Charming Squire - the James Squire Brew-pub in Brisbane

Nestled on the South Bank in Brisbane and conveniently located near the convention centre is the Charming Squire, pub-home of one of the James Squire breweries. The brewing equipment is visible as a lofted monument above everyone's heads and is elegantly lit to blend into the warm gold, amber and brown themes. Everything looks like beer colours and the place was packed on a Saturday afternoon, unlike some of the other places I walked past in Brisbane.

A large number of beer taps are on display and connected to the kegs, which are visible in a climate controlled room next to the bar and visible through a glass panel wall that runs along the length of the brewery downstairs. Essential product information is printed neatly on the wall at the back of the bar to help patrons select from the potentially bewildering collection of beers on offer.  The staff behind the bar tend to ask people who seem confused, and who wouldn't be unless you are a seasoned craft beer drinker and tinkerer, what style of beer they usually drink. This promotes a 'more of the same' approach which doesn't really  tap into the potential that craft beer offers.  I noticed that there were a few wooden panels hanging behind the bar so I asked my bar tender what the smallest volume was that I could buy and whether I could taste different beers.  I ended up with these 100ml tasters and a product tasting sheet with tiny print.  At $12 it wasn't cheap, but I've paid more at other places.  Each beer had a 5-scale rating system for Appearance, Aroma, Taste, Mouthfeel, and Finish.

Their food was good and it was a very pleasant way to spend part of my afternoon on the South Bank in Brisbane.

James Squire is reputed to be the person who first successfully cultivated hops in Australia.  There is some history about The Malt Shovel Brewery that Chuck Hahn established in Camperdown, Sydney in 1988.

The group has several Squire brew-pubs scattered around the country as presented on this map. 

Brisbane Craft Beer Hunt

Today I am in Brisbane, Australia, and I have been doing some research on locally available brew-pubs.  I'm hot on the tail of the local craft beer scene with the view to comparing what I am seeing in the UK and North America.

Here is a useful link to the Australian Craft Beer Industry Association, and here is some history about craft beer in Australia.

Here's a list of breweries to consider when visiting Brisbane.  On my list of places to visit are the Charming Squire, Brisbane Brewing Co., and Catchment Brewing Co., which are all conveniently clustered together in the South Bank area.

Pictures later, when I return.

Brewdog Boosts Benefits

In the last few days of the crowd funding campaign, Brewdog has offered Boosted Benefits for levels of investment in the £5,000 - 50,000 range.

There is a hint of cult following marketing driven by big ego benefits. There is no substitute for a personal touch and Brewdog is right on the money with this one. Take the £10k level incentive - free beer for life in a growler with your name on it and a personalised equity punk card to prove you own the magic vessel that will keep flowing over every month until you stop walking into their bars asking for more. At this level there is also the 'name in lights' offer, or a steel plaque with your name on it, welded to a vessel in the brewhouse for as long as the stainless steel can weather the elements and withstand its useful operation time. It's shrewd, iconic and flashy, but it still doesn't report back to your bank account in the form of dividends. As long as you are happy to take your return on investment in beer, spirits, experiential benefits, a sense of belonging and being part of history you'll be alright.

I will admit that the experience based benefits are quite cool and are destined to develop long-term friendships and keep the super-class clients and supporter's tails wagging. I have no doubt that this Equity for Punks exercise will become an essential part of every future MBA course's case study curriculum.  I can't wait to hear how much they have managed to raise. Tomorrow is the deadline, so you literally only have hours left to splash out. 

Here's a post-dated update on the campaign. It turns out Brewdog raised £19 million - that's astounding. Congratulations!

Goose Migrates to Texas and the UK

Sitting at Houston airport and looking at what is available on draft I see the Goose and it's an IPA.  No hesitation there, I order a pint and its a good choice.

It turns out the company, Goose Island Beer Co., is from Chicago, Illinois. The video about their history is well worth watching.  The founder, John Hall, says he didn't know anything about breweries before he started out in 1988. Everyone needs a support network and the Chicago Beer Society (established 1977) provided this essential fraternity.  The brewery was established as a brew-pub, which in my opinion always makes it easier to get your product to market, but more importantly enables you to stay in touch with your market and receive feedback on product quality and preferences.

Like all growing businesses they needed extra capacity and expanded to a 25,000 barrel per annum business with the addition of the Fulton Production Brewery in 1996 - described as 'trial by fire'.

Greg Browne says 'barrel aged beer was invented in Chicago', and this highlights some of the innovations that craft beer producers have introduced to the industry.  Surprisingly they use bourbon barrels and wine barrels, depending on the beer, and they estimate to be using 5,000 barrels.  The innovation theme is great, especially when Tom Korder says 'learn what can be done with beer' through experimentation.  They have video clips of their brew masters shoving delightfully juicy things into the barrels. Watch the video!

On reflection, sitting in the airport I thought it was a rather long flight for a goose to fly all the way from Chicago to Houston with a keg of IPA around its neck but it turns out that Goose Island sells beers in all 50 states and exports to the UK. Honk, honk!

There are some brewer's notes, recipe information and a list of awards on their product page for this beer. Although my beer came in a rather unattractive plastic cup, I like the look of the bottle and label and will be looking out for it in future. 

Here is a link to the rating for this beer on Beer Advocate.

A little extra info on this beer:

Style: American IPA

ABV 5.9% 

IBU 55

  

Saint Arnold in Houston

Yesterday I was travelling along the Interstate 10 on the way back from Louisiana and spotted the Saint Arnold brewery in Houston. I hadn't know where it was before, so it was a chance sighting and another example of seeing things jump out at you when you are interested in them.

At dinner time in a hotel in Houston, that shall remain unnamed, I was asking the waiter what craft beers they had available. 'Beers?' he asked, and then rattled off the usual list of bland, uninteresting, mainstream, nation-wide-mega-brewhouse insipid products.  I started asking for specific brands of beer that have gone mainstream in the US with the hope to fish something out of the situation. Once, again, the real challenge here was a traditional hotel setting with a wine menu, but not a beer menu, and a waiter with no clue about beer.

Out of desperation I went around to the bar and asked them to start unpacking beers so that I could look at them. This is a common problem. People behind a bar expect that you know what you want to drink and expect you to be able to ask for it by name. Fortunately they had some beer from Saint Arnold's brewery and I selected the IPA, one of my favourite styles. 

I can honestly say that I was delighted with this gem. The colour was a rich amber and the aroma was fragrant leading to sensory anticipation before the first sip.  The beer is well hopped. It tasted quite complex and had a long, drawn-out, bitter tail that whipped my thirst away. I found it easy to savour and nursed it through the duration of my dinner, which is probably just as well because the alcohol content was a little higher than what I was expecting. 

Looking at the producers webpage for this product, the Elissa IPA, they have done a fantastic job of describing the beer, listing it's awards, sharing the ingredients, stating the specifications (e.g. bitterness 52 IBU, alcohol 7.1% by volume) and adding some character by discussing relevant history and trivia about the beer and it's name.  

Typical for the American market, this beer has a 'citrusy flavour'.  They make 'three hop additions in the kettle as well as a large dry-hopping in the fermenter'. It sounds like a lot of hops and certainly tasted like it, although the IBU rating is not as high as I thought it may be. I'm going to have to hunt out some really bitter beers to educate my palate. 

When I'm back in Houston I'll be hunting for more craft gems and I'll have to try squeeze in a brewery tour. 

Louisiana Wheat Ale

I was at a restaurant in Lake Charles, Louisiana last night and asked what craft beer they had available.  The menu didn't have an updated list of what was available and I struggled to understand what was on offer despite the waiter's best efforts to explain what he had in his own 'beer vocabulary'.  Considering the large number of craft beers on offer and the potential for rapid changes, there is a clear need for a flexible beer menu and it makes more sense that it should be in electronic format.

In the end I discovered this little gem: Parish Brewing Co.'s Canebrake Louisiana Wheat Ale.

 It was a delightfully refreshing beer, light as the wind across the palate, crisp, slightly sweet and chased by citrus notes. Looking at the website there is an elegant presentation of their products, however the nature of the website makes it difficult to link directly to one product and its description.

The headline name says it all - Canebrake - they use sugar (or cane sugar syrup), which you may be tempted to consider 'cheating' in terms of classic beer making but remember that this is craft beer and there are no rules.  It is precisely this willingness to abandon historic expectations, and to experiment and innovate that makes this revolution so exciting.
 

London Heathrow

I was in Heathrow Terminal 5 a few days ago and noticed this craft beer exhibit.  I find it intriguing how things jump out at you when you become interested in something new. It's a bit like that car you have your eye on, and then you start seeing them all over the place. 

Someone out there is doing a good marketing exercise; I wonder how they managed to put this together?

Brewdog Millionaire

How do you raise funds for a business? I had a business lecturer who suggested you turn to 'family, friends and fools'.

Way back, crowd funding initiatives developed into the stock exchanges we know today. Now, however, with the Internet revolution the beer revolution is queuing at the online crowd funding 'make-it-up-as-you-go-along' grandstands. There are structured platforms like CrowdCube... or you can make up your own rules and punk your way into the black like Brewdog.  Brewdog are attempting to raise £25 million with their equity for punks scheme. You can read their prospectus here.

The FT has a good Q&A page on this deal and claims the current fundraising initiative values the company at £300 million and creates a price-to-earnings ratio (PE Ratio) of over one hundred times. That's very high in anyone's books!

The benefit of a stock exchange is that it creates trading liquidity - the ability to buy and or sell the share easily (if there is enough demand). Equity punks won't have this luxury - they will have to wait for an annual trading event and hope their specified minimum price reserve is not too high, or else the share won't sell.

Equity punks will not be able to share in any profits and will not receive any dividends. Besides the potential for the share to increase (or decrease) in value, the other advantage for owning equity will be to qualify for product-related perks in the form of discounts or free product deliveries from time to time, and the right to attend a shareholder meeting. However, don't expect to have much of a say in the company's decision making process, there is no intention to dilute the shareholding away from the core owners. The offer ends soon (April this year) so don't delay.

You may find that becoming an Equity Punk is making more of a feel-good investment than a prudent financial investment.  If you do become an Equity Punk, you will be able to howl out loud: 'I invested in a brewery, and own part of Brewdog. Woof!'

Close to my Hart

Today I went to visit the Hart Family Brewers brewery in Wellingborough.

The first thing that struck me was their bright orange kegs, which were new to me.  There was me thinking that kegs only come in stainless steel. I would expect they need to be strong and robust, and that they need to be food grade quality i.e. no scratches that bacteria can hide in and spoil your product. Note to self - what material is that made of? I would guess high density polypropylene. Have a look at this manufacturer in Worcestershire, UK. 

The next thing that struck me was the simplicity of the equipment. I got the impression that this was a scaled up version of a home brewery. No frills. A simplified process of batching. 

Aside from add-on temperature control I didn't see any sign of automation in place.  The temperature control comprised a glycol-based chilling unit linked to the fermenters with poly-tubing. 

Even the bottling is done by hand, with the bottling equipment conveniently stored on top of a Mash Tun until the next weekly bottling run. 

Stock is stacked at the reception and payment area to remind you what this business is about - craft beer, passion, innovation, improvisation - an entrepreneur's dream. 

The tasting was excellent - small little clear transparent plastic 'glasses', which enabled the taster to see the colour and appreciate the clarity. The aroma of the beer told me that the temperature for tasting was just right. The beers are branded with an elegant label displaying a stately steed on a uniform colour background that corresponds to the type of beer.  The product line is numbered and the label contains a well balanced amount of information about the beer flavour and content. Following the tasting, this was the selection that I liked and bought:

The beers were packaged in boxes with simple markings and perfectly designed to hold 8 bottles nice and snuggly. 

My favourite was No. 9, a 'lush golden beer with a crisp, hoppy flavour', and 4.3 per cent alcohol by volume.  The back of the label describes the taste as being 'crisp and refreshing and brewed using UK Cascade hops lending fresh, citrus flavours'. 

One of the things I don't like about commercial beers is the amount of fizz introduced artificially by injecting carbon dioxide into the beer under pressure.  The way craft brewers get some fizz into their beer is to place some yeast and a bit of extra sugar in the bottle before it is capped so that a secondary fermentation can take place in the closed bottle (creating pressure) and dissolving the CO2 produced during the fermentation. The price one pays for this is that the bottle contains some yeast sediment, and can make the beer slightly cloudy when agitated during the handling or pouring process.  

All in all this visit was a delightful experience and I will be enjoying their beer for a few weeks to come.