Brewery News....

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....

And In This Tank...

After 3 - 4 hectic weeks trying to keep up, we have again run out of empty barrels. So it's a quiet week this week, with just a fresh brew of Royston Pale Ale (RPA to it's friends) gently fermenting away. We have a good stock of Challenger & Highwayman in the cellar, but both are getting alarmingly low - but then that is good, we don't brew it to keep it sat in the cellar! Next week will be a double brew week, but only if we get enough empties back. Or we get the 100 new ones we are waiting for. And at the moment 100 firkins is just enough for a double brew week.

Such fluctuations in our brewing volumes marks out the increasing number of 'tour groupies' we seem to be getting. We have noticed for a while that some faces in tour parties were familiar, but this has now been confirmed when someone asked why we had full tanks a few weeks ago, but now had empty ones. When he was answered, he sagely agreed that we had mentioned cask shortages in the past. He then had to admit he was on his fourth visit this year. So far. So it's not just rock bands that have groupies, breweries have them too. And do you know what, I think it's great. I am sure that some Rolling Stones groupies offer more services than ours do (thankfully), but ours certainly do us great benefit in raising our profile in the local pub trade. And whilst I don't want to sound ungrateful, the more I thinka bout it, a few screaming females would certainly add a bit of extra cheer that middle-aged men just can't provide.