Snow. Blind.

What's up? Well, you know how I was talking about dark beers being all the trend in 2025 (our prediction)... 

In terms of that, we ran out of Pressed Rat already this year!! (more out end of next week) and have the second iteration of our Snow Blind Oatmeal Stout 4.2% ready to rock and roll... This version slightly different to the last one, much more body, terrific flavour - this one very slightly more coffee notes - but here's the thing you need to know: "It's really good, and you should think about getting some because we haven't got a lot of it!" - yep, that is the important information... This picture taken 5 mins after pouring - look at that head retention! 

Another kind of cool thing... We shipped a pallet of casks down to a pub in Cornwall... I called to see how it had gone and was going. They said they had Alton's Pride on and they were enjoying it. Here was the conversation:
XG: "Good" says I, "how was the Moondance?". 

LL: "Oh the Moondance went in a night."

XG: "Oh great- I like it when a Firkin goes in a night, a good sign."

LL: "No Xen - ALL the Moondance Firkins went in a night!" 

This is a pub I want to visit! Not sure I can take the pace though! 

Duty. Hummm. We've been tidying up what the duty filings look like ahead of the mahoosive 1p allegedly coming off a pint. A few things about this duty delight. 

First of all the excise man does allow that some of the 72 pints of a firkin are sediment. Folklore has it that they let you assume that there are 68 drinkable pints. Whilst this is an ok-ish rule of thumb a) the actual law says it is up to the brewer how many are deemed drinkable, and they must declare it [pretty much all do on the labels] and b) very, very few go for the full 4 pints folklore allowance. Why? Well let's just say that when they come to audit you they comb over everything, and if you're found foul of this then deep trouble. Second there is a crowd effect - you can see some of the data clicking here https://x.com/PubsAdvisory/status/705425510088773632 . So what do we do? Lower end, but head still below parapet, as don't want it blown off! They really give us no breaks. 

Second - does that mean 69p off firkins in 2025? Errr, yes but no. Not least because most independent brewers get a bit of relief on this, which cuts it in half pretty quickly. So yes, the rule is made to help big beer and not the good guys [us!].  Costs went up a lot in 2024... As they always seem to, wages, energy ingredients, paying for work to satisfy the [often ridiculous] whims of various government agencies and no doubt pay for their boat repairs [given they ALWAYS travel 2 x 2 I figure they must all be going to or from Noah'sArk! - grrr!], etc. etc. Anyhoo what it means is our prices only went up about 2.5% this year, helped a tiny bit by the duty, but we're talking really, really tiny. 

Third - so how much is duty? Well, balance it out this way. I don't think you'll find many brewers like us who refuse to look at their ingredient bills and look for savings for core beers. We want to be the best, and we think this means the best ingredients. So we spend a lot on ingredients. Guess what? The duty bill is damned as near the same as the ingredients bill. 

Fourth - tax on tax - yup, it is a thing. We sponsor Alton Beer Festival. We give them many casks of beer, but to future-proof this from committee changes and to ensure everyone has skin in the game, we invoice them for the duty. I did this myself last year [to save book-keeper/accountant time] and copied in my bookkeeper. She immediately called me saying, "What the hell are you doing, you didn't charge VAT? "To which I said "no Duty is a tax, you can't apply a tax to a tax"... WRONG! VAT needed to be added to the Duty. Here's waiting for the tax on jobs tax!?! [hopefully joking on this].

Anyway - happy to give you any more info you want if curious, but generally tax ain't that sexy... And the new Snow Blind is, so I'll stop writing now and let you reply with what we can bring you next week! 

Hope the year is going well for you so far,

Xen