Apologies to regular web readers for the break but we have a few pieces of news for you.

1. Bottled beers are now available from Clumber Stores, Clumber Road, West Bridgford; N & S Stores, Trent Boulevard, Lady Bay; Scrumpys, Burton Road Gedling; Bells Brewery, Ullesthorpe and West Bridgfordians Cricket Club. Our bottled beers are unfined which means that they are entirely vegetarian.

2. We had a great response to our second birthday celebration. Thanks to everyone who turned up and contributed to the collection - where we made over £290 to be handed on to the Woodland Trust. There is a picture of the assembled masses on the Nottingham Camra website.

3. As promised, here is a picture of the Gedling hop garden. Higher poles will be required for next year! Due to the wonders of horticulture (ie taking cuttings) there will be West Bridgford hop garden in production next year as well. Click image for a larger version.

4. We are really pleased to be brewer of the Month at the Lion in Basford for August. This means that at least for one month we can say with confidence that one of our beers will be available all the time.

5. Congratulations fo Beryl and Ken on their 40th wedding anniversary. Nick and Bob have been left in charge while they are away celebrating. This includes making our contribution for the GBBF (first gold) so you know who to blame if it all goes horribly wrong!

Magpie fits into a bottle.

Magpie hops along!

Readers of the Nottingham Drinker will know that we are growing our own hops to use in a brew later on this year. The hops are growing well despite the recent high winds and we will post pictures regularly to show you how they are coming on.

100 Up

A big thank you to The Globe for hosting the recent brewery night where we launched our 100th beer, fully fledged. The picture shows Cellar Manager Paul, CAMRA Brewery Liaison Officer Alan (who helped with the brewing) as well as the three of us. It was probably a bit later on in the evening when this was taking, judging by the tired (and emotional?) state of the one on the left! Our next new brew will be a revised version of dark secret (called dark secret mark 2) which has been adjusted from last year’s recipe and will be available soon. March 2008

Camra Shy!

We were pleased to welcome Alan Ward, our Camra Brewery Liaison officer, to help us brew our 100th brew. The pictures show Alan arriving at 7.25 (Camra colleagues please note) and then helping with various parts of the brewing process. Brew 100, to be called “fully fledged” will be launched at The Globe on Wednesday, March 19th, and we’d love to see loads of you there to help us celebrate our century.

Guest Brewer hops in

We were pleased to entertain a new guest brewer, Graham Jackson on Monday. Graham, who has worked hard (and successfully) to get the Globe back into the Good Beer Guide decided that he would try to find out the secret behind our stunning beers.

Despite spending an enjoyable day with us, he is still none the wiser, although he did enjoy his trip to the sample room when the brewing process was finished. The pictures show him getting stuck in to various parts of the process.

Norwegians Would

We were pleased to host a party from Norway at the brewery recently. Fortunately, they are used to the cold, so the sub zero temperatures did not put them off sampling a pint (or three) of Magpie as the picture shows.

Beer Festivals

Beer Festival time is upon us and you will be able to find some Magpie at a number of local festivals, including the Boat Club on Jan 25th (Friday night only), The Magpies (Thursday to Saturday ) and the Hockey Club (Friday to Sunday), both the following weekend, and the Chesterfield CAMRA Festival at the Winding Wheel, the weekend after that. We will be putting in an appearance at some, if not all, of these events, so we'll hope to see you sometime.

Festival News

Magpie beers have recently appeared at the Gladstone Beer Festival and also the Grantham Camra Beer Festival and we are due to feature at the Horse and Groom, this coming weekend and at the Royal Oak in Watnall the following weekend.

Further afield, we are never sure where you will find us, but we are due to appear at a Fur and Feathers themed festival soon - I knew that the brewery name would pay off eventually.

We were also delighted to supply the Great British Beer Festival with (for us) a vast amount of early bird although less delighted to find that two of our casks were among those that disappeared from Small Beer's custody when they had a lorry nicked. We did better than other local brewers, who lost a lot more than us, however.

On the beer front, Trent Bridge Special has been well received and we are continuing to make it, but have stopped making two 4 joy at present as the two beers are relatively similar.

Over the summer, we have entertained a number of groups, including from the Globe whose customers made the arduous journey over London Road to get to us! We are really pleased that the Nottingham Camra branch is visiting in a couple of weeks - everyone that visits makes a donation to our current charity, The Woodland Trust, so they will be getting a decent cheque when the summer is over.

More Guest Brewers

Pictured are our two most recent guest brewers, Bill and Mike who enjoyed a day with us recently. They are looking forward to sampling the two 4 joy that they helped us to make.

Birthday

We celebrated one year of brewing with a bit of a do at the brewery last Friday. Friends, old and new, helped us to celebrate by polishing off a fair volume of our current beer range. It's fair to say that the year has flown past and we are really grateful to all those (far too many to mention) who have given us a helping hand. Our local CAMRA branch has been really supportive, as it rightly is to all local breweries, and we are especially grateful to Alan Ward who liaises between us and the branch. Many glasses were raised during the evening and we raised over £200 for the Woodland Trust during the evening. The picture shows some of the throng who attended.

Trent Bridge Test Match/Globe Beer Festival

We are launching another new beer in time for these events at the end of July to be called Trent Bridge Special. This will be a darkish (sorry about the technical jargon) bitter brewed at about 4.0% abv. Following the favourable reception to JPA, our first dry hopped beer, this also will be dry hopped, although we are doing last minute recipe research and haven't yet decided on the hopping details! The Globe Beer Festival will be celebrating local beers and breweries and will feature a selection of beers from most, if not all, of the county's many micros. More details will be on the Globe website, www.theglobenottingham.com.

one 2 many

Not content with having made JPA, which should be available in one or other of our local outlets (and at the Three Crowns/White Horse Beer Festival next weekend in Ruddington) we have made a further beer called "one 2 many".

The name follows the two 4 joy theme but the beer is actually a stronger version of thieving rogue, indeed with one extra sack of malt in the ingredients. No prizes for guessing whether or not this was deliberate or the name of the idiot who made the mistake, but we will be interested to see how it goes down.

We have also recently entertained a guest brewer, Richard Muir, and he is pictured adding the yeast to the latest batch of two 4 joy.

JPA

Following the successful launch of dark secret at The Globe, we have invited landlord Graham Jackson to help “mash in” our next new beer, an IPA to be called JPA, which will be launched in a couple of week’s time. The beer will be a traditional IPA brewed, like all our beers, with English malt and hops at an abv of 5.2%.

Although the original IPAs were designed to travel half way round the world before the casks were opened, we intend that ours will appear rather more locally than that and you can be sure that we will be offering this brew to all our regular outlets as well as a few beer festivals.

Camra Visitation

Pictured above are some of our friends from the Camra Erewash branch who came for a guided tour of the brewery recently. As well as having a good time they also made a generous donation which we will be passing on to the Woodland Trust."

Competition Result:
We had a tremendous response to our competition to give a permanent name to our newest beer. Thanks to the Pub People pubs who ran this for us (The Lion, Bunkers Hill, The Poacher in Ilkeston and the Old Coach House in Southwell) and to everyone who entered. The overall winner, full flight, came from The Lion and was suggested by Steve Cullen.
His prize was 20 litres of thieving rogue. Runners up were Robert Hall at the Coach House, Penny Bowyer at the Poacher and Geoff Carter at Bunkers Hill. If Geoff happens to read this, please get in touch and we will organise for you to receive your prize!

Beer Festivals:
Forthcoming festivals where Magpie will be served include the Magpies Beer Festival at Meadow Lane on Feb 1/3 and the WB Hockey Club Festival on Loughboro Road on Feb 9/10. See the club web sites for more details.

New Beer:
We will be launching a mild called dark secret (a secret that will never be told) in March ready for the Mild Trail that runs from April to May. We are currently wrestling with recipe ideas and have recruited Graham Jackson, landlord of the Globe, as our expert taster.

Magpie's dark secret is revealed!

We are just about to launch our new mild, called dark secret. This has been made in good time for the Flowerpot pub's "Potfest" in Derby, a Beer Festival involving over 100 new beers starting next Thursday, March 29th. Dark secret is a traditional mild, probably slightly more hopped than most, coming at just 3.7% abv.

We will be launching it locally at The Globe on Tuesday, April 3rd, it having gained landlord Graham Jackson's seal of approval at a specially arranged tasting session at the brewery. This will be an informal event and we would be delighted to see you there. It will also be featuring at the Spring Beer Festival at The Star in Huddersfield, an ace pub to visit if you are in the area.

Following the launch, we will be adding it to our product list, at least until the end of May. After that we will play it by ear, depending on demand, like we do with the other beers that we make!

BEER FESTIVAL

We suggest that you might like to try our beer and loads of other quality beers at the West Bridgford Hockey Club Beer Festival which is from Nov 9 to 12 at Loughboro Road, West Bridgford, next to the Fire Station. More details are on their web site www.wbhockey.co.uk.

NOTTINGHAM BEER FESTIVAL

Thank you to everyone who tried our beers at the Nottingham Beer Festival, we hope that you enjoyed them. Despite problems with the two 4 joy not clearing, (bit of a b….r that), we still managed to clear 10 barrels so there must have been quite a lot of you! It was great to get so much positive feedback and we are redoubling our efforts to get some Magpie into a pub near you. We would also like to say a big thank you to all the local Camra branch members who put in a massive amount of time and effort to make the festival such a success. Nick and I had a great time on Thursday and Friday nights and we did a lot of quality assurance throughout.

VULCAN 558 TAKES OFF

We had vulcan 558 on sale at the Festival and it's fair to say that it flew - therefore beating the plane it is named after, which hasn't yet. We have made three batches and should therefore be donating something in the region of £300 to the project. After that, we will be renaming the beer and we are just about to collect all the entries from the Pub People pubs that have been taking part in the competition to find a name. Loads of people have entered, judging by the sackful that I picked up at the Lion and it's going to be difficult to find a winner. Watch this space ……

BREWER OF THE MONTH

We are delighted to have been chosen as the Pub People Company’s Brewer of the Month for October for the Nottingham area. This means that you will be able to find our beers at the Poacher in Ilkeston, the Malt Shovel in Beeston and Bunker’s Hill in Nottingham as well as the Old Coach House in Southwell and the Lion in New Basford.

There is also a competition in each of these pubs to give our new beer a permanent name so why not get along and try out our range of beers. As previously announced, the new beer will be launched at the Nottingham Beer Festival and will then be made available through these pubs immediately afterwards.

NEW BEER!

We are delighted to tell you that our latest beer, thieving rogue, is launched this week. It is a 4.5% golden beer and will be available in the Lion, the Chestnut Tree, the Rose and Crown (Cotgrave) and a number of other local pubs. It will also be served in the CAMRA beer tent at the Moorgreen Show and at a number of other festivals around the area. Further afield, pubs like the Forest Lodge in Edwinstowe, the Nell Gwyn in Mansfield and the Mallard in Worksop will also be amongst the first to serve it. The first brew is more or less sold out, so we have made another one for those who haven’t got their hands on the first lot!

Magpie helps to protect RSPB

Following the successful opening of the brewery, Nick is pictured presenting the cheque for £210.60 to David Goodwin of the RSPB. The money will go towards one of their local reserves. The wonderful sculpture behind Nick and David was made by Gavin Darby (see links pages, if you would like to talk to Gavin about his work).

Magpie ale ready to fly for brewer

Bob Douglas is used to brewing. For 26 years he has resolved problems in the workplace when trouble has been brewing. Now he is turning his skills to brewing beer.

Bob is retiring as area director of arbitration and conciliation service Acas where he has specialised in helping bosses and workers resolve disputes. He and two friends plan to launch a micro brewery, The Magpie, during the summer.

Bob said: "I have always enjoyed beer and have always sympathised with the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) even if I haven't always been a member."

The idea came to him while he was on the golf course with friend Ken Morrison. The two of them are setting up the business near Meadow Lane - hence the name Magpie after nearby Notts County Football Club - and will be joined by a third party, Nick Sewter.

Bob said: "I saw in the CAMRA magazine that the Caythorpe micro brewery had changed hands. It made me think that maybe I could do that."

Bob is off on a brewing course shortly and in the meantime is resolving tax and duty issues with HM Revenue and Customs. When the Magpie Brewery is going full pelt, it will brew 3,500 pints a week. The team is in negotiations to secure a site for a June launch.

Bob said Magpie will brew three beers - a session bitter with a strength of 3.8%, a maltier best bitter of about four per cent and a premium golden, hoppier beer of 4.5%. A course will teach Bob about consistency - how to vary the malt and hops to make the beer more or less bitter.

"I began brewing beer as a student when I had no money, making beer at home," said Bob. He has learned something about the tastes drinkers want by observing what sells - and what doesn't - at West Bridgford Hockey Club with which he is involved.

He said: "We have taken a lot of advice both from other brewers and equipment suppliers.
"Everyone we have spoken to has been extremely helpful and encouraging and we will be working with an experienced brewer initially to try to minimise any teething problems.
"All three of us strongly believe in proper products consumed as near to the point of production as possible - so, locally brewed, real ale, fits the bill entirely."

Thanks to the Nottingham Evening Post for allowing us to reprint this article.

©Magpie Brewery Ltd