Well, nothing untoward to report, yet...
We've just taken delivery of 100 new firkins, courtesy of close brewery rentals, so production should soon be in a position keep up with demand.
Silence, Royston Red & Highwayman have been the main brewing activities so far this month, with a batch of 'Western Harrier' currently in one of the FV's. This is a one off pale beer, brewed mainly just to use some English trial hops('Irene') we purchased a little while back. Next week will see Challenger (in the tank already), and Highwayman going through, and as soon as space allows 'Blink Bonny', a darkish beer, again brewed just to use some stray hops whilst we have some space in the schedules.
Looking much further ahead we have been asked to re-create a mild, once brewed in the East Midlands - we already use the required yeast, so it will be a good chance to see just how close we can match the original, at the first attempt, without the use of dozens of men in white coats.
We have also installed a new PC. Coming from the IT world I had some trepidation about moving over to Windows Vista, especially as at it would have to talk to two XP machines (desktop & laptop), plus a shared printer. Quite frankly, I was amazed. It just worked it all out for itself. Maybe Microshaft have got it right at last. No complaints, no battles to get Vista to see the printer, the network or the internet. I might even end up actually really liking Windows at last....
But in order to balance things somewhat, we have just broken one of our brewery pumps. And it would be the last of the 'odd' ones. Which means plenty of kerfuffle in changing fittings etc to make it fully interchangeable (like the other pumps) or getting adaptors and make existing piping fit it. Much like I expected when I switched Vista on for the first time....
Saturday, 14 July 2007
It's Not Rain, It's Next Years Beer...
You must have noticed it's been a bit wet in parts of late - the recent footage of flooding in Sheffield was, err, well, something else. Indeed we would like to extend our best wishes to the Kelham Island Brewery (and others of course, plus the pubs) who were quite heavily affected, indeed washed out entirely. May they all be back in full operation soon, though I suspect many already are.
Of course up here on the hill, with chalk soil, flooding really isn't a big worry - after all, by the time we get flooded, most of our customers will be several fathoms under water - so we have brushed the rain off as just future beer (after all, it does top up the aquifers tapped by our borehole). Trouble is, if it doesn't stop soon, and by stop I mean get warm & dry for a week or three, then this years barley harvest will be in trouble, which means malting barley will go up in price, and possibly suffer a degree of scarcity - and that is not what we want.
On the other side though, I suspect just three dry days will result in hose pipe bans across the country. You can't win, can you. Maybe someone should build a few reservoirs to trap the flood waters - but no, that would mean spending money, and we can't do that. So we'll just carry on building on the flood plains, and constructing local flood relief schemes that just speed the waters on to someone else instead.
Don't you just love joined-up thinking and long term planning.
Of course up here on the hill, with chalk soil, flooding really isn't a big worry - after all, by the time we get flooded, most of our customers will be several fathoms under water - so we have brushed the rain off as just future beer (after all, it does top up the aquifers tapped by our borehole). Trouble is, if it doesn't stop soon, and by stop I mean get warm & dry for a week or three, then this years barley harvest will be in trouble, which means malting barley will go up in price, and possibly suffer a degree of scarcity - and that is not what we want.
On the other side though, I suspect just three dry days will result in hose pipe bans across the country. You can't win, can you. Maybe someone should build a few reservoirs to trap the flood waters - but no, that would mean spending money, and we can't do that. So we'll just carry on building on the flood plains, and constructing local flood relief schemes that just speed the waters on to someone else instead.
Don't you just love joined-up thinking and long term planning.
One Of Our Dragonflies Is Missing...
...Well, several actually. Last year our little pond was alive with dragonflies, all performing the aerial dogfights much to our entertainment (and possibly theirs of course). This year, just as their numbers start to rise, they disappear. Then after a few days they come back, and start disappearing again - and so the cycle goes on. I'm no dragonfly expert, but I doubt they are going off on long weekends, indeed I suspect it's new ones appearing each time.
So out came our Miss Marple & Columbo outfits. We wanted to get to the bottom of this. Were we being visited by hordes of stealth-equipped bug collectors? Did we have have some kind of lake monster hiding in the reedbed - it would be a good visitor attraction after all. No, nothing of the sort. What we seem to have is a Hobby...
No, we aren't talking stamp collecters, but falcons. The Hobby is a sort of small Peregrine Falcon, just a bit bigger than a kestrel it seems (see the RSPB page here), and it has a taste for dragonflies. To see it in action was quite impressive - it swoops down to the targeted dragonfly, grabs it in its talons, and flies upwards again, transferring the victim to its mouth & eating it whilst doing so. The latin name for the Hobby is Falco subbuteo - and it is from this bird that the table football game got its name apparently. Now there's a useful fact.
So mystery solved, and do you know what? We are rather pleased to have a Hobby amongst us - now all we need is an Osprey for a full set (and that is not so impossible, they do pass through Herts we are told).
So out came our Miss Marple & Columbo outfits. We wanted to get to the bottom of this. Were we being visited by hordes of stealth-equipped bug collectors? Did we have have some kind of lake monster hiding in the reedbed - it would be a good visitor attraction after all. No, nothing of the sort. What we seem to have is a Hobby...
No, we aren't talking stamp collecters, but falcons. The Hobby is a sort of small Peregrine Falcon, just a bit bigger than a kestrel it seems (see the RSPB page here), and it has a taste for dragonflies. To see it in action was quite impressive - it swoops down to the targeted dragonfly, grabs it in its talons, and flies upwards again, transferring the victim to its mouth & eating it whilst doing so. The latin name for the Hobby is Falco subbuteo - and it is from this bird that the table football game got its name apparently. Now there's a useful fact.
So mystery solved, and do you know what? We are rather pleased to have a Hobby amongst us - now all we need is an Osprey for a full set (and that is not so impossible, they do pass through Herts we are told).
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