In fact, I've come to understand there's not been a time like this for something like 100 years. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen the word "unprecedented" is being used in the media at an unprecedented frequency. And now with all the bars and restaurants closed, close to zero beer has left our brewery for the past month.
See, as a brewery with a part-time sole-operator (me), putting beer into bottles doesn't represent a time-efficient pursuit. And so keg has been the choice vessel for the past few years - and I've been seriously moving it! With an ever-growing number of local taps bearing our own laser-crafted timber decals I've been kicking some real goals.

No one saw this coming.

And now I've gone from filling the fermenter with back-to-back brews to wondering when I'll get to brew next. However, I'm not sitting still. There are oak barrels to blend, package and refill and an online store to build with the question of rebranding to consider...
In the meantime, AusPost are holding things up. I ordered some equipment to build a counter-pressure filler and paid for express post. That was 3 weeks ago and there's still no sign of the package from Melbourne...

We take the most important things for granted - until we no longer have them.

Looking back at the past couple of years, we didn't make building a brewery a terribly easy task by denying ourselves some of the most fundamental elements to life: air and sunlight. Strangely, for whatever reason, these weren't at the top of the list when selecting a site - and in retrospect, can now say that had we chosen more wisely, we may have been capable of tolerating more time working on site. Or at least, we'd have left the site at the end of a long day feeling like returning the next day wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

(I'm a part-time teacher and currently supposed to be writing student reports. Must be time to update the blog...)

This entry is entitled "Leaving the swamp", as this represents in a number of ways our current position. Firstly, yes, we'll be leaving Invermay a.k.a The Swamp (a very real title with the extreme weather and flood threat this week), but so far 2016 is proving a ripper-year in terms of the growth of our customer base and subsequently the movement of stock and increase of cashflow is seeing us in a more certain financial position as we're no longer swamped by debts! 

Crap. What now? 1300L of hot, tasty wort and many, many more litres of muddy water threatening to bury the place in faeces (yes, literally. Launceston has the only mixed stormwater / sewage lines remaining in Australia: due to our history as also being the first city in Australia and third in the world to have underground sewers. Get a decent amount of rain with a little flash-flooding and Invermay / "The Swamp" starts getting real organic). I re-prioritise and turn my attention to grabbing anything of value and hoisting it as high as possible. Several hours passed and I've had enough, happy to be jumping in the car and heading for home, leaving the chaos behind.
30 mins later and I get a call from Bill from Not For Horses (our malthouse partner - sharing the building) asking if he can get a ride in: his car is being serviced and there's some stuff he needs to shift at the malthouse.
As we arrived at the plant, a couple of cops pull up and query why we're returning to the area. A few mins later and we're inside, back at work lifting stuff. About an hour went by before the next cop turned up; pretty stoked at finding himself standing in a brewery! However, the excitement was short-lived as he delivered the certain news that "this place is going to go under. They're expecting the level to rise half a metre over the wall". Our hearts immediately sank.

The following day was spent with eyes glued to the media, watching, waiting to learn our fate. With Invermay still on notice, the plant remained shut down: the wort waiting, still steaming hot in the well-insulated milk vat-come-kettle.
Thursday finally came and we were out of the woods. Believe it or not, the wort was still steaming-hot in the kettle! It returned to the boil and the process completed in good time with brilliant results - no harm done! And still time in the day to return the many hoisted items back to ground!

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.

Cleaning the kitchen is my job and I do a fine job - most nights. One particular clean-up following a family get-together over a roast dinner I was scrubbing at the baking dish and marveling at how the amber colour from the roast pumpkin (which had caramelised and crusted onto the edges of the dish) continued to run into the dishwater. I started thinking about beer and wondered if I could utilise the colour from the caramelised roast pumpkin in a pumpkin ale.
Now, we Aussies can be forgiven for hearing "pumpkin" and "beer" in the same sentence and thinking that to be a strange concept, but I assure you, the yanks have been brewing pumpkin ale for many years.

I ladled a few spoons of wort into  the baking dish and started rubbing at the caramelised goodness with the a spoon. All the colour started leeching out into the wort - just as it did in the sink several afternoons before :) The caramel-pumpkin enriched wort was (carefully) poured back into the pot.

Contrary to my usual method, the wort was added to the pumpkin HOT to assist in removing any harmful bacteria which may have been present in the pumpkin. It took a full 24 hours in a cold room to drop to an acceptable 22C - the pumpkin flesh proved a pretty good thermal insulator! I pitched Denny's Favourite 50 - a second generation, as I'd harvested some from my previous brew (a big fat brown ale). OG 1.054 (from memory).

Over the past few days I've been playing around with this image of legendary drummer, Buddy Rich. Anyone familiar with drummers and big bands of this era may recognise some similarity between the KSB shield logo and the shields famously displayed on the bass drums of the likes of Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. According to the stories told in my Jazz History classes at Uni, these legends of music hail from a time before television, when folks all went out of an evening and virtuoso big band musicians were idolised as many sports stars are these days; their income and lifestyles reflecting their fame. Crowds would flock to their shows to see them, hanging on every note and applauding every face-melting solo.