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Seven weeks ago we launched Borderlines Brewing to the world. Huge fanfare. The press were all over it and we’ve absolutely smashed. We can’t keep up with your orders and it’s time to move on to the next phase of our adventure, moving to a purpose built unit asap…
…Okay that’s our alternate fantasy reality. Our actual reality is somewhat different. Don’t get me wrong, we’re chuffed with how it’s gone so far but taking over the world we are not.
That said it turns our it's not just a phase we're going through! I haven’t really envisioned splitting our little brewery project into phases as such, the only real target we had this year was to sell one can of beer and that’s a box that has been well and truly ticked.
As I write this we’ve now got five beers on sale, we’re really close to selling out of Meon Pale and I’m mid brew on our second batch. So, we’ve made and sold a fair bit of beer to date. We’ve also got the beer into two shops, we’ve had reorders from those shops, we’ve had a really fantastic day selling beer on a market and we’ve got two more markets confirmed with another two potentially in the pipeline. That’s a fair bit going on in our spare time. It’s blown our minds and I feel like we’ve come quite a long way in our short lived lives as brewers.
Although I didn’t really plan it to be this way, now we’re moving on to rebrewing beer it feels like that’s ‘phase one’ kind of done. So, with all that achieved and with no real plan to start with, what does ‘phase two’ look like?
Great question but a really easy one to answer. It’s all about the beer, the brand and our service to you.
We’ve a lot we can take from what we’ve done so far and I think this next phase of our adventure will be learning from that, adapting and tweaking and ensuring that we’ve got a kick ass product and brand to move forward with.
First things first of course, the beer needs to be absolutely bang on. I won’t lie, that’s been a real challenge for me so far. I love my beer so I want to put stuff out that is really pleasing and enjoyable to drink.
It’s one thing making a load of home brew and throwing it at friends and family for them to try. I’ve always wanted it to be good beer for them to enjoy and thankfully the feedback has always been really positive, a big driving force behind creating our commercial brewery.
Putting beer out to people who have actually paid for the stuff is a whole new level of pressure and responsibility though and although it sounds pretty cheesy I take that responsibility really seriously. Since we’ve put the beer on sale my confidence in my ability to make great beer has wobbled A LOT. I’ve not had a single soul tell me the beer was crap yet but deep down I think that’s really down to people being nice and frankly I know I can do a lot better.
That’s another reason why it feels right to be talking about ‘phase two’ now. Learning how to brew on a new kit has been much more of a challenge than I really ever envisaged. It’s a lot bigger, takes a lot more cleaning and upkeep and throws up different things to consider than my ‘lil old Hopcat ever did.
Five brews in though and I feel like the teething problems are starting to iron themselves out. Silly little things too like using a hop sock in the boil kettle meaning the beer isn’t bitter enough (though it’s always worked perfectly well for me on the smaller kit).
Another thing has been the height of the table the Unitank stands on was about 4 inches too tall, so the pumps really struggled to push the coolant through the cooler and Unitank (bloody gravity) to keep the wort cool. Three pumps later, multiple pipes and connections tried and it turned out all I needed to do was chop 4 inches off the table (thankfully a homemade wooden one) and bingo – coolant flying through the system on demand.
A consequence of the above was the wort not cooling fast enough during the cold crash. That with using taps the wrong way around on the Unitank and the wrong sized tubing on the can filler resulted in too much sediment in the cans and too much (or not enough) foaming when canning.
A purge of the Unitank with CO2 before filling it up, cooler wort, a more efficient cold crash and the correct pipes should result in minimum sediment and, the right amount of foaming and minimal oxygen contact to preserve the life of the beer for longer.
I suppose in hindsight I should have thought about all of this before cracking on but hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say isn’t it…
There is loads more but this latest ramble is long enough already!
So, as far as the beer goes phase two doesn’t really mean lots of crazy new styles to try. It’s just rebrewing popular beers (actually A LOT harder than you think) whilst also tweaking and refining some of the less popular beers to make them so much better than they have been to date and, I hope, resulting in beers that we can brew for you again and again.
There is quite a lot to do there without thinking about branding, marketing and routes to market! That will involve monitoring and tweaking offers and product options, getting out to see as many of you as we can to sell beer but chat more about the things you like and then of course planning for what 2024 is going to bring. That involves what beers to brew, what guest beers to get in, where to sell it, what events to visit and away from the beer properly understand what else you want us to offer you.
There’s no doubt about it ‘phase two’ is going to be busy. Oh and there is the small matter of the busy Christmas season to throw in there too.
Cor blimey, why do we do it to ourselves eh? We bloody love it. That’s why.
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