www ... optimism or dazed and confused (or both?!)

What's Up? So folks go most of July and trade is pretty mixed but then suddenly it is August and loads of places go nuts! A lot of our fabulous customers got slightly caught out last weekend which seems like it was busy so lots of restocking needed this week which is great. 

Usual brewing of the big boys as you'd expect from the chart below but also brewed this week is Dazed & Confused. We had a visit from Graham's co-founder Frank and I was asking him about the beer - specifically if it was a bit less hoppy these past years than the original versions. He said he thought it was. I checked back old recipes as far as I could find and seems like the IBU measurement has come down over time... this batch is a step back towards the original - IBU measurements in the low 40s. Our beers are always loud (not noisy) and distinctive, and I think you will find this is maybe more Triple fff than the last year's one which I thought was lovely but not as memorable... truth will be in the tasting! Ready in 2 weeks. 

Our trade sales this week have been slightly more Pride dominated than Moondance. Mr. Brightside not necessarily statistically relevant since we have been out of it for the week so would be much bigger and these were all pre-committed orders but in terms of time allocation on what we do, versus what we should do, interesting. I see this as folks wanting to stock up on safe excellent beers they know will sell... Smart. Happy that they/you chose us.

 

Just given how nuts Mr. Brightside has been going (we've been out all week) we've been looking at getting more kegs... in fact the keg business at large has picked up a lot for cold fizzy stuff. Seems like there is a bit of a keg shortage out there which is interesting. Just my sense as seems like picking these up is much harder than it was a few months back.

We contribute data to the PMI and get the full report early and to be honest, talking to so many people every week about business means I genuinely reckon I could tell you ahead of time what it was to one decimal place most of the time. The latest reading though at 51.9 surprised me. [At risk of telling you how to suck eggs, a reading above 50 means there is growth.] This is down slightly from, the previous couple of months but up a bit from the original Hormuz shut-show. I actually thought it might be a couple of points lower, but we'll take it. In short it says that things are slowly getting better/less bad - maybe some animal spirits released with hope for Andy Burn-em! [will be a while before that King Charles joke gets old - the first time King Charles said Andy Burnham he was a prince and had just discovered some of his brother's photos!]. Anyway net-net, not bad news.

That said, I was pricing up some beer for someone to white label. They were obviously pushing the price aspect of it pretty hard - basically with the core proposal was that our wonderful government would get easily over 60% of the total invoice. VAT obviously being charged on the duty. Of course that percentage falls a little bit if we can get a higher price, but oh my giddy aunt! Please keep pushing your local MP's on easing VAT hospitality. I saw Spoons are having a VAT down day in late September. I need to get my head around what this means a bit before seeing if we should copy it, but food for thought. 

All the best for the weekend,

Xen

P.S.

I entered a competition for puns. The competition allowed multiple entries so I put in ten hoping more entries might bring success but no pun in ten did. 

Sorry, that was terrible. On optimism though... 

Funniest thing I saw/heard this week was by far Bish on American Optimism... if you have one hundred seconds spare and you want to spend them smiling then click here https://youtu.be/Z66U-PCTwMs?si=_wnxjsHs9snHvNdV obviously have to watch til the end.