Wishbone Brewery – Keighley, Yorkshire, UK

There are a group of big brewers out there that will quite happily take our livelihoods away…

We really love what we do and we want to get to a position of actually taking a real wage out of the company, paying our staff more money and hopefully growing our little business to a sustainable level.

So lets not let them screw us over!

Here are their suggestions for Beer Duty Reform with my thoughts below.

We recommend that the maximum duty relief is maintained at 50% for ‘micro’ brewers,
defined as being up to 1,000 hls.

The current Small Brewers Relief (SBR) is set at 5000 Hectolitres (hls) and these big brewers want to cut that back to 1000 hls, this would mean that the vast majority of Small Independent brewers would have to start paying a higher rate of Beer Duty. In theory this would be passed onto the customer with a price increase. This may result in a lot of us small breweries not being able to compete on price with the bigger breweries because we do not have the economies of scale, worse still it might see a load of small brewers being pushed out of the market and closing their businesses (much to the glee of the Big brewers who will get a bigger market share than what they already have!).

We also recommend the upper limit for SBR relief be raised from 60,000 hls to 200,000 hls

Now this one is a bit more tricky, if the Big brewers are sensible they could simply make more money out of this, though if the same things happens that happened with SBR any releif from the burden of Beer Duty will mean the Big brewers are able to undercut small brewers pushing them out of the market and, yeah you guessed it, out of business.

Above 1,000 hls, the rate of relief would be adjusted in a phased approach to be more
closely aligned to the diseconomy of scale curve.

They cite some graph at this point showing us how bad they have it and they just can’t make any money because they are so big and that all those little guys are raking in the money because of thier 50% Beer Duty Relief…. What the actual case is… They have their graph arse-backwards, THEY are the ones racking in the cash and posting healthy profits each year while the small guys like us are managing to pay the mortgage, pay the household bills and struggle with things like high business rates!

Export sales should be excluded from the brewer’s volume for duty purposes until the
point that UK plus export sales exceed 200,000 hls.

This one is actually very sensible in my opinion, why should the volume of beer for export be levied against brewers when the beer is to be consumed outside the UK. Never mind a limit, just don’t include any exported volume in production figures that have a bearing on Beer Duty.

We recommend a further adjustment so small brewers can merge with other small
brewers and their respective duty reliefs are combined and phased down over 3 years on a
straight line basis until they are paying the rate relevant to the combined volume.

A market ripe for buying out small brewers then?? Other than that I don’t feel I can comment on this point.

We recommend that there is a further review of SBR in 3 years.

Well you would want a clause in so if it wasn’t going your way you get to try again! We have a yearly review of this anyway, its called The Budget and its where the chancellor puts Beer duty up! Seriously though, things should be reviewed but ALL brewers should be given a say and not just the apathetic SIBA members so a real market picture can be used to guide change.

We suggest consideration is given to converting SBR into an actual cash figure

To be honest, I do not understand this, even reading the notes for it… anyone?

We recommend that HMRC consider whether any improvements might be necessary in
the current inspection regime to ensure full compliance within any revisions to the SBR
scheme.

We would welcome industry wide inspection, brewers, pubs, bars, wholesalers etc as it would help keep our industry above board, you hear tales about how so-en-so sells beer under the radar to thingy-ma-jig’s Pub to save on VAT or something.

Things we need to address in our industry are:

• Increase the duty burden on Multinational brewers who undercut everyone and sell beer into the UK market which causes price distortion, basically this screws over all brewers in the UK other than the Multinationals.
• Contract brewing should have beer duty charged to the brewer who contracts out production at their rate.
• No duty calculation from exported volumes.
• Always help the small brewers who lack the economy of scale.
• Or… just scrap beer duty and raise Govt money by other means.
• We need CAMRA & SIBA to support Small Brewers with all their might.
• If SIBA is to stay relevant to brewers it needs to be FULLY democratic in its decisions and choices and engage the silent masses of members & UK brewers.

I can see now that beating SIBA on their recent AGM vote to allow bigger brewers to join SIBA was a good thing, if the big brewers take control of SIBA you can wave goodbye to any Small Brewers Relief, wave goodbye small and local, wave goodbye to independence, wave goodbye to breweries and beers, wave goodbye to consumer choice.

I’ve been struggling with shouting about this subject online, I feel I can rant about things at times though only through wanting to ensure our industry is in a good environment. I also don’t want to look like a dick to people I admire, so I needed to find a balance yet still be able to make my thoughts public on this brewing industry that we all love.

#SBDRC

…Stay small …Shop local.

 

Further Reading:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eIgtWaQpHuhcdB5Ra3I21uUoKqxTsaeJ/view
http://cask-marque.co.uk/cask-matters/small-breweries-reform-coalition/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lgDyqQA4IKKRvu0pwlS8hQcfv2jgHgQ8/view

Yep, everyone wants a pint of beer at a fair price but I am really unsure if any campaigning group can really make a difference.

If CAMRA & SIBA campaign for a Duty Reduction or Freeze it will be worth about 1 Penny a pint! So surely this means that the only brewers that will benefit will be the Massive ones and the actual drinker in the pub isn’t going to see that Penny in any shape or form.

Cost Factors:

• Business Rates Increase – A massive smack in the teeth to brewers & landlords.
• Fuel Costs – Delivery of raw materials, distribution of finished products, Vehicle service costs, Road Tax etc.
• Energy Costs – Electricity & Gas and their ever increasing price.
• Minimum / Living Wage – Has seen quite a few recent increases.
• Insurance – In all its forms, business, vehicle and the levied taxation on it.
• VAT – You could say general tax, though this is just Govt ‘Cash flow’ and shouldn’t effect things too much for VAT registered businesses.
• Legislation – every time a new piece of legislation comes into play for manufacturers it costs them more.
• Etc – add something I’ve missed?

Now take that list and apply it to every-single-manufactured-product that a Pub or Brewery uses and tell me a way that we can bring down the costs to produce, distribute and sell beer.

Take a penny of Duty off per pint for a small to medium brewery and you are not going to see an effect on the cost of a pint down the pub because the small brewer’s margins are already tight.

Take a penny of Duty off per pint for a Massive brewery and the only thing you will see is a massive tax break for that massive brewery which keeps the shareholders and big business happy, no change to the price of a pint down the pub.

Its a loosing battle and we are flogging a dead horse, costs to produce will increase and to some extent we all need to accept that.

Nothing is ever going to get cheaper!

Permanent Beer lines

I think it is time that we started to think about offering permanent beer lines to Landlords, so far this is something we / I have stayed away from for the simple reason that I like variety when I walk into a pub and if the same beers are their day in day out then I’m going to loose interest. *Thats just me though*

I realise there are many drinkers out their who enjoy going to a pub and having a pint of their regular beer or a pint from their usual brewer.
The regular lines we have now are on this page and they are all a friendly agreement with a discount or friendly gesture for being good regular customers taking a certain amount of beer each month.

We would like a few more of these to help progress our brand, especially in the local area (10-15mile radius of Keighley) so I am putting it out there that if any Bars, Pubs, Clubs (Sports, Social) or Landlords wish to discuss having a permanent deal on their bar, be it a Handpull or a Keg line… or a combo of the two… Please have a chat with us and we will see what we can do for the benefit of both of us.

Within this if anyone would like to take our beers for a 3 or 6 month beer-residency then lets have that chat too…

You can give us a call on 01535 600412 or email sales@wishbonebrewery.co.uk and talk to Adrian, Emma or Dawn

We look forward to hearing from you and hope we can both #SupportLocal

I have started a survey and i would like as many Brewers as possible to complete it, the results will be published here on the blog for all to see afterwards. I/we won’t be looking at any personal detail, I want the UK’s Independent brewers to have an overview of what we all charge and what we all think about a few points. I will release snippets of graphs via Twitter as we go then publish all the graphs along with the spreadsheet data for all to see once we get a good sample of brewers, ideally we want ever brewer in the UK to fill it in though I’ll accept the current SIBA membership numbers of 824.
If the survey dies a death I will release whatever data we have, no email addresses will be released and we won’t go emailing you or selling your details or any such shit like that!

Please be honest in your responses!  Here is the Survey link.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQYc8ldD2gkfsyJrPnTh-MW5JP8W1Www0Q14lBOGMm5lAiYw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Cheers & please Retweet, Share, Post, Re-blog all you like

Ruby Weapon is an American Red ale or more of a Red IPA because of how much we will be dry hopping it, unfined and 4.9%

Strauss may take a back seat on the brewplan due to a couple of Snowy delays thanks to the wonderfull British weather, it will be our first Lager and we are keeping it simple, Lager malt, Vienna malt, German Mittlefruh hops, Lager yeast and Acidulated Malt to tweak the mash pH (Cheers JK), unfined and unfiltered in keg 4.9%

Hazy Wheat a recipe made totally from my reaction to another brewer’s Stuck Mash, the situation where the Husk-less grains of Wheat and its gummy nature make all your malted barley & wheat set solid in the Mash Tun and water won’t wash out the sugars in a timely manner so your brewday descends into brew-evening or brew-night, so I wish to test our kit, our process and a wheat beer recipe all for the sake of curiosity. There will also be Citra & Amarillo, Dry hopped and unfined 4.4% in a true German-style Wheat beer it would be between 50-60% Wheat in the recipe.

 

I’ve written about the cost of beer before and I have seen some conversation online about encouraging brewers to make beer that can be sold at £3 a pint, I feel we ask a fair price for every cask of beer we sell and a lot of our beer could be sold at £3 a pint.

This snowy weather made me think that it would be nice if we had more local support for our beers so when the bad weather hits we can still get beers out of the door to at least some of our customers easier.
I feel the likes of Leeds and Manchester do a lot more supporting of Brewers within the bounds of the city area however a lot of the brewers outside of that area seem to get missed out, then local pubs to those brewers outside of cities struggle sell their beers in the same towns.
Its a bit sad that Localism and Local Support are city based, there are pubs in Keighley/Local that will be getting beer from 30 miles away or more on a regular basis yet they hardly ever ShopLocal.

I question whether we should brew a range of beers that may encourage local pubs to buy local beers, Ya know…. Beers with less ingredients at no more than 4% Which could all be sold at a lower price “because people don’t care what they drink” so long as the price is right… they need to get a certain amount drunk for a certain amount of money, thats it! This is certainly the case in some towns and some pubs with the clientele they have around them.

What affect would brewing cheap beers with less ingredients have on the perception of what we do?

• Maybe locally it would help beer sales.
• Ethically it goes against everything I stand for about making beer.
• Maybe it would devalue what we do.

So I guess its best to stick to our guns and brew beer in the way that feels right.

So how do we find more local support?? How do we get people outside of Cities to Shop Local??

We are considering having a Locals Night, invite only for current customers and pubs in the local area, landlords can bring their staff or a couple of their loyal customers and the beer and food will be on us.

Then there is the question, “Are all our beers Local-Friendly?” Nope, never in a month of Sundays will our beers tick the right boxes for local sales! (lots of variety and a greater mount of beers with a greater amount of ingredients)

Cycle back to the cheap beer with less ingredients! Ha!

And a slight aside to all that…..

There are brewers out there who are set in a race to the bottom, you see prices online with discounts that make you wonder how the heck they make any money let alone pay the correct Beer Duty. These brewers (they know who they are) need to get together and talk to each other about what they are doing, they are not helping themselves and only spoiling the beer market for themselves and others. Ask yourselves, How much do you value the beer you make?!

A big thanks to the loyal local customers we do have, tell ya friends 😉

The #AskSIBA question I posed was answered in a roundabout way, in the style of a politician, I can’t help but think of a certain comedian when hearing Mike Benner’s voice but can’t quite recall the specific comic.

I started thinking, having recently filled in the yearly members survey, maybe there was a section missing.

A price of Cask survey.

The First question would be, “What size of brewery are you?” (10BBL brewing 3 times per week etc)

Free Trade: (Doing a couple of different ABV ranges so we can see a rough average for up-to 4% and over 4%, maybe a 5%+ range too)

1. For a beer between 3.5% – 3.9% Cask beer how much to you charge?
2. For the same beer how much does that cost you to produce, including all fixed costs, wages, ingredients, duty etc etc?

Ask the same questions for selling to Wholesalers and include rental casks and Palletization / Transport costs, ask the same for sales to JDW, ask the same for sales via Beerflex.

Lets not include any other parts of a ‘Varied Portfolio’ like bottles or keg and stick with Cask Beer, but lets pose questions like:

• Do you consider sales to ‘X’ to be Profitable? Yes or No
• Do you sell to ‘X’ as simply a form of marketing and accept that it doesn’t make you any money? Yes or No
• If you sold your beers to include the FULL Duty rate in your pricing do you think you would sell enough beer to make a profit?  Yes or No

I’m sure their are SIBA members out there that can add to what might be pertinent questions to ask the membership so we might have real world view of the brewing industry.

In the coming months SIBA will produce their annual report, it will be glossy and positive as is the way with commercial reporting telling the members where growth is and how good certain aspects are. The bits I would like to see is the negatives, give us some balance to all the polished graphs and stats with what is actually happening for brewers, I get the impression there is a lot of discontent in the membership so brutal honest black and white may be helpful.

And finally, I keep hearing things about the ‘low wholesale price of beer’, meaning the mass-market lagers that get sold to chain pubs and JDW, this skews the market price for beer from the ground up so what can be done to loosen the grip of the multinationals and put more business in the hands of us small independent local brewers?

I know, I know, its all been about #Tryanuary lately, well after Saturday (Jan 27th) its all going to to be about a mini vegan beer and food fest here in the brewery with our friends from Torrside Brewery, Nomadic Brewery, Rubys Street Kitchen and HotTod Dogs and Sauces 🙂

We will all be serving Unfined Vegan beers and all the food is going to be totally vegan too!

12 til 9-ish, Keighley, here at the brewery 😉

Quality, quality or quality?

I recently stated my thoughts at a SIBA (Society of Independent Brewers) meeting regarding a few issues, one of those was in regard to SIBA’s FSQ (Food Safety and Quality Certificate) Quality Audit which is only needed for selling into Tied Pubcos via the SIBA DDS/Beerflex program. I’ll get to this in a bit more detail later.

I see ‘Quality’ as having 3 basic streams.

1. Procedure
2. Microbiological testing
3. Knowledge and skill with the use of ingredients

These three streams of quality can be combined or separated in any combination and a brewer can make either good, bad or indifferent beer with any or all. A combination of all three seems like a pretty good idea.

Procedure:
I am somewhat spoilt in that my background from Saltaire Brewery taught me a great deal of solid procedure, this procedure should be written down and followed, full and complete records should be kept. This is something that ALL brewers should be adhering to from day one of brewing beer.
Its basically Food Safety and the production of beer inline with known procedure which helps eliminate the chance of making anyone poorly. Everything Cleaned and Sanitised before beer goes anywhere near it.

Microbiological testing:
Ideally a brewer should be able to trust their cleaning procedures and demonstrate that what they make is free from contamination. Samples should be taken and various stages for analysis to verify that casks, vessels, yeast, wort are all free of contamination. The simple solution for cleaned vessels is an ATP meter and swabs that tests for protein residue after cleaning and give a score from ZERO upwards with zero being no detected protein. Samples could also be plated up in lab conditions to see if any bugs grow so they can be identified.

Knowledge and skill with the use of ingredients:
I’ll be blunt here, you can give the best ingredients in the world to a brewer and they can still make shit beer. Conversely you can give the worst ingredients in the world to another brewer who will make amazing beer.

I guess what I am trying to say is that ‘Quality’ needs to be a combination of all three points to be fully confident in the beer you produce.
Good Procedure gets you a long way, so long as its adhered to! Though you could make technically correct, contamination-free beer that still tastes pants!

FSQ:
I feel FSQ is a box-ticking exercise and I would argue that is it ‘money for old rope’ for a lot of brewers and has consequences for brewers having to spend more money on some potentially unneeded services or schemes without any real quantifiable standard being achieved.
Join SIBA each year £150 (for arguments sake as a small brewer)
FSQ Audit £300 per year
BFBi Feed Assurance Scheme £175 per year (SIBA require you to register)
Pest Control Contract £250 per year (Contract required by SIBA) *As a food producer you need to have regularly checked pest control in place*

FSQ is no use for selling to Supermarkets, SALSA or BRC would be required if Supermarkets are your thing, SALSA or BRC can be used in place of FSQ in all areas.
FSQ is not required by Bottle Shops
FSQ is not required by Free House pubs or bars
FSQ is not required for direct sales to the public

Then there is the Flying Firkin thing, SIBA just bought a controlling share in Flying Firkin Distribution, (Apparently with members money and without asking the membership) Flying Firkin sells beer to Beer Festivals and Freehouse Pubs and neither of which require SIBA membership or an FSQ audit. Though SIBA’s plan for Flying Firkin is to make all brewers who use them join SIBA and gain the FSQ, so the brewers have to jump through hoops and spend money to be able to continue supplying via FF and all the time SIBA can potentially grow its membership and gain more funds from membership fees and FSQ audits.

I think it is time that SIBA offered a simple membership option for those brewers that wish to support their petitioning of government on Taxation and Beer Duty issues but don’t feel like any other part of SIBA is of benefit to them.

When I started homebrewing making beer was all about experimenting with different combinations of ingredients to see what you got in the finished beer. For me this is still what brewing beer is about, albeit commercial brewing is guided by procedure, quality and record keeping.

Our 5x Beer ‘Core Range’ we started out with lasted about 12 months, the next 12 months moved up a notch and a heck of a lot of new beers were brewed, I believe the next 12 months will be different again though we do have some pretty funky hops to play with during 2018 that is not going to stop us from experimenting with other varieties that don’t always get the same degree of exposure as the Citra/Simcoe/Mosaic/Galaxy/Nelson Sauvin’s of the hop world.

We designed the Unfunk pumpclip (and its Recipe) expressly for this purpose and you will see different combinations over many brews, guaranteed they will all taste like beer and it will show drinkers what these flavour combinations are like, look out for:

• Summit & Magnum (Brewed late Dec)
• Admiral & Cascade (Currently Dry Hopping in FV)
• Citra & First Gold (Future brew)
• More to follow…

We will not be bound by brewing only with the crowd pleasing hops, though if we did I dare say we could make our business climb the ranks a bit faster. Thats not to say that we won’t brew a Citra & Mosaic Unfunk, its about flavour experiences so the more the merrier.

All the above doesn’t do a heck of a lot for your overall Brewery-Score on things like Untappd and RateBeer so although having a high brewery score is obviously very nice we are going to try not worry about that too much and just keep doing what we do.

If you do rate our beers on one of these websites/apps then please leave us constructive comments, and rating a beer 1-Star because its simply not your thing is just dumb and if thats the case please leave a comment with NO rating 😉 Consider all beers separately within style and appreciate that once a beer leaves the brewery we loose control and many variables start to come into play.

You can of course expect a load of big hoppy punchy beers from us this year 😉