I’ll bet that few of you celebrated International Margarita Day at the end of February. The classic Margarita has but three ingredients; tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice but over the years bartenders seem to have developed it into a glorified slush puppy. Tequila itself gained an unhealthy reputation with many young people swearing ‘never […]

Last month we considered the importance in brewing of the calcium and bicarbonate ion, of course there are other ions of significance in the water. Sulphate promotes crispness and accentuates hop bitterness but it can be overdone leading to sulphidic notes as in the famous ‘Burton snatch’. Chloride on the other hand provides fullness, so […]

Beer is 96% water and breweries use a lot of water. They used to use a lot more in the days of washing wooden hogsheads. As well as the water which goes out in the beer, in the spent grains and evaporated up the copper stack during boiling, there is boiler feed, in place cleaning […]

…is that there is no definition, yet everyone reckons they know what it means! The term ‘craft beer’ is bandied about to denote small batch, local provenance, time served expert, quality, independence and generally better. It is also used as a stick to beat the multinationals whose brewers sit behind computer screens all day while […]

Plant breeding has centred on building in increased resin yield, disease resistance, exotic tropical and citrusy aromas as well as hedgerow varieties that grow to around 2.5m tall rather than the traditional 5-6m. However the hop plant does not breed true from seed, each seedling is unique in its genetic make-up which means a lot […]

There are many good web sites for generic CV writing tips and formats…..but there are a few additional tips you may wish to consider if you are writing a technical CV. WHO IS READING THE CV? In many cases, HR may make the first screen of CVs and may not have a technical background. This […]

As autumn morphs into winter, the UK hop harvest is safely gathered in. By now some lucky ale drinkers will be savouring the delights of a fresh hop brew. There is a mad dash from the hop garden with 80% moisture ‘wet hops’ aiming to coincide with a copper just about to come on the […]

Many in the brewing and distilling industry are considering a change of track for their next career move. This might be from brewing to distilling, a move away from production, or sideways moves into related fields such as auditing or into the allied industries doing technical sales. Based on my research with the industry, and […]

To combat ongoing theft, the industry has signed up to a code of practice so that kegs may only be disposed of by the brewer and scrapped by accredited bodies so new brewers can only buy secondhand from other brewers or keg suppliers. In theory there should be no illicit usage as car park markers, […]

Life used to be so much easier; most pubs were owned by a single brewery, containers were delivered, sold, picked up by the local draymen and returned for washing and refilling. The Big Six of Bass, Allied, Watneys, Courage, Whitbread and S&N were emasculated by the Beer Orders and are now no more. Today getting […]

If you are working in a global company, international experience is one of the key skills that is highly valued in more senior roles. The ability to demonstrate that you are ‘culturally fluent’, able to work with and lead an international team and are able to understand the broader global context e.g. in supply chain […]

Cask beer is not chill proofed by brewery conditioning nor is it filtered or pasteurised so there are both haze and infection risks unless good pub practice is rigorously followed. To recap, you package the beer into a cask straight after primary fermentation with enough sugar to promote a secondary fermentation which encourages the remaining […]