Chopps Scales Up... Four Priests Brewery

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@chopps
I happened to pop into a small, new, local brewery yesterday and it brought to mind your current situation.
You're a clever chap, so I'm sure you will have already considered this...
He had effectively raised the wet brewing area with a new concrete floor with an integrated drain / grille thing down the middle to be able to create a slope to the drainage.
 
@chopps
I happened to pop into a small, new, local brewery yesterday and it brought to mind your current situation.
You're a clever chap, so I'm sure you will have already considered this...
He had effectively raised the wet brewing area with a new concrete floor with an integrated drain / grille thing down the middle to be able to create a slope to the drainage.

Yep. I'm just being cheap right now. We need to do what he did.

If we make a go of this and there's a little bit of cash generated I'll get the floor screeded properly to slope the right way round.
For now, we'll live with the wrong-way slope and put a trench drain at the back where the water will collect. Not ideal, but solves the problem. There's some money to spend right now, but there are a million other things to spend it on too :)

Road saw coming on Monday... YouTube standing by!

Cheers mate.
 
Great watch again I wish I had seen this hole cutting suggestion with the Qmax cutter before I made a mess of my corney keg lid i drilled for a s40 valve would have saved me wrecking it with my poor drill
 
That feels like a long way away! We’ll get there.
I bet it does at this time, it's like building houses 1/2 your cost / time goes into the ground/preparations, all the prep goes into the product no one else sees, but you value and get £2 a bottle for and everyone thinks you are minted Lol
 
Can I ask what style of beer do you plan on making. Are you going traditional English style cask beers or do you plan something different
 
Hi @samale

I'll give you a long answer to a simple question...

To keep the spend under control, we'll have to phase-in different packaging as we get rolling.
Having a lot of conversations currently with publicans and locals.
To begin, the simplest and least expensive option is to cask it and get it to pubs. Not good margins but it means we are up and running and able to optimise the kit and our process while generating a bit of income. For that reason, and the feedback, it feels like the right thing to do a good local cask bitter with broad appeal to pub goers.
Not over complicated, just a very decent drop that will fit expectations in rural Cheshire.

Keg opens up more outlets for us, but there's some additional cost in packaging and filling gear (dependent on what we use). We're crunching through the numbers for steel kegs, ecokeg, polykeg, keykeg, whether to carb in the keg or get a CT, whether to keg condition in the eco's. And so on. Either way, cask first then keg second. Entering the craft-keg world gets us more pub/bar/restaurant outlets and the ability to get a bit more creative with the beers we make.

Then finally consumer packaging. I have applied already for licensing so this will be in place when we're ready.
But do we bottle or can? Retailers seem not to like package conditioned so much. They'll buy it but I've been told a few times that they don't like bottle conditioned on the shelf for too long. So again we need to carb/filter and that's more cost. Selling direct to the public via web, in can or bottle conditioned is not so much of an issue for craft drinkers, so we can start there. Better margin for us without the retailer, but not as wide a reach. I've thought about this for traditional English ales, but there's a lot of '3 for a fiver' competition and I'm not going down that road. We will probably keep the bitter on cask and bottle/can the more interesting product. Time will tell us.

So the simple answer is traditional English cask, to start with. Then we can get a bit more fancy :)
 
Can’t believe we’re up to 10 videos already, and I said I wouldn’t over do it…. The production quality is frankly awful, the sound is out of balance and I’m cringingly awkward but the channel seems to be getting a little bit popular. People will watch any old rubbish!

My promise is to try a bit harder to improve the quality. Thanks to you all for the comments, support and feedback so far, it means a lot to me.
 

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