Eight Legged Groove Machine

Yes, someone's been letting me play in their brewery again! This time the nice young men at Roosters let me brew a Chocolate/Cherry stout on their Outlaw pilot plant in honour of me old Ma's 60th birthday!

Why have I named it the Eight Legged Groove Machine? - well, me old Ma has 4 pet Tarantulas(Talula, Tranny, Piper & Jaws) and one of my favourite bands is The Wonderstuff, not very complicated is it.

Why Chocolate and Cherry? Why the heck not?? We decided that only quality chocolate should be used so 450g of Green and Blacks Organic Black Chocolate went into the 11 gallon brew! And of course only fresh cherries would do for this so, 1.3kg went in  after a few days of fermentation.

So how is the resulting beer? Well in the bottle I found it to have the hint of cherries on the nose and right at the back of the palate. But being a Stout, the main flavour is the Chocolate which gave the beer a nice chocolatey bitterness!

The one and only cask will be going on the bar at The Rake on Sunday 31st March at noon so if you've had enough of bashing your bunny at Brodies for the weekend, come along and give this one a try!

Hopefully see you there but you can follow the twitter hashtag #8LeggedGrooveMachine for all news and if you feel like begging for more you can tweet @OutlawBrewCo!

Laverstoke Say Enough is Enough

Just got the story through that Jody Scheckter of Laverstoke Park Farm will NOT be re-doing the labels on their bottled beers over the 1(yes that's ONE) complaint made to the all powerful, totally unaccountable Portman Group.

Good for them!


Here is the offending label...

The Portman Group, Dangerously Childish?

Apparently the label will encourage young people, not yet of legal drinking age, to go out and consume heinous amounts of alcohol and ruin their lives forever.

Ok, I'm being purposefully argumentative as usual but come on, can we please have a bit of common sense?!

The label is nowhere near hip enough to make teenagers want to drink it, quite the opposite really in my humble opinion.

The cost of re-branding the beer would also be massively prohibitive and counter productive to the company who would then have to re-brand the whole range of products that Laverstoke make. Personally the label doesn't do it for me but it has worked for Laverstoke for a number of years now so why should they have to change it because of one complaint?

It may mean that certain supermarkets and multiples will have to take the beer off their shelves because they are funding the Portman group. Mr Scheckter's response to this is far more thoughtful and respectful than the Portman Groups actions on this subject....

"If the multiples stop selling our beer as a consequence, I respect and accept their decision"

Hands up who wants an accountable industry regulator....

All Crafted Out

So the news has finally got to me that Fosters are marketing their lager as craft...You're fucking kidding, right?

The world has finally gone stark-bollock bonkers.

Hipster Alcoholic Diet Water?

With the word 'craft' having caused so much debate and consternation on this side of the pond, I think it's time we found a new 'tag' for smaller batch, independently brewed beer. After all hasn't 'craft' been a bit done to death?

How about...

a) Ibeer

b) Real Fucking Beer, Man!

c) Hipster bio dynamic diet water.

what new, hip, cool name would you give it?