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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Heaven knows what good will come of it but next week we have a business consultant coming to see us to tell us where we are going wrong (we imagine).
The guy is the founder and still runs one of the country's most successful breweries and he's agreed to spend the day on Colonsay at the brewery offering tips and guidance. More will be revealed later but we reckon he's going to arrive - take one look at the set up and say: "That's a stupid place to build a brewery".
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People think that just because we are our own bosses brewing beer on a beautiful and remote island life in general would be a sinecure. Well it is.
This morning was meant to be lager brewing day. The brew team were up and ready and an ungodly hour – raring to go, even though it is the Sabbath. Then the early morning sunshine induced some sort of telepathic connection between the two head brewers and instead of travelling to the brewery and getting the much needed lager underway – they found themselves, inexplicably, at the golf course – and there they stayed with other island worthies only making it back to the civilisation of the hotel in time for a couple of pints and a go of some numbers game that is sweeping the island. Don’t let anyone tell you its hard work running the Isle of Colonsay Brewing Company Ltd. It’s not.
THE GOLF COURSE
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There have been allegations in the past that the Colonsay brewery team spends it' winer hanging round the brewery sinking pints. Whilst there may have been an element of this in the past we are reformed characters. Some bright spark decided to widen our cyber footprint and head off to Facebook -- -- and it seems to be taking up rather a lot of time. Being Facebook virgins we have found it very interesting to see the people being thrown up by our search for friends. Many of them mean nothing at all to us and if you have had a request to be our pal and feel offended being cyber stalked by a brewery then all we can say is sorry.
However its rather fun seeing the networks spread out and people from various spheres being found. If you would please point folk towards out page and ask them to become friends...it only takes a second and keeps us off the booze.
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