The end of Fizzy Tastless EXTRA cold Lager

This says it all..........

.....and now....about the food

Happy Valentines Day!!

A week since we've blogged, so must be time to put some more words down. In this last week we've got Woolpacker casked and started up the kitchen again, feeding a reasonable number of very appreciative customers.

Speaking of which we've not said much here about the food. Dave continues to think up new dishes. There is Mash Ould Ergonomics. This is slow cooked on the bone lamb shoulder shredded and formed into a volute mash covered tussock and served with roast root vegetables and a rich red wine reduction gravy. See how many of you get that joke.

And for today, Hot Passion Thighs. Boned chicken thighs stuffed with an apricot and herb stuffing and served with a Thai passionfruit sauce. We're still debating the best name for this one. We decided that dropping the "stuffing" out of the name might be a good idea.

So hopefully tomorrow will see the return of Woolpacker to the bar.

Picked for a guide and Pics for the Web

Had a nice gentleman visit from the Hidden Places guides. The new edition of the England guide is out this year.

Apparently customers have written to the publisher saying they have been here and enjoyed the food, beer and best of all the hosts. Now I always find these guides interesting because listing isn't without cost to us. However, it did seem reasonably genuine. Only two properties have been chosen out of our section of the County, and we're one of them. So it would seem we will be listed in the edition due to be published later in the year.

If you have visited us and put in a recommendation to the Hidden Places guides then thank you, we appreciate it.

There are no pictures in the Blog today - but there are some new ones of the rooms on the main web site www.woolpack.co.uk/details.htm taken today. They show we've not been idle this winter and are ready for the season. Thanks to all who have made suggestions on how we can improve the rooms. We hope we've got them better for you.

Swirly Wort

Well, first brew day of 2008 - yes, yes, we know we said we'd do it Friday but the water treatment plant was broken, and as the council is comming to test the water on Monday we figured it was a good idea to fix it. It's fine now of course.

So now we have 2brls of Woolpacker at 1039 OG. in the fermenter complete with yeast. The little cells just need to get to work turning those fermentables into alcohol.

It was the first time the new underback was used.

Here is the video of proof that the wort really does swirl round in a slow but effective vortex. The real advantage of this seems to be reduced clogging of the hop strainer when pumping out the copper during the boil due to less fine solids in the wort.

And some more video of brewing activity: First the wort going into the copper.

And now the sparging: