We sometimes feel a little inadequate delivering to our good customer Peckham’s in Glasgow. Theirs is a slick operation. Anne sits upstairs at her computer and her fingers dance over the keyboard with each stroke dispatching more of their top notch foodstuffs to their chain of shops in Edinburgh Glasgow and further North. Anne, we imagine, is a Wagnerian Conductor orchestrating her army in their subterranean vaults with precise efficiency ensuring all gets to where it’s meant to be, and in the best of condition.
This does not sit well with our rather more Hebridean approach to matters and sometimes we think we may just be getting in the way as we roll up with boxes of beer to clutter up this happy scene.
Imagine our horror this morning to arrive and find a proper brewery van in the queue in front of us. This well known brewery had a big shiny liveried vehicle - obviously, we thought, packed to the gunwales with cases of beer to put our little brewery's delivery to shame.
Then our jumps the equally liveried driver - and hands over five cases of beer. FIVE. We don't get out of bed for five cases of beer. So we swagger past and ostentatiously ask when the fork lift will be free to unload our beer. Sucker.
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The absence of the h makes this a non-island story. We send away a steady trickle of beer sold through our online shop (see link above and buy (but not lager at the moment.) Often, as we wander round to Keith the Post with a few cases to Parcelforce away, we wonder what has prompted the order. Is it people who have been to Colonsay and fancy a little bit of their holiday magic shipped back to them? Or beer buffs trawling the www. to find obscure breweries and sample thier wares.
One guy from Cardiff bought a case the other day and went to the trouble to phone us up to compliment the brewers on their work saying it was great beer - some of the best he'd had. We thanks for that - but was there any need to sound surprised?
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We pride ourselves on the long fermentaion of our lager. Not a rush job. Just sitting quietly in the corner bubbling away, soaking up the sea air and turning into a delightful nectar. This winter has seen a long fermenation period turn into an eternal fermentation. It's so bloody cold its going even slower than usual. It fact its almost as slow as ........ (deleted ed.)
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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