Hisotry is Made 
Just a quick note to say all is now here. Lager has been kegged and is now being bottled. The 80/- is next. Bottles will be on sale this afternoon - the hotel are coming down for a tasting this afternoon too...and then the directors of the Isle of Colonsay Brewing Company Ltd will be forgathering for a tasting themselves.
Progress will be reported tomorrow - latish.

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Crisis - what crisis 
Forget the last entry. Supply chain problems mean the bottling equipment is not coming today. It will be here on Wednesday of next week - or thursday (summer timetable) so its going to be a busy old run up to Easter. But who would start a brewery on a remote Atlantic island is they were not up for a bit of a challenge.

The sign is up, however, and now everyone knows where the brewery is. Picture soon.

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I P A 
Success - The IPA is brewed - and it all went reasonably well. George reckons better than that. We are now on course to begin bottling when George returns to the Island on Friday. We haven’t told him the summer timetable starts on Friday so when he turns up late for the 12 o'clock boat he will be delighted to find out that he's actually early for the 5pm boat.

We expect to sent up the bottling line early on Saturday morning and begin bottling the lager first.

That means historic first sales will take place this weekend. What joy. What a journey from four folk sat in the bar last Easter saying lets start a brewery - and we did. The excitement of opening, and drinking, the first bottle will be immense. We have already tasted, at some length, the beer and lager from the conditioning tanks and we reckon its pretty bloody good.



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The Devils Work 

Can you believe it? George made it on Friday - and it was the early boat. In fact he was found in Tesco's canteen at 9am complaining that there's not much to do in Oban at eight in the morning having apparently made it to town in the early hours of the morning.

So work has been done on the brews fermenting currently and preparations are in hand today to begin the IPA tomorrow. Some say that man should not brew on the Sabbath - but there's no holidaying minister at the moment, the manse is empty so we should just about get away with it.

Bottling equipment is due to arrive next week - it left its Italian manufacturer last week - and so product will be on sale by Easter as planned.

There is talk of an opening party at some point over Easter. A veritable p++s up in the brewery. We will have to find someone to organise it.


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Stop Press 
The brewery blog is not yet a week old and already we have an employee of the month, step forward Bob the Brewer. Single handedly he shifted 1697 boxes (and counted them) and did not complain once. Here they are, stacked beautifully high up in the brewery. Well done Bob.

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