Our blog

Yes.

I know.

It’s been a while since my last post.

In the same way that it’s been a while since the last ice age.

Although, to be honest, anyone who knows my average time for completing an essay at Uni isn’t the least surprised by my ADD when it comes to the written word. I might actually still owe my old tutor something on Das Kapital from 1990 and I’m pretty sure he’s dead. So, I could apologise, but, let’s face it, I’m unlikely to change now.

Anyway, in my defence, Untapped has had a manic 6 months that…

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We’ve been here before.

I don’t mean this in a ‘past- lives-I-was-Ivan-the-Terrible,-you-know’ kind of way. But as a testament to our unbounded optimism in the face of situations where we should know better by now. At the very least, we should know not to use the phrase ‘How hard can it be?’. One of us should really remember that, every time we’ve uttered that phrase, it’s turned out to be monstrously harder than we thought.

So, what’s brought this on? Well mainly the battle to get our online shop going. This is not a reflection on our web guys at…

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Right. So a small package arrives. Obviously not a bill, tax or beer duty return, so I open it. Inside are a couple of samples of a specialist beer yeast that I want to trial a new brew on. Nothing remarkable or comment worthy so far, but I find my face broadening into a look that is normally reserved for close encounters with Aston Martins and saying ‘Ooh, lovely!’

I think I’m turning into a lab geek. This is not good.

At this juncture, I should point out that Mart’s response to this was: ‘Turninginto a lab geek?’. Admittedly there…

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Not only is Christmas over and done with, but we’re also past the most depressing day of the year (according to… someone on a large grant, in all likelihood). So, it’s about time to face up to the fact that it’s 2011 and it’s not going away.

The festive season is always the busiest time of the year for the booze trade and this year was no exception. Even if the weather did its absolute best to derail us. We like to think we’re a fairly hardy lot – winter surfing (Mart), hill walking (me) – but this December really…

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Well, our fifth and final beer of the year is now out.

Ember has made its triumphant return after lying fallow for 6 months. And if you’ve missed it, just think how we feel. Not being able to get your favourite seasonal beer is frustrating, but doubly so when it’s a self imposed drought and you have the means and ability to make it if you WANT to…Don’t talk to me about willpower…

Anyway, it’s back now and this year I’m going to make sure there’s a secret brewer’s stash to get me through the summer months. It’s tasting as…

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If you’re wondering about the title, there’s a scene in Empire Strikes Back when Han spectacularly fails to get the Millennium Falcon and most of the main cast out of bother, and, when blamed, plaintively whines: ‘It’s not my fault!’

I’d like to echo that sentiment now – the lack of posts has not been (for once) my lack of imagination, drive or discipline, but a problem with accessing the site. A problem that has now been sorted and, look, here I am on a Sunday afternoon with all the Untapped nonsense that you could possibly never want to know.…

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So; having noticed that the last time I posted a blog was at the beginning of June; most of you must, by now, think that I’m some sort of Ent or closely related to a glacier , such is my lack of speed.

Now, in my defence, we have been monstrously busy lately. The brewery is pretty much running at full tilt, with the chillers (and the brewer, come to think of it) close to meltdown. Having a summer for the first time in about three years is lovely, of course, but does make brewing just a little unpleasant.The best…

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I know that despite global turmoil, environmental disaster in the US, and Ferdinand’s knee going completely confit de canard, what you’ve really been worrying about in the last week is:  ‘What new beer have Untapped been making?’

This may say more about my slightly obsessive, egomaniacal traits than anything else, but hey, no one’s perfect and I’m a hell of a cook, so it’s not all bad.

Well, I can now reveal that the lucky style of choice is…Stout. This may seem a little incongruous in the middle of summer, but by the time we see the results of the…

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Yes, I’ve finally got around to posting a new page on the world’s most temporally challenged blog (by that I mean it’s seriously late, not flipping back and forth through history like Lost. Talking of which, does anyone have any idea how they’re going to wrap that up in just two more episodes? ). Life in the brewery has been fairly busy recently – U.P.A. has gone down an absolute storm, threatening Sundown’s crown as our top seller, and we’ve just about managed to keep up with demand. Our website is in the last throes of a redesign, and we’ve…

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‘Of course we still have to come up with a name…’

This, it turns out, was one of those statements that was a massive underestimation of the task at hand. A bit like

‘Rebuild Iraq? Sure, how hard can it be?’

or

‘Well, we made it to the South Pole. Now we just have to get home…’

Ok, so maybe comparing naming a new beer with a national rebirth or extreme exploration is overstating the case (just a tad), but at times it doesn’t feel like it. This is roughly how the process works:

1 – Choose name

2 –…

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