Bread

As many of you will have seen, this week we took the heartbreaking decision to temporarily close the brewery because of the Coronavirus outbreak. It’s horrible, it really is, for many reasons. However, we’re determined to stay positive and here’s a few things that we’re excited about, looking forward to or thankful for, regardless of what the world’s throwing at us right now.

We have time to ourselves. Running a business alongside other careers and interests is hard. Well, running a business is hard. So now we have some time to genuinely relax, as well as catching up on paperwork and those other bits and pieces we never quite get around to doing. We also have time to dream and plan, meaning we’re really looking forward to when we open again and we can start to put those dreams and plans into action!

We’re hoping to open a delivery and/or takeout service… soon-ish! The main reason we haven’t done this already is licensing – the brewery doesn’t have a permanent premises licence and we rely on temporary event notices for our monthly tap room events. We’ve taken advantage of our little bit of downtime to become possibly the only people to apply for a premises licence in March 2020! We’re guessing it completely confused the council. Anyway, if it all goes well, we should be able to partially reopen in the nearish future – keep your eyes peeled for news.

Our house is probably the tidiest it’s been for years! We had some work done on our house last year and even though it’s nearly a year since it finished, we still have some stuff that’s not been moved back to its normal place. Mrs Beerblefish found the potato peeler in the (converted) loft today – a genuine win, both because we can now peel potatoes safely and because it’s one more item towards the loft being a properly usable space again.

Brett is great in sourdough. We’ve had many brewing-related baking accidents over the years, mostly before the brewery was commercial and James was still homebrewing. We’ll never forget the mince pies that rose or the gingerbread people that looked pregnant because of the amount of yeast floating around in our kitchen. However, we very intentionally added a small amount of brett to our sourdough starter (named Barry) and it gives a wonderful, almost meaty flavour to the bread. Definitely one to try at home!

We’ll be back again next week with some proper beer and/or gin news, but in the meantime, keep yourselves well, wash your hands and REMAIN INDOORS!