Happy New Year to all - hope your blues turn to brews.
The New Year has started with a bang at Deeside Brewery, which is back in action again after a hiatus of a couple of months whilst Rob sorted out who to sell the business to.
It looked initially as if Sandy Kennaway (Deeside Drinks Emporium etc) & partners would get it, but with the run-up to Xmas being Sandy's busy season, the deal got delayed a little and an improved offer came in from Mike Bain of Escape IT (http://www.escape-tech.co.uk/) and Rob accepted that just before Christmas.
Mike, apparently, intends to stay in the background and Rob (who's still involved, although not working full-time at the brewery) is now training up a replacement brewer - Tim, who worked at the adjacent Deeside Activity Park and had earlier shown interest in the process.
The initial batches being brewed will be cask-conditioned, but it looks like future growth may come from bottling - much like the Brewdog model, I guess? For now, they are concentrating on three main brands - Bydand (which is effectively a replacement for No.3), Macbeth and Talorcan.
Rob will continue to be my main point of contact as local CAMRA BLO. He has been through a difficult time personally and operating as a one-man business hasn't been easy either. It's good to see that the brewery has survived - despite the growth of Brewdog and Burnside's new investment, our area is still relatively under-represented when it comes to new microbreweries when compared with the rest of the country.
Not much other news to report from your Deeside correspondent - I didn't order any mini-kegs for the festive season as I would normally have bought any I needed from Rob, so I ended up largely on a diet of bottled beers, of which my favourite new (to me) one was Tryst's latest Hop Trials:
The aroma was almost as good as the taste - very grapefruity - must be the Nelson Sauvin hops. My thanks to Sandy Kennaway for turning me on to this one. The case of M-Pire I bought from him has gone down pretty well too!
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