Category: Uncategorised

Every week I don’t do a brewery blog post I get told off by our sales girl Dawn, she likes me to keep everyone up-to-date with goings on and new beer happenings in the brewery, she even likes a bit of rant, though I’ll try keep that to a minimum and if it does happen it only happens because I care deeply about our little business and the state of our UK brewing industry.

Introducing….

Squelch, its a 3.5% Session IPA with Simcoe, Amarillo, Motueka and a hint of Bravo, its got a fairly firm bitterness and its unfined, vegan and quite possibly hazy, dry hopped to a similar level as Bleep… this is the kinda the little brother of Bleep.

Next up is….

Wibble (Yeah its from a Blackadder scene) its a blend of Simcoe & Ekuanot hops which I had an excellent beer from Cromarty Brewing while up in Edinburgh. Its turned out pretty dank with all the Simcoe in it, a proper gob full of dank mouth-coating hops, unfined, vegan and hazy 5.2%

Coming very soon…. to a Cap & Collar near you on keykeg!

Dassler, this is our new NZ Helles lager using Motueka hops, hits of tartness from the Acidulated malt, a nice spicy bitterness from the Saaz-related Motueka hopping, we almost called this a Pils…. we almost called it all manner of things while trying to name it. Dassler comes from the innovative brothers that created Adidas and Puma, they were a couple of shoe makers… this fits well because my Grandad was a Cobbler 🙂 4.2% Unfined & Unfiltered (Casks are Fined).

Happy now Dawn?

Saturday 14th July, thats next weekend in case you wondered, Wishbone are hosting and Bingley Brewery are bringing their bar down to Keighley, two brewers, two bars, entertainment from Singer Jamie Squire from Saltaire and Streetfood from Southern Manny Flavaz… think fried Chicken and Waffles then some tasty Vegan treats too 🙂

Bar open 12 til 10pm-ish, about 12 tasty beers to sup your way through from us and Bingley 🙂

 

I would really like this to have gone far and wide, there are 2000+ brewers in the UK so imagine the results we would see if we could engage with them all.
So, as I said all the results would be made freely available, no email addresses will be used for anything and the results will not be picked through on an individual level… ‘cos thats just not fair!

You can see the results HERE.

And for those of you who still want to complete the survey it is still running so you can do that HERE.

The things we can see so far…

• 90% of those who responded run a brewery no bigger than 10bbl brewkit.
• 84% of those who responded produce no more than 20bbl of beer a week.
• 74% of those brewers have no more than 3 employees.
• A massive 62% of breweries have a Brewery Tap, Pub, bar, bottle shop.
• 62% of Brewers are SIBA members.
• 68% of those that responded don’t think its important to be a SIBA member.
• Its a relatively even split on whether or not brewers discount to gain sales.
• 74% of Brewers DO NOT price their beers to take into account giving a discount.
• 56% of Brewers think Beer Wholesalers should pay the cost of having a pallet of beer delivered.
• 48% of those that responded said they wouldn’t sell enough beer if the FULL Beer Duty rate was charged, 46% said ‘Maybe’.

You can check out the cask pricing splits for yourselves, its a little more complex but shows that all beers are different, all brewers production costs are different, I think it is fair for landlords to appreciate that everyone is different and there is no longer a cover-all price or ABV-lead structure that can dictate what modern beer should cost. *back to this old Chestnut eh 😉

We brewed our first two Lagers, Strauss which came out at 4.3% (target was 4.9%) and beers which uses a reasonably large portion of Vienna malt mashed fairly hot to retain body and subtle hopping from German Hallertau Mittlefruh. Mittlefruh was the obvious choice for the simple reason that we already use quite a lot of it in our European Blonde. Tettnang or Hersbrucker would have been equally lager-esque in character.
Gohan is still cold conditioning in tank and its hit its target of 5.5% almost perfectly, we learned a bit about how the yeast works with mash temperature from Strauss, Gohan includes a 25kg sack of Flaked Rice to help lighten colour and bring a more refreshing edge to the beer, I was thinking Vedette white for some of my inspiration though the hopping is off on a tangent and then Framework came on board with this brew and we decided to give it the spice treatment with additions of Coriander and Camomile. Its making for a very distinct beer and we can’t wait to get this Keg-Conditioned and it have it served properly when carbonated.

So when is a lager no longer a lager, does a lager have to taste like a stereotypical lager to be a lager?

I think this is a good question, undoubtedly if you lager a beer ‘cold conditioning or ageing at low temperature’ I guess it kinda becomes a lager through this cold maturation period.
But what about an IPL, India Pale Lager, it would use a lager yeast and go through its cold conditioning period but the hopping would be that of an India Pale Ale and its never going to drink like a lager. In my opinion using hops that aren’t traditional for a lager beer detracts from the classic flavours from those noble hops, I’ll have more idea about this when we taste Gohan which has already got way more flavour than that of most lagers.
All that said I think there is lots of room for using Traditional lager hop varieties which have been bred from or grown in other countries so you get some of the traditional backed up with the flavours that the climate and soil of the other country bring, NZ Pacifica & Motueka are going to be fun for certain with the latter bringing the character of Czech Saaz when used in the boil hops.

Next up, re-brew of Strauss as its mostly reserved for MTB/TTO’s, then get our timing right to crop the yeast for a 4th Lager brew I think we could manage about 1 per month without screwing over our other production… so what shall we brew?

Black Lager? Marzen? Vienna? Pilsner? Bock?

Untappd: Most Popular vs Highest Rated

Its weird, our most popular beers according to untappd are our 5 ‘core beers’ we started out with two and a half years ago with Flux and Cloudy with a chance of hops creeping up on them.

Our Highest Rated beers on Untappd is almost completely different, Cloudy with a chance of hops is well up there, Parallax is stubbornly and consistently up at the top no matter if other beers beat it down for a while on occasion.

So what does that mean?
It seems to be down to the number or ratings that our old 5 core range is up there and Blonde, Gumption & Abyss will always keep coming around on the brewplan as regulars.
If its actual rating + number of ratings then Black Porter and Cloudy with a chance of hops should be firmly nailed to the ‘Core Range’ tag. Tiller Pin is as good as permanent thanks to the guys at the Boathouse in Skipton and I keep having thoughts of brewing a ‘Tiller Pin 2’ which would be a little stronger with the volume turned up on the dry hopping. Not forgetting Pastiche, Night Star & Volk, the later two will be making appearances on the brewplan soon though I’ll have to check hop stock for Galaxy to see if we can brew Pastiche again.

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.