A minute to breathe

Part 1: Lame Excuses

Those of you who've been following our progress will note the absence of blogs over the past few months - I must apologise, all time and energy has been sunk into the brewery construction and the creation of our festival bar which will be put to first use THIS WEEKEND at Esk Beerfest!

The past few months have been exhausting. Between my fatherly duties, winding up with teaching for the holidays (writing reports - need I say more), playing the odd wedding here and there with the Jam Plan and mixing sound / drumming at Door of Hope, I can't believe I've still been able to progress with the brewery. We're actually not too far from gaining our Excise Licence and starting production.

Part 2: Wait - so you have beer, but no brewery?

"Hang on!" I hear you say... "if your brewery isn't operational yet, how can you have beer to sell?!" Well, our good mates at Morrison's Brewery have stepped in to fill a couple of contract brews for us, producing a couple of our recipes to allow us to begin trading (hey, a few more bucks would be sweet right now!). 1000L of our quaffable Aus Pale Ale "The Fifty Eight" and 500L of our hoppy "Stompbox IPA" will be hitting a craft beer bar near you (assuming you're living in Tas).

Part 3: Excitement and Bragging

Let me tell you a little about our current recipes.

You're gonna love em.

The Fifty-Eight is a straight-up-and-down ale in the Australian tradition - well, not the current tradition held by the "Australian" (internationally-owned) mega-swilleries who've been watering-down beer according the wishes of their accountants and money-hungry shareholders over the past century, but a more romantic notion of how our beer should taste today. Single-hopped with balanced early and late additions of Pride of Ringwood, The Fifty-Eight keeps it real with a malt base of Australian Traditional, a bucket of Wheat Malt and a smattering of Crystal.

Our Stompbox IPA gets me very excited - I LOVE HOPS. IMHO, I think the Americans have this style down, so in our own take on an American IPA, we a total of 7.3 grams per litre of Citra, 3 grams per litre of Amarillo and bittered it with Tassie's own Ella hops (an additional 0.56g / l as an early addition). If you've done your math correctly, you'll have calculated 10.86 g/l of hops! Mmmmm.....

Part 4: Thanks-es

At this point, I'd like to say a massive THANKS to a few folks. Firstly, Paul Morrison from Morrison's Brewery for accepting an extra couple of contracts from us right in the his peak season (trust me - he really didn't need the extra work!). Also, my good mate Bill Armstrong for his help and fine company on this venture and his hospitality as a room-mate (we're sharing our premises with his hand-crafted malt house, Not for Horses). Mark Edmunds certainly deserves a mention here - I'm truly grateful for his generosity and motivated, can-do attitude (combined with TIG welding skills).

Finally, the biggest thanks of all goes to my beautiful wife who's been playing it single-parent-style more than any married woman should and generally picking up my slack around the house. Any parent who gets to the end of the day thinking "gee, I really didn't get anything done" but managed not to throttle their kids can rest assured that they've actually put in a decent effort.