I have just finished reading on of Tandleman's excellent blog (http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk) on "mainstream" craft and what really struck me about the post was not so much the idea that people like Thornbridge and Brewdog or becoming mainstream breweries, but the criticisms in the post of a lot of the new small "craft" breweries. First of all I would like to say that a lot of the observations are justified, however I would also like to point out that there a lot of craft (and more traditional cask breweries) of a similar size to these new ventures that also have the same issues but are lucky enough to experience their learning curve outside of the London Goldfish bowl. I would also like to point out that I don't think there is a small brewery around that doesn't aspire to the consistency, quality control and professionalism that Brewdog and Thornbridge exude.
I am not sure if I consider Caveman to be "craft" or not. We are definitely a cask brewery and not "craft keg" brewery as yet. To be honest i'm not even sure what craft means, although I have used it in marketing as I think people associate it with the types of hops we use and styles we brew. We did however go through a series of issues in starting the brewery and those first few months of brewing that I think parallels what Tandleman is highlighting. Having come from home brewing, training, learning all you can, living and breathing it for a long period of time nothing prepares you for the different expectations, quality requirements and polish you need to be a commercial brewer. There are things they don't tell you. Like the the yeast doesn't do what its meant to, or the copper packs up mid boil or you have a regular beer that you suddenly can't source the hops for. I brewed some beers that were effectively a work in progress, some that were not consistent enough and some that were over-conditioned. I am not proud of these beers and I am ashamed that I let some people down who were very excited about our brewery and brand.I like to think that since then I have learnt a lot about our kit and its quirks, spent a lot of money improving it and spent a lot of time improving myself and my brewing knowledge and I am now proud of what we produce. The problem at the time was the pressure we were under to start making some money by selling beer, and also I think the excitement of finally be able to, meant we couldn't spend six months brewing beer, learning the issues and correcting them behind closed doors. That doesn't stop me wishing that we had.
Fortunately for us we made a lot of our early mistakes outside of the beer soap opera that is the London brewing scene, where a legion of pubs and beer drinkers want to be the first to get that beer from the latest brewery. I think this is where the comments in Tandleman's blog need to be put into perspective a little. There are breweries like us that started, made mistakes or didn't have the best beers, (hopefully) have learnt something, improved and then start to be more visible to the larger beer world. In London there is no place to hide. Open a brewery in London in a disused Tube station 100ft below ground under cover of darkness and someone in Shoreditch or Hackney will know the moment you mash in. Give these breweries and brewers time to grow, improve their products or consistency, whatever the criticism is and some may well grow be that usurper that topples the early revolutionaries at Brewdog or Thornbridge.
January Beers and New Prices
A little time off over Christmas gave us time to look at our costings from the ground up and has allowed us to drop our prices slightly, which should be good news for everyone.
We have a new seasonal beer coming early next week, a 3.0% all Kent hopped pale ale. Based loosely on last years EKG green hop ale, this beer uses all East Kent Goldings to give an aroma of honey, backed by a light malt base and a low ABV. We also expect to be getting our first batch of new Citra hops at the end of January which should allow us to get brewing our award winning Citra pale ale again.
Our Christmas Club 6.4% spiced old ale went very well over the festive period and CaveDweller Porter continues to prove popular. Plans for the bottling plant are progressing nicely with conditioning tanks now installed on the roof and the pipework arrived over the Christmas period. We hope to begin bottling some time in January.
New Recipes
Having had a little more time over the last few weeks we have tweak our recipes to improve on the originals. Those changed over the last few weeks include Clovis Point Brown, Prehistoric Amber and Neanderthal. The Clovis has been balanced slightly better, with a touch less malt allowing to hops to stand out a bit clearer. With the Prehistoric Amber we removed the small amount of darker malts leaving the Amber malt as the main character malt and and removing the hint of malt bitterness. The Neanderthal has has a slightly simplified malt profile which makes it smoother and more easy drinking.
We have also changed the way we dry hop our ales which should give a more consistent result than the previous approach.
We have a new beer coming out by the end of the month which will be a stout called Cavedweller. It is 5.8% is brewed with East Kent Goldings hops to provide a fairly traditional stout.
A Quick Post
Its my second week as a full time caveman so in theory I now have loads of time to blog and do all the things I have been meaning to do for ages.. Unfortunately that list is quite long, so just a quick blog entry for now. The brewery is looking nice and shiny at the moment, we have just stripped down and rebuilt the heat exchanger and the malt auger is next on the list.
The rest of the list largely revolves around getting out to pubs and selling some beer, although i had a bit of light relief on Friday working with the guys at Uglyboy on a promo video for the brewery. Slightly worried they are going to pimp me out on some internet dating website, but otherwise it seemed to go well. I guess ill post a link to it here when they have edited it, assuming it isn't too horrific