Jan 2010

Well the snow and ice seem to have disappeared (for now) and life is getting back to normal. The worst that happened to us was Bob slipping over (sober) on the drive at home and bruising his arm - fortunately, it was dark at the time so there weren't any witnesses around to laugh at his discomfort!

Our big news for January is that Magpie is coming to the Magpies. Starting this week, we are trialling a barrel or two of Magpie on matchdays at Wheelers (formerly the Meadow Club) situated next to the main entrance on Meadow Lane. His will be on a small scale to start with while the club judges what demand exists but we hope that both quantity and choice will build up over time.

We are brewing a new beer for the charity night at the Dewdrop in Ilkeston, which takes place on Wednesday, Feb 17th and which will also feature at the Hockey Club Beer festival, the previous weekend (just Friday/Saturday this one) and hope to have time to brew early bird for the spring. The new beer will be a traditional best bitter colour, brewed to about 4.3%.

As ever, we will try to get out to as many festivals as possible through 2010 and hope to see as many friends as possible at them.

Cheers!

Bob, Nick and Ken

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who came and saw us at the Robin Hood Beer Festival. It was great to chat to so many people, friends old and new, and it certainly helped to pass those quiet moments (!). The festival was a huge success and congratulations to Steve Westby and his team of volunteers for all the hard work that they put in to make it so. Our festival special, Hedgehopper, did go ahead, albeit with less local hops than last year, and certainly tasted completely different to its predecessor. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first Magpie beer to run out was Svendemonium, our "one off" that is now on its fifth brew. The last barrel of Hedgehopper has been saved for the West Bridgford Monarchs HC Beer Festival which takes place from November 12 - 15 - see www.wbhockey.co.uk for details.

At time of writing this, Magic Lantern, which we brewed as a Halloween special, has sold out. Apologies if your local hasn't had any (it sold very quickly) but there's always next year …. We have just brewed another special, this time for the Canal House Beer Festival, and to help raise funds for a permanent memorial for Victoria Cross holders from Notts regiments (of whom there are/were twenty). Called Local Heroes, it is a 4.7 dark bitter, and it will also be available at the Little Acorn festival and (hopefully) from most of our regular customers as well.

We are currently planning for Christmas and into the New Year. We will be making a Christmas beer again, possibly Humbug as that seemed to go quite well last year and we are continuing to make Midnight Porter, as we seem to have sufficient customers wanting it through the year. Beyond that, we haven't really thought about any more new beers - maybe we'd better concentrate on making sure that we have a few more of our supposed regulars available!

Exciting times at Notts County has led to us developing a new beer which is smooth and golden, called Svendemonium and currently on sale in quite a few local (and not so local) pubs.

We are brewing another new beer especially for the joint Trent Navigation/Globe Beer Festival over the August Bank Holiday - its name will depend on which pub you are in - it could be Global Navigation or it could be Navigate the Globe - or you could just be seeing things …. And it is a golden 3.9%. We have sourced quite a few of the beers for the festival and can promise you some interesting beers from around the country as well as some excellent locales.

This year we will be brewing our first designated Halloween beer, a darkish bitter at 4.4% and to be called Magic Lantern and we are also hoping to brew another locally hopped beer for the Robin Hood Beer Festival. This is in the balance at the moment as I don't think that the hops will be ready as they haven't grown very well this year - too much cold windy weather we think.

A reminder that you can receive regular brief news updates from us. Just send your email address to bob@magpiebrewery.com and we will add you to our mailing list. You won't be deluged with material but we will try to send updates on new beers, etc

A big thank you to everyone who came to our recent birthday celebration and contributed to the collection for the Woodland Trust. We raised the grand total of £361 which is a record for one of our events. The picture shows one of the younger guests getting an early taste (or sniff anyway) of Magpie products!

We recently brewed a new beer called Mapperley Gold to help celebrate our Camra branch's local pubs week. This beer should be available throughout the week of July 6th in the Bread and Bitter, The Plainsman and the Woodthorpe Top and we are aiming to do a bit of quality assurance in them later on during the week! We were delighted to be helped during the brewing process by Dale from the Woodthorpe Top and by Ben from the Bread and Bitter.

One or two customers have been asking us about vegan and vegetarian beer. To be clear, all of our bottled beer is entirely vegan while none of our cask beer is. We would be happy to supply cask beer in this condition, on request, but it does take ages to settle - whereas the bottled version settles quite quickly.

We have decided to start up a new facility such that anyone interested can receive regular brief news updates from us. Just send your email address to bob@magpiebrewery.com and we will add you to our mailing list. You won't be deluged with material but we will try to send updates on new beers, etc.

We are delighted to be able to reduce beer miles by supplying the newly reopened Trent Navigation Inn, who are taking our beers regularly and (almost) always have at least one and often two or three on sale. Not only have we been able to reduce beer miles, but we have also delivered on foot occasionally and the picture shows Bob nearing the cellar with a recent delivery.

Although the Globe is about the same distance away, we have never fancied legging it across London Road, so have always used the van to get there!

The Trent Navigation will be holding a Magpie Night on Wednesday, Feb 11th, when a good number of our beers will be on sale and we hope that a lot of friends will join us there.

Rather belatedly, we would like to congratulate all those involved in the planning and organisation of the Robin Hood Beer Festival. It was a bold and imaginative step to go to the castle and the worry, hard work, etc all paid off with a hugely successful festival. Our new beer, Hedgehopper, went well and will be brewed again next year, so long as the hops grow on well.

Steve's Grog

We have been hosting a very special guest brewer this week, Steve Westby. The pictures show him concentrating hard on various parts of making Steve's Grog, a 4.4% best bitter, which we hope will help him celebrate a major milestone in his life in style. Later in the month, we will be making our first ever Christmas beer, Humbug, which will be a 4.9% winter warmer.

Magpie Reaches New Heights

Bob and Ann have been attempting to climb (ie walk up, they don't do proper climbing!) all the Lake District summits of 2000 feet or more mentioned in the Wainwright guides over the past few years. The picture shows Bob raising a glass of JPA on the summit of Pillar, the last of the 127 to be completed. Bob commented that, while it might seem a bit sad to collect peaks in this way, it has encouraged them to walk in many of the lesser known areas of the Lakes, seeing some stunning scenery and very few fellow walkers in the process.

More New Beers

Since the last update, we have launched a couple of new beers. Thieving rascal is a less strong version of thieving rogue and will only be available through the summer while Magpie Best is likely to replace Trent Bridge Special as our "traditional" bitter. Bob, on being asked its colour by a potential customer replied that it is "beer coloured". After being subjected to this advanced sales pitch, the customer went ahead and ordered some - smooth marketing speak obviously pays off.

We have two more beers in the pipeline. The first, Monty's Firkin is named in honour of Monty, the pub dog at the Queen Adelaide, and is one of a series of "Monty" beers - others have been brewed by Full Mash and Nutbrook. The second, is our locally hopped beer, (see updated photo) which will be called Hedgehopper, following a competition in the Nottingham Drinker. This will be launched at the Robin Hood Beer Festival at its new venue - we hope to see you there, we'll be around on the Thursday and Friday, so do come over and have a chat.

Bottles

Don't forget that that these are now available in a few local off licenses. We are operating at close to capacity with our high tech equipment (it makes Heath Robinson look state of the art) so will only extend our range if other local shops approach us. We certainly aren't aiming at the shelves of any supermarkets!

Locale

This campaign which was started by Nottingham CAMRA is now going nationwide. Congratulations to Steve Westby for getting it going and also (belatedly) for his recognition as Campaigner of the Year by CAMRA. We do travel a fair way to deliver beer, but we started out as "Local Beer - Local People" and we believe that is the way to go. It's fair to say that when we do travel, we fill the van as full as possible, and our customers do tend to keep excellent pubs.

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