We do have computers at home though and often Google the brewery to see what people are saying about us: Here's one that's rather good from thebeercast.com.
Beer fancying isn’t just about a competition to find the darkest, strongest, most pungeant brew you can. Most beer websites and blogs do tend to concentrate on that end of the spectrum, but only because they tend to be the most interesting and flavoursome. Even the most ardent lagerfan would probably admit the lack of taste the lighter-coloured stuff suffers from. But less taste doesn’t mean no taste (unless you opt for certain lagers), there shouldn’t be a stigma against drinking good lager - after all, it was invented by the Czechs, and they know more or less everything good about brewing.
So amongst the BeerCast’s regular malty, hoppy, caramelly (Podcast no.1 was brought to you in conjunction with that particular word) offerings, this committed Lagerboy will now and again pop up with a few drinks from the world of beers that you can actually see though. But just as ‘real ale’ suffers from an image problem, so does lager - one of popularity. In 2005, the UK lager market was worth £11.3bn - nine out of the top ten takehome beer brands were lagers (Guinness being the other). 42% of British adults now buy and drink it. By 2010, 80% of all UK beers sold are expected to be lager. Yikes.
But most of the major brands out there are the same old suspects - Stella, Carlsberg, Carling, Fosters. They don’t taste of much, they are fairly cheap, you can buy them in any off-licence or pub. But it doesn’t make them any good. Take Stella, the UK’s most popular lager (it has a third of the market), due to recent issues of ‘branding’, producer InBev added more boutique beers to the stable, a wheatbeer called Peeterman, and a 6% super lager called Bock, which someone bought by mistake the other week and nobody would drink it. Fosters, brewed in Edinburgh, is the typical Australian lager - except I lived there for almost a year and hardly ever saw it.
You have to search them out, but local lagers are available. They cost more than the mass-produced types (although Stella recently went up again, by 12p a pint), but are infinately nicer, with more taste - and you get a pompous air of smugness to have sought out something regional that the other lagerboys will have never heard of. Take Colonsay Lager. Produced by a small new microbrewery from the tiny Scottish island of 120 people, they knock out this 4.4%abv gem using local ingredients and a slower fermentation process. That means the lager has a touch of the wheatbeer about it, and is a dark apricot, almost amber colour. Incredibly refreshing, and with a packed taste, it blows the Carlings of this world out of the water. Which can only be a good thing.
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A microbrewery has many challenges - not least of them is consistency of product. Beer is a natural living thing and the trained palate can spot the odd variance in taste and texture - we certainly can.
Ocasionally amongst ourselves we somehow manage to concentrate on our perceived shortcomings. A knowledgeable peer through the glass, a sniff, a taste and a knowing slight shake of the head is enough to indicate, brewer to brewer, that something is not quite right. It is a slightly anoying habit we have got into but one born of a desire to ensure the drinking public get the best of beer all the time. So - to put the record straight - let us say that the IPA on draught in the hotel for Burns' Night last night was about the best beer you could imagine - not the best we've made - but the best you could get anywhere.
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If the brewery had a computor we might spend endless hours researching new products and markets and contacting potential customers and all that sort of business stuff. The downside of this would be that people may order more beer and we would have to brew it. Its fine in the summer when the brewery doors are wide open and the sun shines in, passing visitors stop to have a chat and occasionally we even get the chance to sit outside in the warm at the end of the day and have a pint in as the sun sets pouring a bucket of red glow over the island of Jura to our East. But really in the winter. No when we have to brew at this time of year its a nightmare of cold, dark and forbidding --- and that's just the brewers.
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Here we are at the dawn of a new decade - the festivities on the island are in full swing and nyet we know that just arround the corner the long haul of winter is waiting to snare our happy spirits and sink us into the gloom of dark days, nothing much happening and non stop gales. But heyho - we've a brewery, lots of stock and time on our hands - - I see a way forward.
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Two sycophantic brewery workers leapt to the stage when Karen Matheson said her band was feeling a little parched. A lady came up to the bar later and said she had a grood picture opf the crawlers at work......Madam - please send it to info@co.......you know the rest (spam protection)
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