Excise Duty Hike March 2008
"Inexcusable" is the word that springs to mind. Alastair Darling's ridiculous assertion that the way-above-inflation rise in beer duty rate would be spent on pensioners fools nobody. Furthermore, trying to imply that our customers are habitual drunken louts who need to have the price of their tipple raised is a insult. We don't, and never have, aimed our products to appeal to 'lager-louts' (for want of a better description), and no way deserve to be hit so hard when raw material prices have also shot up (see item below) 21-4-08
Raw Material Prices
Never before have world-wide barley crops AND hop crops been so poor. Normally if there is a shortage in Europe, say, then North America can make up the shortfall. This year, though, has seen such global shortages that we cannot even obtain the Oregon Fuggles we have used for the last 12 years, and prices of other hops have trebled in some cases. The story is similar with malt. We allowed for price rises in budgets for this year - but we're running at 71% over, so far. We think it might be a good idea to pray for good harvests this year............ 21-4-08
Altered Roles for Andrew and Babs
For 18 years Goddards Brewery had been wholesalers of 'third-party' beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks on the Isle of Wight, as well as brewing in our own right.
The brewery side of the business has been growing rapidly in the last two years - to the point that a pint of Goddards is enjoyed every 55 seconds "24/7" as they say in America. By contrast the wholesale business had been under intense competitive pressure and we closed down that division of the company in February so that we can concentrate exclusively on brewing Goddards.
A by-product of this change is that Andrew Young, our Sales Director, will be concentrating on our 'export' sales to England, whilst Babs Mitchell, our Admin Director in the office here, will look after home sales on the Island. So far, we don't miss wholesaling one little bit! 21-4-08
Inspiration now 5.0%
Bowing to the fashion for reducing the strength of some beers, we now brew the seasonal Inspiration at 5.0% instead of 5.2% as hitherto. We've left the hop rates the same, so what was already a hoppy beer is hoppier still - more hops than a dead frog, as they say ! 21-4-08
Fullers
We're delighted that for the second time, Fullers have added our Special Bitter to their third-party beer offers for October 2008 - a good opportunity to taste our beers in the Fullers (including what was Gales) estate. 21-4-08
Branding Beers - a serious business
Some here think that "Iron Horse" - one of our seasonal beers - isn't a very warm, customer-friendly name. Typically, Anthony Goddard came up with "G-Spot" or "The New G-Spot" which was considered, er, not quite the ticket. Pity really.....21-4-08
Goddards in China
When Goddards Brewery drayman Ian Mouat went out to China to see his out-laws he took a bottle of Ale of Wight with him (and a polo shirt by the look of it).
Here's a holiday snap of his father-in-law, Mr Gang Liu in Shanghai with the aforementioned bottle..
100K Klub
There
are eight licensed outlets that are members of the Goddards
Brewery 100K Klub, having served more than 100,000 pints.
Top is Travellers Joy, Cowes with an astonishing 265,000
pints, followed by the Duke of York, Cowes at 175,000 pints.
The other members are Seaview Hotel; Crab and Lobster,
Bembridge; Wheatsheaf, Yarmouth; Island Sailing Club, Cowes;
Anchor Inn, Cowes and the Red Lion, Freshwater. Their
support has been wonderful, and they've each had a
certificate as a token of our gratitude.
Derek Smith of the Traveller's Joy commented, "That's an
awful lot of beer. We had no idea we've sold so much.
Clearly we couldn't have done if the beer had been crap!"
Quite so, Derek...
Bling
Nigel
Eldridge - our 'new' (he's actually been with us over two
years, now!) Assistant Brewer has been 'flying solo' for a
while, which is a considerable relief for Chris Coleman, his
Head Brewer boss. Chris can now go on holiday without
worrying about what's going on back at the shop. An
unexpected facet to Nigel is his penchant for haute couture.
These glasses are a good example. Perhaps he should stick to
the day job??
Fuggle-Dee-Dum Voted IW CAMRA Beer of the Year
We're delighted to report that Fuggle-Dee-Dum was
recently voted IW CAMRA Beer of the Year. It's a credit,
once again, to Chris Coleman, Nigel Eldridge and relative
new-comer Alain Elliott who continue to brew some of the
best beer in the World (a modest little claim we like to
trot out repeatedly). It's the result, too, of attention to
detail and the maintenance of high standards - no surprise
that they managed a 5-star rating from Environmental Health,
then.
At
the presentation evening at the Yarbridge Inn, Chris Coleman
was presented with two certificates. One was the official
CAMRA document, and the other was presented by Yates Brewery
for being "the happiest brewer on the Isle of Wight". As
regular readers will know, Chris is a considerable
af-fish-ianado, so the industrial size tin of tuna chunks he
won in answer to a quiz in Portsmouth CAMRA's Ale Mail still
probably ranks as the high-point of the last few months. Our
photograph shows Chris in ecstatic mood...
Full House !
We
reached another of those little milestones recently when
every vessel in the brewery was full - a total of 30,240
pints. That's enough for a pint for 1 in 4 of the Island's
population. Another little statistic is that we're having to
purchase another 500 casks, which will take our cask
population to well over 1,300. That's a piddling amount by
the standards of the big brewers, but quite a capital
commitment for us.
