Of January & Cynics

Given the sudden lack of postings (again), you could be forgiven for thinking we had been visiting Bin Laden at Lord Lucan's new home. But fear not, we have been here all along, just too busy (or too lazy?) to publish any worthy waffle here.

Well, not anymore. So what has been happening? Christmas has apparently been and gone (Our friends at Tring had Christmas last week it seems, so we are not alone...). Quite a bit of time has been spent sorting out stuff related to the expansion, which has now started (or it least it sounds like it has). A regular blog update relating to the work will appear on this very site, probably. So far the huge increase in raw material prices has not caused us to drop down dead, but that could yet change. Oh, and Mother Nature has just this week decided it is now Spring (more on this too on this site in due course). But the really pertinent stuff must be what is, and has been, brewing...

January, as any brewer will tell you, is generally very quiet in the trade. This is down to Christmas overload amongst the great unwashed, and then come the end of the month, the arrival of the credit card statement. So February therefore often isn't much better. Now of course bills & wages etc still ahve to be paid, so it is not uncommon to find breweries offering big discounts at this time of year, just to get some money coming in, just to cover costs. Thankfully, we have not (yet) ever had to resort to this. And this year it seems that we are not alone - although it may have more to do with the fact that an increasing number of breweries are now discounting heavily all year. It might even be the raw material increases, but that would seem to contradict the previous argument. For us, January was, against all expectation, a good month. Not the best, but good nonetheless.

Why? Well, being cynical, we decided to try a new tack. Specials. Now we have often had specials available over the last 3 years or so, but not to the degree we have now. For example, in January we had Boadicea 4.0% & Western Cavalier 3.8%, and now we have Venus 4.4%, Woolwinder 4.1% & A Little Bitter Science 3.9%. Why is this cynical? Because there is a demand for new beers in trade. In the past we have tried to focus on our core range, but now, with a whole stack of new casks to play with, and the problems with certain hops, we have been able to look again at our range. So, instead of bringing in new regulars, we have joined the band of those who constantly change brews. Once it has been brewed, that's it. No re-brewing. Of course we still have our core beers, but instead of brewing a special for a period of time, we are doing one brew, then moving on. Eventually of course we'll run out of permutations. But names? No. So yes, it's cynical. But it works, and unlike some breweries, we are actually changing the recipes (to varying degrees) between each name. So cynical, and ethical.

This means more Western beers (we have over 50 more of these train names to use yet), and more beers named after LNER A1, A2 & A3 locomotives. Britannia, as mentioned in the past, has been hit by problems with getting Bramling Cross hops. We have managed to source some now, but not enough. So Britannia will be rested for periods through the year, to be replaced by a range of similar strength (4.4%) beers, all named after Britannia class locomotives (ironically, Britannia was never named after a train..) And there are plenty of them. And then we have loads more - certainly more than you could shake an anorak's notebook at. And that is just trains - other themes/names aren't hard to find of course, but a picture of a train seems to help sell beer. Maybe we all have a bit of the anorak about us?

And when we really do run out of recipes? Well, who'll remember how they all tasted. And maybe then we will let our ethics slip like we have with our principles. If ethics and principles REALLY made a business succeed, they'd be taxed.