End of an era ...

... start of a new one. After three years in Berkhamsted, Haresfoot Brewery has relocated to Chesham. My co-directors decided that they want to focus on landlord sales rather than directly to the public via the shop and on-site events. As a consequence they have joined forces with GIG and set up at their secure premises along the road from Haresfoot Farm. GIG is a catering company which services large scale events and festivals, so there may be good opportunity for growth. But I am following a different path, one focussing more on the town and local community, and my route to becoming a beer sommelier. This starts with the 3^rd annual Berkhamsted beer and music festival aka BerkoBeerFest on 22^nd April at Berkhamsted’s Civic Centre. I wish my co-directors well – it’s been a hell of a roller-coaster of a journey. I have learned a lot about beer and business but its time to move on.

New year, new direction

We received the key to our brewery on 24^th December 2013. So we have got through the second year, that “second difficult album”, and we now have time to contemplate, time for a rethink and time to set a new direction. This year we intend to focus more on the local community. We have a fantastic facility, located on the edge of Berkhamsted between the Grand Union Canal and the mainline out of Euston. We know our premises are ideal for events – we can seat 100 people (and stand up to 150), our musicians love the acoustics (natural reverberation), and the industrial setting creates a unique venue and atmosphere.

Gifts for those awkward men … and women

It’s that time of year, the time when the shops put up decorations and display their Christmas gifts. It’s not only a reminder of the impending holidays but also the agony that some of us face choosing the perfect gift for our loved ones.

 

The awkward middle aged man who is non-committal about what they want for Christmas is one of the most difficult challenges. Fortunately, very few men refuse a beer related gift and that is where Haresfoot Brewery can help.

 

Our First Beer Festival

Several of the pubs in Berkhamsted host great beer festivals – The Rising Sun, The Crown and The George & Dragon – but our festival last Saturday was the first beer festival in a brewery in Berkhamsted for at least one hundred years and possibly ever.

Our theme was a Celebration of the Chilterns and, in addition to four of our own beers, we offered ales from eight other local breweries. Beer selection for beer festivals seems to be one of the dark arts. Should they be unusual and niche or known favourites? We enlisted Dave Culliton from Aston Clinton Beer Festival to offer advice, select the ales and, with his able team, manage the bar.

 

Easter means Hares not Bunnies

Easter is almost upon us and the shops are filling with chocolate eggs and bunnies. But if you really want to be Easter-authentic then I propose you celebrate Easter by toasting your beloved with a pint of Haresfoot ale rather than a chocolate bunny.

Easter is thought to be German or possibly even Babylonian in origin. Most believe that Easter gets its name from the old English Ēastre or Ēostre, the Teutonic cum Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (see picture), for whom a festival was held in her honour every year at the vernal equinox. But some believe that Easter is derived from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of spring, and a homophone of Easter.

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please

The tangential title of my blog is the 1980 hit single of Splodgenessabounds – a "song” which tracks the frustrations of a man not being served at his local bar. But I digress, the point is that lager and crisps, that most rudimentary of pub orders and the default beer and food combo, is a very distant relative of the current trend offered by sommeliers of beer and food pairing.

The push for beer and food matching has been around for several years now. Famously, the sommelier at Le Gavroche, Michel Roux Jr's two-starred Michelin restaurant, advises on the beer choice per course. Last year, Britain's Beer Alliance launched their “There's a Beer for That” campaign, which allows you to request beer matches for food on their twitter feed (just tweet @BeerForThat with #beermatch).  

Let the Judging Commence

Having done the Advance Course at the Beer Academy, I thought I would give Judging Beer a crack. Obviously I am no expert, having just started, but more of a keen amateur. However, I thought it is worth jotting down what I have learned because it all starts with how to taste and appreciate beer – a useful skill to have even if you don’t get to officially judge beers.

There are lots of websites out there which tell you how to taste and judge beer. I suppose this blog forms my bluffers guide. Not surprisingly judging beer comes down to: Sight, Smell and Taste.

A Mid-life Journey

A few weekends ago I paddled down the Grand Union canal in a Canadian canoe garbed in a Native American headdress and war paint. This wasn’t on my agenda, it wasn’t something I expected to be doing in my middle-age but, then again, I hadn’t anticipated investing in a microbrewery.

The trip down the canal was to launch our new Totem AmericaPale Ale. We named the beer after Berkhamsted’s very own totem pole. This genuine totem pole, made by the Kwakiutl tribe from red cedar, can be found adjacent to the Grand Union Canal. We paddled to the totem pole and pulled up alongside to take a few photos; we didn’t have the courage to land or dance around the totem pole and we suspect it would have upset the elderly residents of Alsford Wharf (who now own the totem pole). 

The Mysterious Powers of the Totem

Another blog from George (in a drunken haze) ...

I don’t like Totem! … or do I? As a co-founder and marketeer from Haresfoot brewery it's a dangerous thing to say perhaps?

I’ve always been on the sweeter side… from a beer perspective. When we launched Totem , a 4.5% ABV American IPA secretly I was highly cynical. I like dark beers, I like a dominant malty taste and don’t most other people?  Isn’t this a Marmite beer – you love it or hate it and how many people are going to love it? It’s too niche I thought!  However a strange thing happened to me. It started on Saturday. I was in the Boxing Hares bar running the shop. No fewer than 10 customers came in and asked for Totem – a significant allegiance given the beer has just been launched. I tried a sip from our stock back in the cold room- maybe I’m wrong?  Way too hoppy, almost sour to my taste buds… who in their right mind would like that?

Eight Go Brewing

Guest blog by co-investor George also appeared in the Aldbury Outlook.

April 12^th 2014; a cold spring evening and a landmark day –Lock Keeper’s Launch Ale flowed from the pumps in the Valiant Trooper. It is hard to put into words the pleasure of drinking your own beer in your local pub.

Haresfoot Brewery was the idea of eight friends and local business men: Simon, Philip, Nigel, Nick, Martin, Keith and, from Aldbury, Scott Carter and me. You might call it our mid-life crisis. Rather than buying fast cars, taking up triathlons or donning lycra, we built a brewery. It’s been an incredible adventure. When you set up your own business you have to be prepared to do whatever is needed: leafleting in town, working in our shop, manning the bar for a party or jumping into the car to deliver a new firkin to a pub that’s run out on a Friday afternoon – oh and of course actually making the beer. I’ve learned about the science and art of brewing drawing on my background as a chemist and discovered that there are more varieties of hops than you’d every think possible.

Some Sommelier Course

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Advanced Course at the Beer Academy. It is the start of my journey into becoming a beer sommelier. The course promises to “equip you with the skills to communicate knowledgeably about beer with customers and consumers and will enhance your professional status in the beer sector”. So rather than simply say you like or dislike a beer, actually describe the beer and explain clearly why you like or dislike it. This approach to drinking certainly helps elevate your status from beer-monster to connoisseur.

The Naming of Beers

"The naming of beers is a difficult matter
It isn't just one of your holiday games"

B.S. Bellylot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Beers

Coming up with original beer names is almost as difficult as coming up with original beer recipes. I have shared the origins of the Haresfoot name previously but I will update this page each time we launch a new beer, in order to try and explain the reasoning behind the chosen beer name.

Brew Day Blog

Wednesday 14 May was the first time I brewed in our beautiful brewery. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and found it therapeutic as well as tiring. Rather than write down my thoughts, I captured them in a short YouTube videoblog aka vlog (as I am told it is called by my young son).

By George I think he's got it

Guest blog by my co-investor George Harvey, written for the Chiltern Tapler

Little more than a week ago (at the time of writing) a dream came true as the team from Haresfoot Brewery sat in the White Hart at Whelpley Hill drinking a toast of Lock Keeper’s Launch ale with landlord Iain Griffiths-Jones. After a year’s avid research, intensive planning and frenetic activity, the excitement of creating a brewery has come to pass for 8 business folks from the Berkhamsted area.

The timing is particularly poignant because it was exactly 100 years ago that the last brewery, Locke & Smith, closed its Water Lane doors in 1914. The Haresfoot team are very proud to play their part in reviving the town’s brewing tradition.

And finally ...

This is no April Fools joke, we finally did it. After almost a year of preparation we have have produced our first beer. Our brewers call it Gyle 1, the technical term for each batch of beer that leaves the fermentation vessel. But to the rest of the world, it is Lock Keeper’s Launch Ale.

Despite a year of preparation it was still all a bit lastminute.com, with the brewery kit arriving on the Sunday, installed on the Monday and the first brew in progress on the Tuesday. After the brew day, where the malt and hops are added, the wort was transferred to the fermentation vessels where the yeast does its magic. Four days later the beer was racked into barrels (firkins) and left to condition for three weeks.

 

Work in Progress

I haven’t blogged for a while, please accept my apologies, but it’s with good reason. Our brewing kit arrives this Sunday (9 March) and we have to prepare the brewery ready to receive it.

Nick is keeping building works in order. Our Builders have been beavering away, installing the three-phase electrics, building a sloping concrete floor, plumbing in water supplies and drainage, raising the block work for the Fermentation Rooms, Conditioning Room and Malt store, and drinking copious cups of tea with four sugars. This weekend the team turned up for a mass painting session, some 200 litres of paint was applied.

More Red Tape than Red Stripe

Who would have thought that the noble craft of brewing was a bureaucratic minefield? I suppose it’s symptomatic of the nanny state we now live in, the PC world, the H&S obsessed regime. Anyhow if you have any romantic notions that setting up a microbrewery is simply about honest hard graft in a quaint disused farm building then let me highlight a few of the regulatory hoops (consents) you need to jump through.

Merry Chistmas Everybody

Just a quick blog today, it is after all Christmas Eve and I’ve shopping to do. So yesterday we received the keys to our new premises and invited our families along to have a quick look. We celebrated with a couple of local ales and then congregated at the Old Mill for further celebration over “Christmas Dinner”. I’ve put Christmas Dinner in quotes as only two of us actually ordered turkey and Christmas pud.

Anyhow it’s a high to finish the year on, but come the New Year the real graft starts. In the meantime, as Noddy would say, Merry Christmas everybody.

Beer Tasting Challenge

So last Thursday was a busy day for us and it finished with our Beer Tasting Challenge. Some 30 guests blind-tasted five beers, judged them and told us what they liked best. The results were not as expected!

I previously blogged that George and I visited the local hostelries to ascertain what beers sold best. The top four beers favoured in Berkhamsted are (with no great surprise): Fullers London Pride, GreeneKing IPA, Sharp’s Doom Bar and Tring’s Side Pocket for a Toad. We purchased polypins of these beers along with one of Chiltern’s Beechwood Bitter. We then got our beery guinea pigs to try the beers without being told what they are. We had a few stray women in the audience, and I have separated out their views for now.

Milestone date

Today was another busy microbrewery day and a momentous occasion. Today Scott and Nick signed the lease for our microbrewery. We are now committed to Unit 2 River Park for 5 years (with a lease break) – bloomin' hell I need a sit down and a beer. The property is a recently refurbished industrial unit with plenty of space to brew beer, host brewery tours or brew days and, if planning goes ahead, sell beer in our new trade counter.