. When you look at it like that, it can be hard to see what the fuss is. What the media don't tell you is that the additional costs of that pint being stored, poured and presented have also increased. Each outlet is different. So come Monday morning, some pubs will have the price the same. Some will add 20p. Some 3p. I'm nervously looking forward to seeing the price increases on cask, because with a shake up of other products and prices on the bar, you may just find that it doesn't change at my place. I really hope so, because apart from anything else, like many licensees, I pay full price for when I have a pint at the bar. It would send out the wrong signals to the staff and customers if I didn't. And I enjoy a pint of well-kept Pedigree.

Cheers

A couple of notes:

1) All prices have been rounded, up or down as per convention, to the nearest whole penny

2) If any of my maths is incorrect, please let me know. I'm new to this, and still learning. More importantly I'm still willing to learn. So speak up if you can help - thanks.

Budget Day

2010-03-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

So, there we have it. 5% increase across the board, except for cider with a 13% increase.

A couple of thoughts:

Why aren't more of the media reporting it like this? It seems fine for them to report 2% and 10% respectively, when it's 2 and 10% above inflation (currently at 3%).

Whilst the trade world online is full of people bemoaning the inevitable tax rises, once my initial hatred for the badger-faced idiot had calmed down I started thinking about what it actually means. Phoning a couple of suppliers, I was surprised to be told they wouldn't know the price increases straight away. I know I can work out the duty increase myself, which I'll probably do tomorrow (it'll be good practise for when the brewery opens), but I also know that some of them will be adding on further costs at the same time. In the same way I haven't increased prices at the pump with the VAT increase at the start of the year, or the brewers increases that came through in February, a couple of the local brewers haven't passed on any increases yet. So when CAMRA say that 20p could be the increase at the pump, I can well believe it.

What really worries though, is that whoever wins the General Election will have another 'budget', regardless of what they call it. And we can expect VAT to be increased, one way or another. The time-bomb taxes.

Now if we were on the continent, we'd have all the lorry drivers out by now, blocking the motorways and causing hell. But hell, we're British, and so we'll be all talk and no action. Having said that, what can we do? I've already signed at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Realciderbeerale/ but we know the petition system well - they'll be a generic reply of some sort. I'd like to think we could organise a march, but a) I can't see it happening b) I can't see what it would actually achieve.

I imagine Monday will be the day I find out the price increases, and review the prices at the pumps. My initial thoughts are to freeze ale prices and increase others, but I'm aware that's because I'm biased towards ale. Trying to justify it, ale needs turnover to keep it's quality, and the £3 a pint mark is definitely a barrier. But little point worrying about it until I know the increases.

Anyway, time to sleep on it, I'm sure the pub will still be open tomorrow. And with Cask Ale Week on Monday, it should be a good start to the season. Just got to stay positive.

Cheers

The brewery arrives (part 1)

2010-03-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

It's the start of something good. The first 2 Fermentation Vessels arrived on Wednesday, along with 20 barrels. I've already got the Mash Tun, and next Wednesday I'll have the final FV (although it'll be used as a Hot Liquor Tank to begin with) and the Copper.

I know they don't look like much, but I wanted a brewery that I could do up myself, replacing bits and pieces as and when. I didn't want to get a brand new sparkly show piece that meant all I had to do was push a couple of buttons. I suppose I really want to work at it - learn how it all fits together, learn better positions for all the kit. And of course learn how to brew - what different yeasts do.

So here's the kit so far, a 4 Brewer's Barrel Mash Tun, sadly without lid or sparging arm at the moment. As you can see, there's a bit of work to be done on the housing for the brewery - cladding the walls in stainless steel is one option. Getting a roof on it is the first thing though, and that means getting friendly with building regs.

The 2 FVs (yet to be named, suggestions welcome!). Again, not much to look at but the technical side of them is there. They are VERY well insulated, and have cooling jackets which will be plumbed into the water to control the temperature of the ale whilst it ferments. They have a small tap on the door which allows you to draw off samples.

The top of the FVs have an input for an airline. The idea, the previous brewer told me, was that by pumping air into the top of the FV, you can draw the beer off into a conditioning tank without disturbing the yeast at the bottom as much as you would if you drew the beer off with a standard pump. Seems to make sense, and looking forward to the day I turn the pressure up too much without thinking and spray beer across the brewery...

We've found a temporary use for the barrels as well. Rather than just have them stored in the corner of the car park, we currently have no fencing marking the end of the patio. We also have the poles from when the marquee got blown down waiting to be re-used. The solution is on the right - not bad for a temporary solution!

So, not much left to get. Copper and HLT arrive next week. Then it's just a roof, walls, door & lock, water, gas, electric, heat exchange, self priming pumps, connecting pipes, drains, gas ring for under the copper...

National Cask Ale Week

2010-03-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of anything that promotes pubs in a good light, and Cask Ale Week certainly falls into that category. As with everything that I can, I throw myself into this, and it's working to the pubs advantage sooner than I expected. Last year we sold 21 guest ales, plus the regular ales, in the week, on 5 handpumps. We also got presented with the bronze award in the local Camra POTY by our MP. And, most importantly, it was a lot of fun. This year the local newspaper and radio station have already contacted us for more details, and we've got a few room bookings for it as well! So I'm in a good mood, and looking forward to placing the order next week.

I've finally confirmed everything for the week, and it's all in the .pdf file below. It's been designed to be printed double sided, hence the strange layout of it. If you wanted to see it properly, simply print page 2 on the back of page 1, page 4 on the back of page 3, fold into a booklet and your away.

If anyone has any suggestions on how we could improve the week, let me know as we go to print on Wednesday ( delayed by a day sadly).

Cheers

NCAW2010 Programme of Events

1 to rule them all...

2010-02-26T11:07:00.000-08:00

A recent comment on one of Pete Brown's blogs got me thinking about all that speak for the trade. DJ suggests that the trade needs another body, and I found myself spending the last week debating both sides for and against the idea in my head. The kind of thinking that wakes you up at 3am with an 'its so obvious' moment.

There are plenty of groups that claim to speak for the trade. I'm not sure what criteria is needed to form a group that that 'speaks for the trade' - I know I've never been asked by any of them. I am a member of the BII, mainly for the excellent training and ideas-sharing that they do. I'm a big fan of working out problems, rather than just moaning about them, and the trade would do better as a whole to look at others, and indeed ask, what works for them that might work for me.

It's part of the reason for calling this blog Student Brewer - although the idea was to write about my experiences setting up and running a brewery, and learning the craft, it's let me talk about other ways that I consider myself a student. I starting using twitter for the pub ( @kilverts ), and learnt quickly from other pubs that I started following what it could be used for. Updating the guest ales, for example, or highlighting that a new menu is now live on the website (seeing as you asked, Mother's Day menu goes live on Monday).

But the BII seems very 'on the fence' regarding nearly everything. The BBPA will jump on anything that takes the spotlight off the tie. The IPC includes in it's ranks Fairpint, who want the tie removed, no middle road, and SIBA, who argue for the tie to a degree. And there's numerous other groups - GMB Pubrevolution, who for ages have said they, as self employed businessmen and women, will go on strike by breaking their legally binding contracts. In fact, they've said it for so long now I'm actually hoping they get on and do it, so that they'll be sorted, one way or another, and leave a space for people like me, and I presume DJ, and others that I talk to, to campaign against raising tax/mandatory codes/neo-pro's/more red tape/etc ad nauseum.

But that would involve forming another group - a group I'd like to think of as democratic (as far as possible). A group that surveys it's members, and asks for their top 3 things to campaign for/against. A group that I feel I have a say in - even if it's just picking the top 3 out of 10(?) things every 6 months. A quick email would do.

And it would need a figurehead. Someone willing and able to take apart Health Alliance reports and show the truth. Someone willing, not just to blame others and argue against them, but to go to the table with them, and suggest a future that works for both parties. Someone with genuine knowledge of the trade and it's issues, but not directly in it as that would potentially skew their opinions. And someone who can get their ideas, thoughts and proposals across clearly, in a way that's understood by all.

I have my own thoughts on this, and a couple of names spring to mind. But given the world of beer writing and blogging that I've found myself sinking deeper into, I suggest we don't need another trade body. We need the Guild of Beer Writers. A group willing to speak for pubs and their customers without bias, led, perhaps, by Melissa Cole and Pete Brown.

Cheers!

Win - Win - Win

2010-02-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

Been a great weekend this one, and shows no sign of letting up! One particular part of it made me feel on top of the world yesterday.

We offer Camra members a £10 discount on our rooms, which has worked by increasing take up of the rooms so far this year. A couple checked in yesterday, and he pulled out his Camra card and asked about the discount. Nothing unusual there, showed them to their room, all is well.

Later on in the evening, I fancy a pint as the evening starts to wind down (Dorothy Goodbody's Ruby Ale - beautiful. Shame it's only a guest ale!). Seeing the couple at the bar say hello, and we start chatting. It turns out he had only recently 'found' real ale, and when he saw the ale page on our website and then the discount offer, he booked straight away. Immediately after booking, he joined Camra - because of the discount! Hence he didn't mention the offer when booking, but upon checking in as his card had arrived.

I see this as a win-win-win situation. He was happy, he'd got a deal staying in the only pub in the town that does guest real ales (5 handpumps, 7 ales over the weekend). I was happy - I'd finally found an offer that genuinely seemed to work, rather than just us loosing money (in that most guests that take up offers would have booked anyway on the feedback forms we did last year). And I had been part of the team that had made this particular couple very happy indeed.

Camra had won as it had a new member. Nobody was loosing out in this scenario. And for a while, that really gave me hope for this trade. At times, you really feel like banging your head against a wall, when all you read in the mainstream papers and trade press is bad news. So something that genuinely appears* not to have any down-side gives a great mini-boost, especially at this time of year.

And hopefully, to top the weekend off, the brewery I'm off to have a look at tomorrow will be just what I'm after, and at the price I'm after too. Who knows - tomorrow may well be another day where there's no downside - I get what I'm after, and he gets rid of what he needs. Here's hoping.

Cheers

*If anyone finds any potential downsides, please let me know through the comments! Cheers