8. Bailing the sea with a creel

   The title of this blog "Bailing the sea with a creel" is a Gaelic saying I once read which has come to mind many times since we started the brewery almost a year ago. I imagine it would have been used to describe a fools errand or a job that has no chance of success but in the case of the brewery we have had success way beyond what we could have imagined, however we have found we are fast running out of space and our to do list is endless. We need to find a way to swap our creel for a bucket!

       As Scotland emerges from lockdown we are looking forward to the islands becoming much busier. We now have a larger brewing vessel and larger fermenters and we have been working them hard for the last few months in preparation for visitors returning to Harris. However, more brewing means more bottling, labelling, packaging, paperwork and more stuff. We're doing our best to prepare for the seasons ahead by making changes that will make life easier for us without losing the Handmade and Homemade quality we value so much about our product. We know that what makes our brewery special is that we have a hand in every part of the process from grain to glass and every beer is brewed, bottled and labelled right here on our croft. Our goal is to reduce our workload and squeeze everything in to a normal(ish) working week and a tiny Brewshed. To resolve the challenge of lack of space we're looking at ways to make a new beer conditioning room and labelling / packing room which will mean we can finally get our kitchen back! So how about the To Do list....

       If you have been following our blog from the start you will know that we have an almost masochistic urge to do everything ourselves. Of course we brew the beer ourselves, and it makes sense, at least to us, that we print and label our beers by hand as it means we never have to change a beer to match a pre-printed label, we print labels to match the beers. This idiosyncrasy has had an unexpected benefit during lockdown as we could change recipes when ingredients became unavailable. You may have wondered how our N˚9 Brown Ale became a "Light" Brown Ale and now you know! We also knew that at some stage we would like to offer a bespoke label service and this month we were delighted to be asked to provide bespoke beers for the wedding of Martha and Dave which took place on Scarista beach. They chose three different styles of beer and we designed and printed special labels for their guests to enjoy a personalised toast. We loved how they turned out so we made some more bespoke labels for another very special event our son Charlie's 18th Birthday! This service will now be available on request for all of our beers with ten weeks notice. If you have a special event coming up drop us an email and we will send you some samples (of labels not beers!)

       One of most time consuming jobs on our to do list is delivering beer. For orders to be delivered off the island we pack your beer on our kitchen table and take them to Leverburgh where they are collected by our local courier - Woody's. After a sixty mile drive to Stornoway and a two and a half hour ferry journey across the Minch your beer arrives in mainland Scotland. For all deliveries on the island we have been "Doing it Ourselves". Every Saturday since July we have driven to addresses throughout Lewis and Harris in our old Landrover or our bright yellow van. We have discovered places we had never been and met many of our lovely customers as we delivered their orders or surprised people with gifts. Saturdays are definitely one of our favourite days but unfortunately the many, many miles we have clocked up have taken their toll on our old vehicles. So far we have resisted trying to work out how far we travel on a typical Saturday but a quick calculation by Mr Google reveals that our last delivery run was 251 miles long. Our Landrover is celebrating its quarter century this year and we have decided that he should be enjoying an easier old age. We have two solutions which will be good for our engine and our sanity.

       Because we don't yet have a bricks and mortar shop of our own, we don't want to lose the direct contact we have enjoyed so much with our customers so we will continue to deliver beer ourselves when we can but we will delegate all other deliveries to Woody's. We will cover delivery costs for orders over £30 but for smaller orders we will have to pass on the delivery charge of £4.80. We hope you will agree that this is a great reason to order a few extra bottles and benefit from FREE delivery. Our second solution is to make our beer more accessible across the islands by supplying beer to other businesses. We have been very busy behind the scenes filling in forms and completing all of the paperwork needed to allow us to sell wholesale and we have chosen a small number of shops and restaurants in Harris and Lewis as our new stockists. We are delighted to announce that a selection of our beers are available to buy at The Island Spirit Whisky Shop in Cromwell Street, Stornoway and The Anchorage Restaurant in Leverburgh, South Harris. We also supply beer to luxury Guest House Ceol na Mara in Direcleit, North Harris. We are delighted to be working with these fantastic local businesses to make our beers more readily available and we are very grateful for the interest they have shown in our beer and the brewery. In the next few weeks we will be building our stock levels so we can supply another two stockists in Harris.

       We're excited to see where this journey takes us and we're so pleased to have you along for the ride. Time management for control freaks is an ongoing dilemma but for now we will keep working hard and keep bailing.