Greeting and a strange idea from Cumbria....

I have this idea.

I have a brewery and a quiet remote Inn in a beautiful part of the Lake District. We have comfortable rooms and serve nice food. We often have a good selection of Cumbrian ales on the bar. I like talking about ale and brewing.

I normally brew mid week. Weekends are taken up trying to keep customers happy. I sometimes have rooms empty mid week, which is why I brew then. I do wonder if there are any beer fanatics who might like to stay mid week and try their hand at brewing?

I did help to get Ted on the road with his project I believe he might be doing alright, so I guess I've got a little bit of a track record. I do suspect that Ted would have done just fine without me, but hey, I'm taking some credit anyhow.

So the deal would be along the lines of: Stay for a couple of nights. During the day help with some brewing, cask cleaning and ask me questions about how it all works, in the evening you buy food and beer off me.

It wouldn't be a high tech course, not all about brewing science, because I don't know much about it. It would just give the discerning beer drinker an idea of how beer is made in a microbrewery or the home brewer a chance to try his hand on bigger plant, or maybe give somebody who thought they might like to venture into brewing a taster of the work involved.

This would be most likely to happen in February or March 2009 on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If anybody wanted to bring a beer widow/widower with them then that's fine, if there was enough interest we'd organise a day trip or something.

I'm treating this as kind of market research. If I get no response then I'll forget the idea, if I get enough response I'll develop it further and start setting dates.

Leave a comment or mail me: dave at woolpack dot co dot uk

As winter, comes howling in....

When Winter's shadowy fingers first pursue you down the street

And your boots no longer lie about the cold around your feet

Do you spare a thought for Summer whose passage is complete?

Whose memories lie in ruins and whose ruins lie in heat

Lindisfarne

"What summer?"

Well it's gone now, what there was of it, next year just has to be better. But still, we finally think we've got to grips with how this great old Inn wants to work. We can look forward to a good summer next year - statistics must come into play sometime. Next year will be the hottest on record and we'll all be complaining about a lack of water! Yeh right!

Meanwhile we have to go into a winter shut down mode. November we'll guarantee to be open Friday nights, all day Saturday and Sunday lunchtime. We simply have to save on overheads during the rest of the time due to rising staff and energy costs, we hope you understand.

December and January we will be closed to casual trade. Pre-booked events may be possible if numbers are sufficient. However, part of the time is being used for our usual maintenance schedule. February we will start to trade again by the half term.

We have also decided not to do New Year at the pub. Judging by the number of requests we've had this year I guess there are plenty who like the idea of our style of doing things at New Year. So I'll make a promise - providing we don't either get drowned in a maturing debt problem, submerged in an ever growing sea of red tape or just simply washed away down the Esk by even more rain, we'll do New Year 2009/10. It'll be to our ever increasing standards, so start saving now!

December we are spending a large proportion spilt between campaigning about pubs and beer at the European Parliament or doing beer research in Belgium and Oregan. Look out for the info on this blog and Dave's rants.