The Woolpack Inn

A service announcement

2009-10-11T11:35:00.002+01:00

We will be closed Monday 12th to Wednesday 14th October. We will be open again 11am 15th October.

Dave and Ann apologise for this inconvenience, however at this quiet time of year the mid week trade is not sufficient to cover the costs of staffing.

We will be open all day everyday between 14th and the end of October, with school holidays approaching we hope business will pick up a little. November we will open weekends only. December and January we will be closed except by prior arrangement.

The Strongest Beer in Britain

2009-08-14T13:22:00.002+01:00

One of the things we like to do here at The Woolpack Inn is be different. This beer has been in the news for being ridiculously strong¹. We might not sell any, but we decided to stock it anyway.

It's a desert beer in our view. Treat like a fine port wine and drink with cheese or a rich chocolate desert.

Perhaps even a Blue Bore Bomb.

¹The picture shows 12%. The one we've got is 18.2%.....

Beer Fest 2009

2009-06-04T10:31:00.002+01:00

The 9th Boot Beer Festival starts today.

Our beer list

1. Hardknott Tenacity 4.8%

2. Hardknott Light Cascade3.4%

3. Hardknott Mildly Complex 2.5%

4. Hardknott Woolly Fusion 4.2%

5. Hardknott Zippy Red IPA 6.6%

6. Hardknott Dry Cascade 3.9%

7. Hardknott Pride of Eskdale 4.3%

8. Keswick Thirst Celebration 7.0%

9. Keswick Thirst Pitch 3.8%

10. Cumbrian Legendary Ales Dicky Doodle 3.9%

11. Loweswater Loweswater Pale Ale 3.6%

12. Loweswater Grasmoor 4.3%

13. Barngates Moth Bag 3.6%

14. Barngates Cracker 3.9%

15. Tirrel Wainwright..knew my father 3.8%

16. Hesket Newmarket Dead Bunny – no hops 3.5%

17. Great Gable Wrynose 4.0%

18. Foxfield Nettle Encounter 4.4%

19. Stringers Old School Porter 4.7%

20. Stringers West Coast Blonde 4.4%

21. Ulverston Flying Elephant 3.7%

22. Ulverston Stout Ollie 4.3%

The Eye of the Storm

2009-04-22T11:32:00.004+01:00

Well that was Easter. It was very busy, probably the busiest we've ever had, so that's the excuse for delays in blog updates. Over on Dave's beer blog he's had difficulty keeping up. Importantly though, the team coped really well with the sudden increase in trade. Easter weekend of course there were quite a few people who had not booked for food that we had to disappoint. That is part of our ethos. Satisfy everybody we can and once the kitchen has reached capacity we put a cap on covers. It worked, we maintained quality throughout the weekend.

Of course now we have to order more beer for the next bank holiday, May Day. Kriek, that lambic Belgian beer packed with cherry yumminess is becoming more popular. Are more people getting to know that it's one of our many specialities? Either way, more had to be ordered today. It's Ann's preferred tipple and therefore an important oil for the Woolpack machine.

Dave has just brewed more beer, a new one, yet to be named, but possibly incorporating dry hopping. The second brew of Pride of Eskdale, which is lucky seeing as it has just been entered into the Good Beer Guide following a tasting session last Autumn.

Baked Alaska must be our most popular desert. It can sure get interesting in the kitchen when there is an order for 4 on at the same time. Are we getting famous for them or something?

Further news items:

We are due to soon have our licence for holding weddings and civil partnerships here. We're getting quite excited at the prospect. Look out for more details soon.

Dave's brewing workshops have been a success. He is keen to hold more at times convenient to both the Inn and prospective apprentice brewers. The information we have indicates it is a significantly cheaper option than many other hands on brewing experiences. Please get in touch if you are interested.

Tenacity

2009-03-17T21:08:00.004Z

Dave has always said the you need a good supply of tenacity when running a pub. The first beer he made was brewed without anything like the level of knowledge he now has, only a vague idea of a recipe and uncertainty about the precise legal status of the brewing authorisation from HMRC. However, none of those things put him off.

The first brew was supposed to be a stab at a generic bitter. Far too much crystal malt was used and a very tasty dark ruby beer resulted. It had fantastic strong malty sweetness balanced with hop bittering. The beer tasted determined and Dave was determined to get it brewed, and drunk. Calling it Tenacity summed up the moment. We've not changed the recipe, after all why fix what ain't broke. We've realised it's two years since it was last brewed, but now it's back.

It is not pronounced ten-a-city as some customers seem to want to say. We've got some on the bar right now and there are another 8 casks after that. It's just lovely and recently got compared to Barngates Red Bull Terrier, which is also delicious.

Dirty Weekend

2009-03-07T22:14:00.003Z

Dave was looking for inspirational ideas for marketing The Inn. He came across this article. (don't ask, OK?). Basically it laments the fall in the number of couples taking dirty weekends away. Now Dave and Ann have had their fair share of troubles through life but both agree, and that doesn't always happen, that a few days away with the one you love, good food, good drink, kind hospitality and yes a comfortable bed, can help with the troubles of life.

Who cares if the weather is bad, who cares if it stretches the bank balance a bit? Getting a bit of quality time with the significant other away from the stresses of the 21st century has to be priceless, no?

Change of plan

2009-03-02T22:39:00.002Z

This week we have a slight chef problem. Dave, who is our only chef, is having knee surgery, so our published food times are going to be a bit hit and miss. Ann is the stand in and is really much better at cooking than she likes to let on. We think she's better than Dave but we just can't get her to take the job on full time. In any case Ann will be busy looking after Dave because he gets to be a right twiney sod when he's not well.

Hopefully all will be well by Friday, but meanwhile, if you'd like to eat with us, please check ahead.

Brewing and beer workshop, again

2009-02-25T21:14:00.004Z

Would you like to spend a couple of days watching someone brew beer and then spend the evening sitting around talking about beery things?

Why not? If Oz and James can so can you.

Read about it here

Marmalade

2009-02-23T10:00:00.002Z

We are keen here to provide quality products. We used to get all our jams and marmalade from a nice little cottage industry in St Bees. Unfortunately Skip, one of the partnership, died last year after a long and fruitful life. Although there are similar producers elsewhere in Cumbria, the supply chain does not make it easy to obtain them from this remote corner of the area. We were offered some Servile oranges a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully this week we will get around to putting 40Kg of various marmalades into jars.

This year we have more or less completed our transformation of the business. We are happy with our general product range. We have looked out for quality products and now this is the pivotal core of our ethos. This does of course cause us problems with the lager & lime and the ketchup brigade, but we seem to win most people round. Kreik of course helps the first problem, many lager and lime drinkers being converted immediately.

There is still things to do on the building though. Too much to get all of it done before the summer trade starts. We're expecting a quiet week so we're shutting the doors until Friday (27th February) so we can get the marmalade in the jars and to catch up on other essential work.

Busy, busy, busy

2009-02-15T12:05:00.002Z

Well, maybe not really busy, but not bad for February. Dave ran his brewery experience last week, which seems to have gone quite well. We also had some other nice customers who really enjoyed themselves.

This morning we had our first entries for the year in our visitors book;

V. welcoming personal service. Best breakfast in Lakes. Lovely bath

And

Great place, Wonderful food

There were lots of entries from last year, nearly all of which say similar things. We like making customers happy.

Brewsed

2009-02-05T20:48:00.003Z

Well we've been open one weekend. We've got another coming up, starting tomorrow. Yesterday Dave got well over 2 UK brewery barrels worth of wort in a fermenter, which the yeast cells are already going crazy about. The beer will be ready just in time for our eager, willing apprentice brewers who arrive on Tuesday.

We are opening from 3pm tomorrow and will be open 11-11 Saturday. Sunday we will open in the afternoon, but will then close down in the evening. We will then be open for booked meals Tuesday - Thursday Evening before opening up on Friday for the full week of half term.

Hope to see you soon.

Here is a view of Harter Fell, just across the road from us. It's amazing how many people ask if we get cut off in the winter. No, is the answer. We are too near the coast and in a snow shadow. It's a shame, we like snow. We seem to be suffering a snow shortage compared to everywhere else.

Go, again

2009-02-01T21:07:00.003Z

We opened. Friday we had customers and Saturday we had a few more. Today, Sunday, the weather was horrible and we had no customers at all. We're not open again until Friday next week. Jim, who is a regular at The Mug House came to stay along with a friend. We also had a drop in for the night on Saturday, so all in all a nice gentle start to the year's season.

The Brewery Experience is now fully booked, so we'll be looking forward to that and brewing beer on Wednesday so the guys have something to put in cask when they get here.

Ann and Dave have been to Brussels and Oregon this winter. Both are excellent beer locations, so there is an increase to the foreign beer stock for the season, some Belgian Dubbels and Triples for a start. mmmm. Here's a picture of some food as well just to get you drooling.

We'll be fully open over half term and then open all day every day from the beginning of March. We look forward to seeing you all.

Ready, steady

2009-01-29T20:48:00.002Z

Dave has been in the kitchen all day. We've now got less than 24 hours before we open again after being closed for 2 months. Obviously there is plenty of prep to do. We're gunning for a short menu to start the year, 3-5-3 probably. No point in overdoing it, the end of January in a recession, it won't be busy.

Talking of the recession, there seems to be plenty of places tackling it with cut price deals. In our mind cutting price has to also mean cutting costs and therefore quality. We have been working to improve the quality in the 5 years we've been here, we really don't want to go backwards. We have held the prices on most of our rooms, but with increasing prices of supplied beer, malt, hops, electricity, insurance etc, we'll not be dropping the price of a pint any time soon, sorry.

Ann's been busy tiling the gents and putting the last touches to the rooms. The bar needed some tidying after all the work, but again Ann has done a good job there. There will still be some work going on in February, but at least we'll be open.

You might have seen Dave's blog about beery things. He's getting disturbingly geeky about the subject these days. Now that he's done Belgian beer research and Oregon beer research, he says there is more to quality beer than cask beer alone. So the stock has increased to include such things as Budvar Dark and Westmalle Dubbel on draft, which are actually quite nice, just don't tell Dave we agree with him. Also we'll have Orval and the full range of Chimay in bottles. The range might change during the year depending on demand.

Dave's pleased at the moment because he's managed to fill his first brewery experience event. He'll be able to waffle on at length about beer to a willing audience.

We hope we will get to see you sometime this year. Just remember that despite the credit crunch we'll be here offering pretty much the same as last year, perhaps just a little bit better. If you're worried about money then just remember, you deserve a treat, surely?

A new season approaches

2009-01-25T11:53:00.005Z

The Snowdrops are out. Spring is nearly here - it must be time to reopen. We've been busy working on the property over the winter and are just about ready for customers. We will be open 30th and 31st January and would love to see some customers to prove it is worth opening.

We need to brew some beer now, which will happen soon, and of course there is the chance to experience brewing beer with Dave on the 10th and 11th of February.

We've increased the number of handpulls on the top bar. We have 10 now, although for much of the year we will not have that many on at one time. Look out here for our opening selection. Of course there is the beer festival, for which we only have a small amount of accommodation left.

We look forward to hearing from you soon, whether just dropping in for a pint or booking for our restaurant or accommodation.

Brewing experience

2009-01-06T19:14:00.013Z

Next event 24th & 25th March, more planned - check here

Please email us if you would like to be informed of future events.

Some time ago we suggested running a brewery experience event for anybody interested in seeing how a microbrewery made beer. Well we've worked out what we're going to do.

Firstly, this is not a formal course. You will not be taught how to brew beer. You might pick up enough skills to be able to do so, especially if you have prior knowledge or reasonable tenacity. But we make no promises. It is a sampler experience only.

Here is the plan:

Dates: Tuesday 10th - Wednesday 11th February 2009.

Cost: Nothing for any customers staying in our accommodation on those dates. Costs for accommodation, food and beer as per normal Woolpack Inn prices. Note: discounts apply for 2 or more nights midweek.

Number of attendees: 4 maximum

Program: To some extent determinable by attendees. There are brewing schedules that need to be considered and so here's my outline.

Arrive Tuesday lunchtime. Check in to accommodation. Have lunch if required. Arrival time is variable as the first activity is largely boring.

Afternoon activity casking last weeks beer(1pm - 5pm): Cask wash, prepare cask finnings, cask, seal and label casks, store in cellar. Fill copper to heat liquor for brew day. Stillage, tap and vent beer and decide if we need to put a beer on for the evening.

Dinner if required 7-8pm

Evening activity, after dinner: Formulate beer recipe and drink beer

Wednesday - brew day. All times approximate.

8am - Put copper on to boil liquor
8-9am - Breakfast
9am - Weigh grist, add liquor treatment, transfer liquor for mash, mash in and refill copper with sparge liquor.
10am - Coffee break
10:30am - Transfer spare liquor into FV
11am - Sparge and put copper on to boil wort
12 noon - Dig out spent grain from mash tun.
Lunch if required
1pm - Sterilise fermentation vessel, second drop hops, copper finnings.
2pm - End of boil, start cool cycle.
O.G. test, liquor back calculation, start yeast culture and pitch yeast.
3pm - Clean copper and brewery floor

5pm - break, possibly drink beer.

7-8pm dinner

Evening activity - drink beer, ask questions, drink more beer, swap jokes, drink more beer, try and get Dave off his soap box, drink more beer.........

Thursday am - ow! my head, breakfast and check out.

Questions?

Do I have to do any work? - no, you will be our guest and this is for you to learn. Learning by doing is always best so you can join in as much or as little as you wish.

Who should attend? - anybody who wants to know how beer is made in a small brewery. You might be thinking of doing it yourself, or you might be interested in knowing how the beer you drink is made.

Is the brewing experience really free? - Well not quite, we do expect you to stay with us, and we'd like you to eat our food and drink our beer, or wine, or very nice single malt, for which we will charge our normal price. We will make no charge for taking part in the brewing experience.

How do I get to taste the beer we brew? - Ah, so you figured out you wouldn't be able to do that while you are here. The beer will take at least 2 weeks from brew day before it is ready. Sorry. You can come back to try it of course. We can probably bottle some samples for you to take away.

Can I get some on at my local free house when it's ready? - Don't be impatient, I was coming to that. Possibly, but we don't normally wholesale our beer to other pubs. The main obstacle here is transport of the finished beer and for us, just as important, is getting our valuable cask back. If this is important to you then we can discuss before you book.

Can we decide what beer to brew? - Largely yes, but Dave will have right of veto. Availability of ingredients are also a factor.

How do I book? - Ring +44 (0)19467 23230 or check out http://www.woolpack.co.uk/

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T07:42:00.008Z

The morning of New Years day saw a fantastic sight. The haw frost on the trees was magical and the bright winter's sun shone though giving a fluorescent edge to the bare woody branches.

Dave and Ann actually managed what they would call a real holiday in December. It's nice to get to do this but the only way it can happen is for The Inn to shut for a while. There are some scathing people who would have us tied to the place 365 days a year, but they don't seem to be the ones in our regular customer base.

We've stripped out some of the residents lounge bar but have still to decide what exactly to do with it. Other essential work like improving the guttering, painting some windows and replacing the beer python will hopefully progress.

Dave has had this idea to run a "brewery experience" event for interested beer fanatics. It seems that there is a bit of interest in the idea, so if you are interested look out here for announcement of dates.

We are starting to get bookings for when we open again in February. If you have been trying to call and just got the answer phone then try again soon. We should be here now most of the time.

Looking back this blog seems to be nearly 1 year old. Since then Dave has also started his own beer blog and he's now gone and got himself membership of the British Guild of Beer Writers. Now he'll have to improve his writing skills. Along with Dave and Ann's work with CAMRA and a general crusade about the difficulties the whole of the pub industry is facing there is plenty for them to do.

But just look at these pictures - what a beautiful place Eskdale is!

Bah Humbug

2008-12-10T19:54:00.006Z

I hate Christmas when it starts so early. What is it with all this stuff starting in November? Christmas is from Christmas eve until the 12th night in my book.

Anyway, we're away for it this year. We're leaving Harry and Pads next door, Alan our barman and Mick at the YHA up the road to keep an eye on the place and occasionally we'll dial into the CCTV system to check on things - wonders of modern technology eh?

Meanwhile, have a very merry Christmas, don't spend too much then you'll have some to spend with us next year. We hope you all have a very prosperous new year, again, only so you've got more to spend with us, and lets all hope for a gorgeous summer next year.

Mid week breaks might just be that little treat you can afford when the finances get tight.
-------------------------------------

Yes, that means we're shut. Till when? Some time in January.
Why? Because there are not enough people about and because staff and heating cost too much.
Oh, and because we work every other holiday in the year.

Merry Christmas!!

Greeting and a strange idea from Cumbria....

2008-11-17T21:53:00.002Z

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....

2008-11-05T18:24:00.003Z

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.

A cut above

2008-10-31T18:05:00.007Z

We always get our beef fillet now from Country Cuts at Santon Bridge (notice Grockles - there is only one "t" it's NOT Stanton!!") The beef is especially good. We buy a whole fillet and trim it out, cut steaks to our specification and then Dave does his dry marinating bit.

Last week we had our first cause to mildly chastise Country Cuts for a poorer than normal fillet. Apparently the butcher was on holiday and Jason wasn't well. This week they excelled themselves with quality, delivering an excellent fillet so we thought the reasonable thing to do was share it with you.

Just look at the fat marbling, it might have been a lean summer for the pub trade with all the wet weather, but the cows must be doing alright feeding on the fell pasture overlooking Wasdale, the Best View in Britain!

A bit of light rain

2008-10-26T13:53:00.005Z

It rained a little yesterday, just for a change.

The beer garden was full of water and the Irt at Holmrook got pretty high. See pics

We thought it would be a good idea to put some information on this blog about what beers we have on. A bit late in the year we know, we'll try harder next year.

Today we have:

Stout Tenacity 3.8%, it's a stout!! not as bitter as some and a bit lighter. Brewed here.

Old Faithful 4.0% - Tirrel Brewery.

Thirst Chestnut 4.0% - Keswick Brewery. The name probably say's it all.

Caption comp

2008-10-24T23:44:00.003+01:00

We still like this one. We hope to get a really good one of the squirrel but Dave took this by accident. Captions please.

Getting blogged down

2008-10-24T15:51:00.003+01:00

Dave has well and truly got into this blogging lark now. He's been getting more and more worked up about all sorts of issues relating to beer and pubs. He's spent so much time lately getting on his high horse about it that it's difficult to get him to do any real work.

It's a good job we've still got Razvan!

Anyway, Dave's beer blog is here. It's a bit heavy and discusses the various issues surrounding the beer and pub industry. If all you want to do is drink beer then you're best steering clear of it. If you are interested in some of the problems of the pub and beer industry and want to hear some of Dave's thoughts then have a look - but we've warned you.

Music

Some of you have mentioned about the apparent lack of any mention of music on our web site. Well we have been forced into the situation where paying for musical events is just not viable anymore.

We still have folk sing rounds, normally the second Saturday of the month. We will be having one this Saturday as our friend Ben is spending some time at the Youth Hostel up the road.

We are always interested in anybody who would like to play here, providing you don't need us to pay you any money, as we've got non.

As an aside, I don't want to get political here, but please consider one thing at the next election. The current government have laden so much bureaucracy on the pub industry that it has increased the small operators costs to the extent that things like live music are a problem.

We would advertise live music events and possibly it would make them work, but unfortunately we know that the local council would be likely to poke in and cause us problems over licencing if we did. This would all be in the name of public safety, you know because roots and folk music is sooo likely to cause rioting and all this real ale fueled disorder would be too much.

The problem is that I know the other side will not be any better after the next election. Governments seem to have only one function - make new legislation so they can justify spending the money they take off us.

Sorry about that, I'll have to watch out otherwise people are going to start thinking Dave's writing this blog as well.....

AS winter approaches

2008-10-17T09:23:00.010+01:00

The mountains and trees are starting to look very autumnal, all browns, reds, yellows and golds. Our squirrel, or one of them, we've never seen more than one together but we hope there is more than one, is busy collecting acorns

All things considering, it's been a good year. We are starting to think that we might just have saved this ancient hostelry from failing by our determination and lateral thinking. The year has only been dented a little by the awful weather, but we've still managed to stay ahead even if only just.

So we can now start looking towards next season. For our customers who have seen many changes over the years our intention is a period of stabilisation. We are very happy with the general service we now provide. Small tweaks here and there, a lick of paint, finish the tilling in the gents that sort of thing. We are starting to think about what we might get done this winter, but for sure it won't be as radical as in previous years.

Dave is due to go over to see Ted and brew some beer on his plant. Perhaps he'll take Ann and the children as well and get some skiing in. There will definatley be something on here about that.

In any case there's only 2 weeks to go before we move into the winter season as we see it. Customer numbers are already very low some days and with the increases of fuel prices we have little choice but to have close days to help reduce the overheads.

We hope though to refresh both ourselves and the building a little during the winter, progressing forward our goal of improving the quality of the service ever further.

Damn Emmerdale!!!

2008-10-14T11:34:00.005+01:00

Ever since we've been here we've struggled with the fact that The Woolpack on ITV is more famous than us.

It seems there is a chance that they might start selling Woolpack beer - see Corrie Beer - perhaps it's time to Trade Mark

Woolpacker(TM) !!!

Just doesn't seem right that a Micro like us might have to take such steps. ITV might already have done it - it would cost us £80 to find out or risk £200 to register and loose this if it's already registered. But if it isn't registered after paying to find out we still need to pay for registration after that. Is this fair??