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 has left me and Mart knackered but happy. We launched Crystal last summer and sold out our first bottled brew in just a couple of weeks. Nice to know that all our hard work in making the dam’ thing to start with was worthwhile! We’ve got our cask beers into an increasing number of pubs where they’ve gone down a storm and production has been under severe pressure just to keep up with demand. And we’ve just has our best Christmas season ever, with seemingly everyone in South Wales going crazy for our 9 pint pins. Combine this with our regular markets getting better and better and some top one off events as well, and we’ve had quite a year.

So, what now? Well, first off, thanks to everyone who’s bought our beer in the last year, and especially to our regulars who evangelise on our behalf (you know who you are…). We’re working on getting more casks into even more pubs this year, so that you can enjoy a pint of Untapped’s finest in some of the best pubs in Wales. We’re developing a new beer that will ONLY be available in pubs; although if you come down to the markets in the next couple of weeks you may well get to try the trial brew we’ve just done (check out the website for details). As ever, we haven’t got a name for it yet, so anyone who tries it and has a winning suggestion may get a nice freebie.

But the big push this year is going to be getting our own brewery finally sorted. Plans are afoot and are making pretty good progress. Although we’re both alternating between unbridled enthusiasm and the occasional panic attack as we map out everything we’ve got to do in the next 6 months. Mart has made me promise to keep you all regularly updated with events as they unfold, and I promise that the next post will be funnier. Which I’ll write just as soon as I’ve finished that essay on Marx……

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 Jammy Custard Studios, who have done such long and hard work on our behalf to get this together that if you creep up behind Patrick and whisper ‘Untapped’, he may not cry, but he’ll definitely twitch. No, this is down to all the other nuts and bolts that you need in place to run your own online service, none of which is helped by our rather different brewery borrowing arrangement.

To illustrate, here’s a paraphrased conversation I had with a very patient courier manager:

Courier person: ‘ So, where’s the business based?

Me:  ‘Cardiff’

CP: ‘So we’re picking up from Cardiff?

Me: ‘ No, the beer is stored in a bond in Gloucestershire.’

CP: ‘So, we’re picking up from Gloucestershire?’

Me: ‘No, the distribution is going to run out of a wine importers in Herefordshire’

CP: ‘So, they’ll be handling the paperwork?’

Me: ‘No, we’ll do all the admin, they’ll just load the truck.’

CP: ‘So, where’s your brewery?’

Me: ‘We don’t own one. We rent someone else’s kit.’

CP: ‘ In the Cayman Islands?’

Ok, so that last bit didn’t happen. But you can see why it took a while to explain.

We also had to get some nice, sturdy branded boxes made to make sure your beer gets to you in one piece. A little easier to organise but the bill was a bit of a shock. I thought at one point that I’d have to get Mart to sell a kidney to cover it (not me – you wouldn’t buy my internal organs in the same way that you wouldn’t buy a car with differently coloured front and rear seats).

All in all,  we missed our ‘open for Christmas’ deadline by 3 months. Still, faster than calling the 3 Mobile helpline (don’t ask…).

But everything is now up and running, and you can get cases of Untapped’s finest delivered straight to your door. Combine that with a pizza / curry delivery and you never need leave the house again.

Or, so you’d think.

Because the one thing you won’t be able to get online (not for a while anyway) is our new wheat beer. The brew could be safely described as challenging, as I took advice from books, the net and Chris at Warminster Maltings (Thanks!) to understand why wheat malt behaves so differently from barley malt. This, combined with a weekend spent watching the ferment like an anxious parent and a hell of a triple filtration, has made for quite a week. The beer, however, is now safely in bottle and is hugely aromatic and flavoursome. With any luck, it should be ready to sample very soon, and should be on general release in late May. And with all this out of the way, Mart and I can return to normal and start arguing about what to call it…

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 has been something of a behavioural trend in the last couple of years, but a little mild dabbling in chemistry never did anyone any real harm, and it’s not like I’ve moved onto the hard stuff like glycolitic pathways or humolone oxidation.

Well, not often.

However, my reaction did provide, in Jules Winnfield’s immortal words, a sudden moment of clarity. The simple truth is that if you want to be a brewer, there’s no way to avoid an intimate connection with biochemistry. And, if you get to see the interaction of malt, hops, yeast and water on a daily basis, it’s very difficult not to be fascinated by it.

Let me explain. The difference of a few degrees temperature at mashing in will have a huge knock on effect to the final gravity and fermentation of your brew. As will how long the mash stands, sparge volume and time, boil time, hop acid, yeast strain, conditioning and a hundred other things that you have to monitor and predict to get a great, consistent beer. It’s a process tailor made for obsessives.

But, the thing is, when this leaches into your every day life, it can rather disconcert the normal people. Checking the wort at the end of a brew and finding that the specific gravity and pH are bang on where you wanted them is very satisfying, but you probably shouldn’t punch the air and say ‘Who’s the daddy?’ unless you want to be avoided at parties. Balance is key – and it’s important to get out, walk your (eejit) labrador, scream at the rugby and, oh yeah, actually enjoy a few pints of the stuff you and your fellow fanatics have made before you turn into a cross between Bond’s Q and Gollum.

This isn’t to say that I won’t be obsessing next week when we do a trial of our new wheat beer. I’ll be pondering, calculating, revising and tweaking to my little heart’s content. You just can’t keep a good geek down. And don’t pretend that you won’t be asking to try some samples at the markets in a couple of weeks…

Simply Superb Stout | 4.9% vol.

A powerful mix of multiple malts give this stout its intense black colour and heady aromas. Amazingly rich, upfront flavours give way to a mellow yet luscious finish, with bags of long lasting hop character. A beautiful beer to refresh your soul at the end of the day.

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Perfected Pale Ale | 4.5% vol.

Designed to be an Indian Pale Ale style, the light straw colour of this beer belies its full and citrus fruit driven flavours. Distinctly hoppy, with wonderful aromas from Styrian Goldings hops, the finish is perfectly balanced and satisfying. A huge hit with Untapped fans!

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Winter Warming Ale | 5.2% Vol

Three kinds of roasted malt produce the fabulously rich, dark colour and strong textures of this beer. First Gold hops give a tang of zesty fruit, whilst Cascade hops give a sweetly nutty aroma. Hugely flavourful and mouth filling, this ticks all the boxes for lovers of strong, old style ale.

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Gorgeous Golden Ale | 4.0% vol.

We use a blend of pale ale and crystal malts to give a depth of golden colour with a subtle distinct flavour. Goldings and Challenger hops lend a sweet aroma with a hint of spice, followed by a defined, dry yet mellow finish. Wonderfully refreshing and our top seller!

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Divine Dark Ale | 4.4% vol.

High colour crystal malt gives this beer a darkly red hue and rich roasted flavours. We use Northdown hops for both bitterness and aroma, which gives a clean counterpoint to the power of the malt and a balanced fruity finish. A fantastic all year round dark ale in the best traditional style.

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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 took the michael. You really shouldn’t have to wear your full winter mountain gear in the middle of Cardiff, but I was very grateful of it. I hadn’t realised that selling at Farmer’s markets could be classified as an extreme sport. ‘Oh tosh.’ I hear you cry. ‘It can’t have been that bad.’  Well, try this experiment. On a really cold day, get properly dressed up, go to a nice exposed place, and STAND STILL for 4 hours and see if you can feel your feet at the end of it.

The particular highlights of the weather were:

Mart putting the camper van through a 180 spin on the way to St Donats with a full load of beer in the back.

The  windscreen wipers on my golf freezing to the windscreen on the way to Usk (that was a fun 10 minutes…)

Watching a forklift with a full load of bottles drift purposefully sideways on the ice to narrowly miss hitting the cask washer.

Having to cover all the cases of beer with duvets and blankets to stop them freezing overnight before markets (confirmation to the neighbours that no, he’s just not right…)

And seeing a fresh jug of water freeze in front of our eyes in an hour at Riverside (if you don’t believe me, check out the photo on facebook)

So, a challenging sales environment. But, we managed to rise to the occasion and not only had a pretty storming Christmas but also made sure that every Untapped fan had plenty of liquid warmth to see them through the season.

But now, it’s a whole new year and plans are already afoot to expand our little empire (insert your own sith lord joke here).

The big upcoming news is that we’re getting ready to launch our own online shop. All being well, it should be going live in mid february and then we’ll be able to deliver cases of Untapped’s finest straight from the brewery to your door -with only a courier having to deal with the weather.  There will also be offers that will be exclusive to online customers, as well as (in time) t-shirts, beer glasses and anything else that might look cool.

I’m also working hard on the specialist brews that we’re going to release this year. The recipes are taking shape and I should be trialling both of them in February.

We’re also looking to expand the range into cask this year. So, if you know of a pub / bar that would be improved by some draught Untapped excellence, let us know…