Some time later that same blog.........

Somethings gonna change.......

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, it's been some time.

Last time I blogged on here, it was back before Christmas, and things where going along swimmingly.

Since then, well, it's been absolutely manic here at Liberty Towers. we've been joined by a load of new pubs, a selection of fine breweries, we fell in with a big name, and fell out again just as quickly. We have been rattling along at such a rate that it's become a weekly fight against exhaustion, vehicle gross permitted weights and common sense just to get the beers out there to all our lovely customers, but we are loving every minute of it.

As you will see elsewhere, the website has changed a bit over the last couple of days, and it'll evolve a little more over the next couple until we get it somewhere nearer to what we actually want. It was good when we started, but we've rolled with the punches and swung for the gaps so often now that the copy actually bore very little similarity to what it is we actually do now, and it was all a bit formal and stilted, so we changed it.

There are a load of other things happening as well....

We are talking to some people about giving up a few more hard earned Pound notes to finance the first major expansion of Liberty Beer since we started, it'll enable us to do more beer for more people more often, but it does mean that in the next few months it might not always be Steve or I that you see for your weekly deliveries if you have managed somehow to get used to us. It'll also mean the end of the nasty and slightly comical hire vans, to be replaced with something far more in keeping with our 'brand' (ooooh get me!)

We will be announcing the grand opening of our new chilled distribution hub in down town Essex in the next few weeks, which will make our lives a great deal easier, and also a deal with Bath Ales down here in Bristol is on the cards that will see Liberty providing porterage for their beers in London quite apart from our own continuing expansion.

And we are heading rapidly toward our Birthday, and we have something special under our hats for that as well, I won't go too much on it at the moment, but it'll be quite different to any beer festival that I've ever been to, and we will be showcasing our entire range for customers, suppliers and consumers for 3 full days toward the end of the year with masses of entertainment, food and good stuff for you to enjoy. Stay in touch to see what we are up to a bit later in the year.

I want it all, I want it now.

Busy week this week, what with Christmas comming faster than a very fast thing, we have a lot of things on our plate.

Monday has turned into accounts day, problem day and fustration day, as a problem has occured with the labels for bottled Ironworks Ale, the supplier has wound them on the wrong way so that everything is in the wrong place for the label machine......

Tommorow is looking good, but I have to make sure that everyone has their Christmas orders in, so if you want some brilliant Craft Beer for Christmas, you'd better get hold of us soon as it's going fast.

The madness begins Wednesday as I collect this week's order of Ironworks Ale and deliver it to the pubs in East London that have it on draft. It's not a huge quantity, but then we are still waiting for the people at Wetherspoons HQ to cross the T's and dot the I's on the paperwork that will see it in The Millers Well and Barking Dog as well as some other Wetherspoons pubs in East London and Essex. We expect a big increase in sales once that deal is finalised.

After that we are meeting the good people from Brewdog at their new bar in Camden Town to have a look at what they have done there. Looking forward to trying some more of their beers there.

Then it's back to the South West via our friends at Ramsbury Brewery, and I hope to have time to drop in on Devilfish and Plain Ales as well. Once back in the office it's back to the search for a good quality lager producer that can provide a short run to test market an Ironworks Lager for January.

Phew.

Liberty Beer's Latest baby.

Steve and I have been hard at work with the pencil case and crayons recently, and we are proud to announce the arrival of another new idea from the fertile minds of liberty beer.

The concept and all the artwork is by liberty beer, and we are very happy with the result. The beer is available all over E13 and in some of the better outlets in Essex, and will imminently be available by mail order for those fans who don't get to the Boleyn Ground as much as they would like.

we also offer an outsourced design and marketing service for brewers or Publicans who need a helping hand with their design work or production of merchandising materials. we also do websites.

You can learn more about Ironworks and see more of our work at www.ironworksbeer.com

Beeriodical: The Seven Stars Bristol, first monday of the month.

Last night saw liberty beer supplying their first Seven Stars Beeriodical.

As our regular readers will know, we have been out hunting London based craft brewers over the last fortnight or so, and this is the first real evidence of our efforts. Paul, the manager at the Seven Stars, asked if it was possible for us to find them 22 London beers for their monthly 'beeriodical', so we set to work.

Although there has been a major resurgence of brewing in the Capital, there where a few obstacles in our way, not least that the two largest and possibly best known brewers on that list, Camden Town Brewery and Meantime, don't actually do a lot of cask beer. Camden Town only produce cask products for their own pub estate, prefering to concerntrate their efforts in the market on their excellent keg products, and Meantime are focused on keg and bottled products, so it was a challenge to obtain something from each of those producers, although we are happy to say that we suceeded.

The other thing is that some of the brewerys that are most talked about in the beer blogs and online are actually incredibly small. For instance we would dearly have loved to have supplied some beer from the excellent Kernel brewery in South London, but at the moment they are still working off a 4BBL plant, and have sold every drop they can produce well ahead of our time frame. You'll have to wait until the new year if you want some of Kernel's beer on your bar, but once they have sorted out their new facillity it will be available from liberty.

But enough of the can't, what about the things we did do?

We put together a list of 22 fantastic ales from 9 different breweries (would have been ten, but one let us down at the very last minute.) By the horns, a brand new brewer from South West London came up with three really interesting beers for us, 'Bobby on the Wheat' is a crisp and refreshing wheat beer that has a subtle citrus edge and a good finish, whereas their Christmas Porter was a big powerfull bag of fruit with a pronounced hint of Cloves for a real nod toward the festive mulled wine. East London Brewery weighed in with three beers, including their new baby, 'Nightwatchman' a beer that until the begining of this week was only known at 'the 4.5% ruby red'. We even managed to beat them to the launch of their own beer by bringing it down to Bristol before they launch it in London this weekend.

Ha'Penny provided their excellent and very moorish 'London Stone' and the marvellously named 'Spring Heel Jack' Porter which although I didn't get the chance to try, was very popular with the other punters. But perhaps my favourite of the evening, should I allow myself the indulgence of having a favourite from such a great list, was the big hopped monster of an amber ale from Redempion, 'Big Chief'. Andy at Redemption did us proud, with a list of 5 great ales all of which flew off the bar.

Finally, a mention has to go to Paddy at Windsor and Eton. we cheated slightly and slipped outside the cordon of the M25 to bring down some of their beer, and it was definitely worth the effort. Any brewery who brews a 7.4% Black IPA like their Conqueror 1075 has to be worth including, even if it bends the rules a little. It's also on at The Gryphon up behind the Colston Hall if you are in Bristol, well worth checking out.

There we go then, December's beeriodical well underway, and we are proud to have brought so many new beers to Bristol for the locals to try. One fella told me that he had added no less than 8 beers to his 1200 beer list of 'stuff i've drunk' which made me smile.

It's all go at liberty beer.....

Oh my, it's nearly a month since I last updated....

We've been busy fellas in the last month, deliveries have started in Bath and Bristol and we have been working hard to bring the very best of the West Country's craft beers to our customers. We are really happy with the way that things have gone and look forward to expanding out of the City centres and out to more customers in the BA and BS postcodes.

As well as the West Country beers, we've also be scouring London for the best of the Capital's craft beer. We have set up supply agreements with several brewers who will be added to our list very soon, including a couple who are brand new to the market.

Talking of London, we are in talks with a pub company with a good few sites in the Capital, so will let you all know about that soon I hope.

Back in Bristol, I'll be on the train soon to go and put my head around the door at The Seven Stars near Temple Meads Station, this great little ale house puts on a monthly showcase of regional beers, and today's will feature 21 casks of London's finest, all supplied by liberty beer.

Finally, we are proud to announce that the first sales of liberty's 'Ironworks Ale' went on sale on Saturday in various locations in East London and Essex in advance of West Ham's game against Burnley. The match wasn't one that I want to reflect too much upon, but the interest in the Ale was stunning. On Saturday morning we received a Facebook message saying that despite the first ones only having been delivered on the Friday, one of our friends had already spotted 3 Ironworks Ale t-shirts in Stratford. If you want to follow news on Ironworks Ale, you can check the website at www.ironworksbeer.com or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

London Calling.

Liberty Beer clattered into London this week to see some brewers and some pubs.

We had the pleasure of meeting Gary at Redchurch (http://theredchurchbrewery.com/), Jasper and some of his team at Camden Town (http://www.camdentownbrewery.com/), Andy at Redemption (http://www.redemptionbrewing.co.uk/) and the brand new guys at By the Horns (http://www.bythehorns.co.uk/).

We wore out our shoes and cursed Boris's Buses, but we had a great time.

Look out for some exciting new beers being added to our list very soon.

Binge drinkers, education or legislation?

To very little fanfare at all, last month the government introduced a new duty on beer that is above the arbitrary imposed limit of 7.5% ABV. The government framed this legislation as a response to the social issues surrounding 'binge drinking' . Do binge drinkers drink beers like that? I don't think they do.

Will a price increase on super strength lager really provide a disincentive to the binge drinkers, or will it simply move those with substance abuse issues away from the super strength lager and on to it's cider, wine or spirit equivalent? 

One thing it will do though is disproportionately affect the independent publican and the growing craft and microbrewing community that we have here in Britain. Lets be clear, the mainstream producers, pubco's and supermarkets won't be affected in the slightest by this 25% raise in duty. Their sales of super strength products are all in the lower income end of the scale as far as they are concerned, niche beers for the low waged and the problem drinker that will easily be shifted to another product. When micro brewers produce high ABV products they are at the very top end of their market, a specialist product for the connoisseur or enthusiast.

If the Government is serious about the prevention of criminality and anti social behaviour around alcohol consumption then it is the massive price differential between the Supermarket and the controlled environment of the Public House that should be addressed so people don't turn up in our town centre pubs and bars already having consumed a large amount of cheap supermarket alcohol at home, and the number of cut price deals offered by the large chains for 2 for 1 drinks that encourage rapid consumption.

Although we at Liberty Beer don't currently deal with any brewers who produce a beer that will fall foul of the new duty, we hate to think that good beers will no longer be available to the british drinker due to some wrongheaded piece of legislation that does little to address the problem it seeks to solve. The other Justin at Moor Beer here in Somerset puts forward the facts for us here in his blog telling us how his product offer will be affected by the change.

I offer you this link to the online petition against the duty rise: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18346 and hope that by whatever means, we can together encourage the government to look again at the way that duty is applied to beer in general that threatens to further damage our fragile industry. We at Liberty have already written to our MPs.