Festivals and "you had one job"
May 08, 2026
What's up?
Our busiest ever week in every single sense. That is good - but exhausting. I suspect the gang might be dozing off in their beers at the FoFFF festival [friends of triple fff] this weekend... which is, you guessed it... a sell-out.
On festivals, I should have known this week would be crazy as I got a call from the awesome bods at Farnham BeerX on Saturday late-afternoon asking for help with bright beer. They were running low as folks had drunk so much in the afternoon.
I would normally have been there myself but was nursing a category 3 hang-over [rating the same as the hurricane one / goes up to 5 which is "catastrophic damage"] having been out two nights in a row - saw it was sold out and thought I would sit this one out. Lucky because it meant I was totally sober, could drive and get them some more casks. Everyone a winner!
Anyway hope you had a great week of trade this past week too. For an end of month week it feels like it has been very strong.
What's on?
Lady Eleanor is being packaged tomorrow! Can be shipped next week
Apache Rose Peacock has also been flying - I would guess likely only one more week of supply on that - reviews on Untappd very positive
Brightside - I know kegs are hard for most to take from independents, but this is a right little crowd pleaser...
What's about?
Got a letter from HMRC today saying we owed £1,730 arrears on VAT - coincidentally it arrived about an hour after our fabulous book keeper - Tish - had been on the phone with them. Turns out we did owe a tiny bit on the VAT - £1.48 (they were only 99.91% out on their maths/accounting) to be exact because tough cash-flow meant a payment delay... I appreciate thus far this is about as interesting as the headline of "dog bites man"...
BUT that ain't the story.
The Revenue also had a much larger bill for us than was conceivable on beer duty. Paying beer duty is a pain as it is. Sure it is a lot of money (more than ingredients AND they charge VAT on top of it), but it is also something you have to pay with a different reference every month and one that you can only do on a desktop. Very 1990s and very clunky, no consideration for end users.
Turns out that although we send PAYE, Beer Duty, VAT etc., to completely different accounts with completely different references at their insistence, all staffed with completely different departments who can not easily communicate with each other, that they are completely unable to accurately allocate payments. This is like me trying to send you money but it ending up in Jack's dog Franklin's fan club account. Literally. This at a time with an all-time high tax burden on businesses. Grrr.
They had invited us to pay a couple of fines for their inaccuracies, which I have declined and invited them to cancel as will be cheaper than paying the invoice for Tish's valuable time spent uncovering their incompetencies.
Lessons here: 1) you can't trust HMRC to do a competent job - so if you sense something is wrong, trust your sense - it is likely better than their account segregation; 2) if you don't have a great book-keeper or find sometimes this stuff is overwhelming then worth thinking about getting some help on specific issues.
Hoping you have an awesome long weekend, folks drink loads of beer and we can be your first call for a reload early next week! Office is open on Monday.
Xen
P.S.... got this from a friend of mine who lives in the Cayman Islands. The awesome eye-witness will make you smile especially if you look at the photo of the incident itself. I guess it was a quiet news day there... and I am in no way insinuating the eye-witness is in any way like any of the staff at Triple fff in their slight leaning towards possibly a slight exaggeration. Nope, nobody springs to mind on our team here at all. Definitely not. Not at all. No one.
Have a great weekend. X
