That’s all I have to add. And until this footnote, the title was longer than the content. Blown it now though.

Photo credit: Ian Britton, via: freefoto.com, ref: 09-15-53

Increased duty on two out of these three...

Something I noticed while reading the HMRC document assessing the (then proposed) impact of the High Strength Beer Duty. In the assessment of the changes, it states under “Other Impacts”

The reduction in consumption of high strength beer resulting from these measures is likely to have a health benefit.

Small breweries will not be significantly impacted upon, as beers over 7.5 per cent abv represent only 2 per cent of their total production.

There is no adverse impact on competition as all producers and importers of beer with a strength exceeding 7.5 per cent abv are liable to the new duty for high strength beers.

I’m not sure this is all correct.

1. The change was designed to ‘reduce the availability and affordability of “super strength” lagers associated with problem drinking’. If the change is likely to show health benefits, you need to also increase the tax on super-strength ciders, wine and spirits to make those less affordable. An alcoholic will either not care about a price increase (it is an addiction that they must satisfy), or will move to drinking other cheaper forms of alcohol. A 2 litre bottle of cheap cider is way cheaper than most equivalent beers anyway. Putting a sensible minimum per unit price and preventing the sale of alcohol at lower than cost would have far more effect.This also seems to be a little narrow minded in the definition of “problem drinking” – in no way does this impact the person who causes trouble/gets themselves into trouble/difficulty after necking 10 pints of strong lager (~5% ABV) in a club/pub.
2. While small brewers may only have 2% production of strong beers, it doesn’t take into account that some breweries specialise in these products and are likely to have an increased percentage of high strength beer production compared to the norm.
3. The duty payable by a large brewer (>60000hl/yr production) has just increased by 25%. For a small brewer (<5000hl/yr), the duty payable on the same beer, though still less than that of the large brewer, increases by a whopping 50%. Given the way profit margins work,  and the likely lower margins for a smaller brewer, how does this represent a level playing field for all brewers?

If you’d like to have a play with a spreadsheet I generated to work out what duty is payable on your beer, try this out:  Beer Duty Spreadsheet (.xls) (NB: I believe this spreadsheet to be accurate as of 26-Oct-2011, but this should not be used for any official duty purposes! If you spot any errors, then please let me know!)

And, if you haven’t already, get over to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18346 and sign to campaign against the duty.

Photo attribution:
6-8-10 / Smabs Sputzer / CC BY 2.0

XH558 comes to visit…

Recent beer – a brew marathon:

• Dark mild – racked into keg and fined; 13 pints remainder bottled (somewhat cloudy!)
• Belgian Blond – dropped 65 points in 8 days. Chimay yeast=wow.  Crash cooling, should be a good one.
• 80/- – probably mostly done inside 4 days. Give it a while to tidy up though. Smells caramel and roasty.
• Mad Boris RIS Mk II – the most foam I have ever seen; 35-40L at least. 1.088 OG rapidly dropping still!

But the cold weather has bought some unexpected visitors – notably there were a few reed buntings (pictured) flying around the garden all day (first time I have seen them here), as well as a late visit from a pair of siskins who haven’t been around for ages. Yesterday, a local great spotted woodpecker popped in for a while. All this as well as a load of chaffinches, goldfinches, robins, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, blackbirds, song thrushes, a pair of yellowhammers, wood pigeons (grrr) and the local house sparrow colony.

Nice.

[Show as slideshow]

• Annular Eclipse over Africa, India and China on 15th Jan
• Total Eclipse over the Pacific on July 11th (and quite a long one too)
• Total Lunar Eclipse on Dec 21st
• The Winter Olympics
• The World Cup

I won’t be going to watch any of these events (though I might just sneek a peak of the lunar eclipse if I’m up early in the morning and it’s clear). And, if I can help it, I may avoid the World Cup on TV almost entirely too…

In brewing news, my Southwold bitter just lasted the holidays, my East India Pale Ale (Amsinck, 1868 – from the Durden Park book) has finished and is in the keg, and I have a big starter of yeast recultured from Chimay Red to play with in the near future.

• Our Wedding!
• And Honeymoon! (photos when I finally manage to sort them…)
• A Boneshaker win for me!
• Village Ball
• Loads of friends’ birthdays and family visits
• A visit to the Lovibonds Brewery in Henley-on-Thames (thanks Jeff – great day!)
• Veggie patch digging/harvesting/sowing, and loss of all tomatoes to blight
• Chutney/Xmas cake making
• Beer: a Fuggles-based bitter, a wild hop honey ale, best and ordinary bitters for the Sutton Festival. And a new mash tun and boiler to come soon (with luck).

Phew!

1. The BIOS utility (2.0.0) didn’t give you a progress bar for the rebuild option as I’d expect and as the manual states.
2. It’s not obvious that the array is rebuilding at all…
3. …unless you download and install the Promise Array Management software where you can see the status and progress when booted with the degraded array
4. When it rebuilds a 750GB array, it takes literally hours (about 12 in total, though I lost count…)…

Looking forward to 5 large measures each of some unfiltered single cask – even the one that I have no idea what the tasting notes were… (OK – it’s an Ardmore – a speyside – and it’s 14 years old. I know nothing more that…)