The end is in sight though. We reckon we should be bottling ... well any day now. In the menatime the stock of lager at the brewery is - NIL.
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One of the main attractions of our island is that it is physically and emotionally as far removed from base mainland consumerism as it is possible to get.
Even at the height of the summer visitor season an all pervading peace and tranquillity covers the island broken only by the sound of birds and the odd hooray Henry.
Until now that is. For Colonsay, yes Colonsay, is to get an out of town shopping mall. Wikipedia defines a mall as such:
A shopping mall or shopping centre is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area – a modern, indoor version of the traditional marketplace.
And so it is that perhaps as soon as this year you will find your favourite island brewery in such a complex.
Our neighbour Kevin presented us with a neighbour notification this morning alerting us to his application to change the use of our neighbouring facility from a store to a retail unit. So inevitably after many years of the General Store at the other side of the hall being the centre of island commerce the balance will shift to Dunoran and the Mall. It may well be that Mike the Shop forms a one man protest group to try and stop this shift of economic power but in the face of massive corporate muscle what chance would he stand.
We imagine with the brewery shop and the bookshop cheek by jowl it will only be a matter of time before we have coach parties arriving like the woollen mills in so many Scottish towns. Perhaps we need to set up a catering facility too.
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Over on our neighbour Jura you can't move for deer. We often sail over and take a stag or two and bring them back in the boat and fill the freezer with tasty treats. Wouldn't it be good if we had deer here, we often think, and save the four hour boat trip to get some venison.
This weekend has been the weekend of the stags --- but of the wedding variety - not the antlered sort. It is true to say they were a disappointment. Think of stag parties - think of Dublin, Edinburgh, Iceland --- huge cosnuption of beer - tills jingling. No such luck with our stag party. They were the gentlemanly sort - long walks - at one with nature, a civilised pint or two in the evening. This is a market we need to develop. Imagine gangs of stags roaming the streets fuelled up on copious pints of IPA. We heard Dublin was trying to get rid of them -- we need to get them here.
Thanks for the custum guys - hope the wedding went well.
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Every so often a little window above one's head has the curtain drawn back and light floods through giving a whole new impression of what you have been looking at for some time.
Such was the visit today of our consultant, Angus MacRuary of the Isle of Skye Brewing Company (brewers of our favourite non Colonsay Beer Hebridean Gold).
Angus has run the Uig based brewery since founding it in 1995 and so knows the difficulties posed by brewing on islands with expensive transport links to the rest of the world. Straight away within minutes of walking into the brewery he was offering up suggestions and comments on what we do here that was like the proverbial curtain being drawn back.
Suffice to say that he left us a huge amount to think about, and a shopping list as long as your arm of things we need to improve, develop and enhance our products. To show how much we liked him we even gave him the very last bottle of lager in the brewery to have with his lunch.
Working in isolation has its challenges and our brewers particularly have enjoyed getting the beers to where they are today - itys has been a revelation to speak at length and freely and openinly to one who has trodden the path a long time before us. Cue flurry of activity.
Brewer Chris and Angus in the brewery
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So they sit down for one of their all too infrequent bored meetings to review a number of things - not least the health and welfare of the business.
Most decisions needing to be taken for the coming year are on hold ahead of the visit of The Consultant.
There is time for a review of last year and it shows our little brewery to be in remarkably good shape despite the recession and overall sales are up year on year.
However there is a shock - - off island sales are through the roof - up 17 per cent, the third year running. We are faced with the prospect of having to rename our off island sales force. Until now he's been the skiver - in the light of such dramtic sales figures this is obviously no longer appropriate so we've come up with a new name ------ Lucky.
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