Hip-Hop? Nah- Hop-SNIFFING - how spiffing!
Jan 19, 2026
What's up? Well we've been hop-sniffing - obviously - haven't you? In fairness the "we" applies to Graham and Pete on the brewery side and a trip to Worcester. Yes, hop-sniffing isn't exactly a mainstream thing to do, but every year we have to do it and take it really seriously. Nature doesn't really do identical but for us consistency is everything. Brewing is science and art. The science can measure the alpha acids and a bunch of other metrics of relevance but knowing how a hop will evolve in your proprietary brewing process with your specialised and adapted kit and having a sense of how that will evolve with cask-conditioning... well lets just say complex formulas and AI might get you most of the way there but for me in these things, art trumps science. The cascade hops they have chosen for Moondance this year have real power but without an abrasive edge [I am learning!] - I think they'll work great - hope you think so too!
On the brewery side we have packaged Winter Sunset - we can start shipping it from next week but don't tap it before Friday! First batch flew out - huge consistency on this second one which I expect to do the same - but will be better for the extra week in cask.
Otherwise the Tap Room has come back to life. On 5th January we did 11 sales. I think it equated to maybe 18 pints but jeepers... this Monday was a crazy 23 sales and 36 pints... if only we could double every Monday! So January has hit as usual but not utterly dire.
What's About?
The move on business rates is a positive but at the same time deciding not to do something that would be really bad in the future is not the same as actually helping now... please keep the pressure on.
On that note a special shout out to Matt Todd at the Wonston - he's been brilliant at representing the issues and unless you follow what he has done chances are you might not appreciate the effort put in. I don't go to a hairdresser for dentistry, nor a butcher for bread - the point being we all have our skills and he has become super refined and really excellent at doing this - I really recommend following the Wonston or Matt himself and amplifying everything you see there as much as possible. He's a brilliant spokesperson for our trade and if we can build his following even more then that would be awesome. He runs a terrific pub too [it could take a bit more Moondance and Pride of course ;->] but he both chooses and cellars beer excellently.
The key point is we need to keep the pressure on Westminster. I think the banning Labour MPs thing actually made a difference. The other thing - that I touched on a couple of weeks ago - is the unemployment data definitely a big pick up in folks looking for work...at least from what we have been seeing.
In other news - we have a brewery tours in conjunction to Steam Rides initiative with the fabulous Watercress Line - truly it is stunning and some of the stations must be literally the most picturesque in the world - anyway these tours... well, they are a total sell out - the tickets have flown.
In recent years we've treated our brewery tours as something interesting for folks to do but we haven't had bandwidth to ramp up the numbers. Now that that is happening regardless - so I thought I'd do some research. I used my home address, my personal credit card and my first name (Thomas) and booked a brewery tour for yesterday with Hog's Back. Sadly I did it on my work computer and the email must have auto-filled because the confirmation came to this address - 😥- anyway, no matter. I was still pretty much incognito - kept my mouth shut most of the time etc..
So how was it? Well, it was good. It was entertaining. It was very different from ours which are entertaining as well in that it was given by an amusing professional guide... ours are given by an amusing professional brewer. If the tour was maybe a bit light or general in some of the brewing explanations, it was still fun - a good way to spend 90mins.
What did I learn? Well they have the same sized brew kit as us - that was interesting - because they brew around 3.5million pints per year and we errrr certainly don't - yet. I think we might take health and safety more seriously - we're all paranoid about briefings etc. - them not-so-much. Lots of other bits and bobs like their one planet eco brew kit was half paid for by - well you, the tax-payer. When the daily noise of all the b-s that running a brewery holds dies down I guess there is more time to look at these things...[one day?!]. Anyway, a good tour. I still can't drink TEA (interestingly the Tour Guide's comments that he didn't like it either were used by him as a credibility plug!), the Surrey Nirvana was OK, and the Hogstar Lager was fine if a bit flat, but I was driving so had less than a pint in total (the TEA went to drain after the first sip - a great brand, just doesn't work for me). Bottom line is though, if we can achieve what that have achieved (way faster than us) that would be a terrific milestone for Triple fff.
Long ramblings... sorry Sunday morning and on my second coffee. I will shut up and let you get to the important business of deciding which and how much of our beer to order this week!
Xen
P.S.
I asked AI to create a picture of Graham and Pete conducting hop-sniffing... yeah - work in progress this AI! Happy Sunday
