One Year In – Official Blog #1

Funny thing about brewing, when you first decide to take the plunge, there’s some (a bit) of down time. You’re waiting for engineers to turn up, tanks to be fabricated, council approvals to come through, etc…So you go to all the London Brewers Alliance meetings, go to industry events, tell everyone about your plans. Generally get out there and prep the world for your glorious coming.

Then installation day happens and you start brewing. And no one sees you again for a year.

That is basically our story. We’re a year in now, full time for 370 days – every single one of them. This is my first-ish blog! But they’ll be regular now…we’re slowly emerging from the first year frenzy.

It’s been a wonderful crazy start – constant brewing equipment and process improvements (hop cannons, bottling machines, in-line carbonators, additional cooling capacities, new FVs on order, extra-cold storage space for hops, proper bar dispense); hop crises (where’s all the Amarillo and how we do deal with shortages?!); planning brews, researching and then selling them; finding designers and getting what we want from them; choosing routes to market (cask vs. keg vs. bottle vs. can / pub vs. restaurant vs. export vs. wholesale vs. e-commerce); ensuring consistency and product quality…the list is endless. We didn’t start this with bags of experience, and have made, and learnt, from a lot of mistakes. Now we just feel worn-out, wiser but that glow of having just gotten started and the excitement for what’s to come has never been stronger!

Looking forward to much more team…over and out. Sam

p.s. come to our mystery event on the 29^th August