Casey's Beer

The brewery now has a motto. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been working on a tag-line or slogan for the brewery. You know the sort of thing, “Cruddings, where crappy service is just the beginning”. So rather than have a tag-line, the brewery will have a motto.

I have to be coy about what the motto actually is because I need to check with IP Australia and then register it as a trademark. I will either have the motto engraved on the mash tun or a plate made up to fix to the mash tun.

The motto will be the foundation for both the branding and the graphic design of the brewery logo, bottle labels and website. I had a bit of a wish list about what the logo will incorporate. The motto ties in rather nicely. Things will now speed up considerably on the marketing front.

Toiling quietly in the background for the last couple of months have been Stefan Sojka and the team at Cyrius Media Group.

They are handling all of the design and marketing aspects of the project, plus building the website. This includes branding, logo and label design. Given the way I want to market, sell and distribute the beer I thought that the best way to do it would be with one team, or at least under the umbrella of one team. Anything that Cyrius cannot do in-house they will project manage.

It is vitally important to get all of this stuff right at the very start because it can be quite hard to change later. And although the initial expense might be greater it should work out cheaper overall plus it will help to sell more beer along the way.

At this stage I will be coy about what Cyrius have been doing and where we are up to. Nonetheless here are a few general observations about these matters. As human beings we look for meaning in what we do. We also like to do things for more than just one reason. Quite often the extra reasons we find to do something are emotional reasons.

So when we come to buy stuff all of this comes into play. For example if two products equally satisfy a practical need, but one also offers us more meaning and emotional satisfactions then that is usually the product we will buy. And often enough we will be prepared to pay more for that.

This doesn’t mean we buy stuff irrationally. Certainly we can do that, but it means that we buy things for more than just rational or utilitarian reasons. So when you buy product X, what are the emotional extras you get? Branding is about defining these extras and the emotional reasons why someone should buy your product.

Lots of things come into play to define these emotional extras, and in some respects they are inescapable. For example, the law requires bottled beer to be labelled and the label to carry certain information. Even for the plainest of plain labels you would still need to choose the size and colour of the label, the typeface and how the information would be arranged on the label. Almost paradoxically, choosing the most minimalist label would convey a great deal of emotional meaning and be a major element in branding.

So for a new product it is important to get all of this stuff right from the start. I need to define the emotional reasons why people will buy my beer rather than someone else’s. Given that the brewery will have a website, the bottles will need labels and that colours, typefaces and graphics need to be chosen it makes sense to integrate all of this to work together.

Is it a manipulative con? Of course it is. But how do we get anybody else to do something other than telling them they will feel good if they do it? As human beings we are both rational and emotional.

Have you seen the new Carlton draught beer ad? If not here it is at YouTube.

It looks like a cracker follow up to the Big Ad, especially after the dumped Tingle ads. It is beautifully shot with a cinematic feel. Although the pub interiors looked very Melbourne, it was apparently shot in several Sydney pubs. There was a time in my life when I could probably have told you which ones. The music is Puccini’s “Nesun Dorma” (None Shall Sleep) form the opera Turandot. The Carlton lyrics are:

Slow motion.
Men in slow motion.
Men look much better in slow motion.
It makes me want to sing quite loud.
Now, now, I want a Carlton Draught, chips and lasagne.
Men in slow mo…
In slow mo…
Slow motion.
Blah blah blah…
Slow motion.

The question is of course: Will it sell any more beer? This didn’t seem to be the case with the Big Ad. Indeed one of the lines in the Big Ad was “This ad better sell some bloody beer.” Last week on ABC TV’s Gruen Transfer Russel Howcroft from advertising agency George Pattersons, which made the Big Ad, said rather wistfully that the ad hadn’t really sold any extra beer despite a bit of a spike after the ad. (If I have misquoted Russel, someone please tell me.) Given declining per capita per consumption of beer, and the “premiumisation” of the beer market, maintaining sales of a mainstream beer may be the best that can be hoped for.

With the slo-mo ad Carlton continues the “Made from beer” tagline. It is humorous, and humour seems to be the main way to advertise beer these days as sex is no longer allowed. The other traditional hook for advertising beer is to emphasise the quality of ingredients. But given the general drinking public does not have much idea about beer ingredients, this is not really feasible – hence the “Made from beer” tagline.

There is more to discuss. Who is the ad aimed at? What about VB ads? And where is Tooheys in all of this? Recent Tooheys ads have been terrible. But that will have to wait for the next post.

In the meantime: Don’t live life in slow motion, drink Casey’s. When will we see the first parody of the new Carlton ad?

This is how things are looking

The four jacketed fermenters will be in a line in the south eastern corner. The coolroom will run along the back wall up to the window and out to the start of the roller door. It will contain the six conditioning tanks. The brewhouse will sit where the pile of pipework is on the left. the white pipes are from the grist conveying system, a section is sitting in the hopper of the mill in the foreground.

The photo was taken from the stairs leading to a little mezzanine office. The sixth conditioning tank is sitting unseen below the stairs in front of the mill.

On Friday Andrew Larsen came over to do the layout for the brewery.

I hired a pallet jack for the day so we could shift fermenters around and see how they fitted into the space available and how possible layouts would look. I had done some stuff on paper with a publishing program, but it lacked tha physical tangibility.

The unit is 9.8 metres wide and about 26 metres long. It runs fairly much north-south, with the front of the unit facing north.

So starting from the back of the unit, running along the eastern wall will be the four jacketed conical fermenters, then the brewhouse, the steam boiler and the mill. We will leave enough room in the southeastern corner to put the glycol chiller, there is also a back door there. The coolroom will go in the southwestern corner, running along the southern wall at the back. It will be about 6.5 metres long and about 4.8 wide to accomodate two rows of three conditioning tanks plus extra space. The coolroom door will face east to the conical fermenters.

An extra sloping floor with drains will be installed in about two thirds of the unit, from the southern wall to just past the brewhouse. This will be a general work and bottling area. It is larger than actually needed, but it allows for easy drainage layout, and easy expansion in the future, just get a couple of double volume jacketed fermenters. The Meheen bottler and the labeller are both castor mounted so can be moved around very easily.

Pallet racking will go along whatever space is left along the eastern and western walls. Part of the area under the pallet racking on the eastern side will form an enclosure for the mill. The mill has a conveying system to take the crushed malt to the grist hydrator and mash tun, all very neat.

Andrew will have the plans drawn up over the next fortnight – layout, electrical, plumbing and drainage.

Some people, eg my wife amongst others, say my tastes run to the bizarre and the byzantine. SBS has been showing some quite interesting food programs, Supersizers Go, and now another round of Heston Blumenthal.

The Supersizers, food critic Giles Coren and performer Sue Perkins, would pick an historical cuisine and eat and live it for a week. Of the ones I saw the most interesting was the Elizabethan episode. If you think Tony Abbott is whacky, he’s got nothing on those Elizabethans. I am not sure about the gustatory qualities of Elizabethan cuisine, but it had lashings of theatricality. One of the dishes served was “Surprise Pie” which was filled with live frogs. The idea being that they would jump out at diners when the pie was cut.

Edinburgh brewer Brew Dog has a 55% ABV beer, End of History – named after the Francis Fukuyama essay. Only 12 bottles were made and each were presented inside a stuffed stoat or squirrel. You can see them here. Predictably this caused outrage, but it’s all old hat. The Elizabethans were dead keen on sticking food inside dead animals for table presentation.

Heston Blumenthal is sometimes said to be an exponent of molecular gastronomy. How would you approach brewing in a similar vein? Ingredients are one thing, techniques are another. It’s something that’s been ticking over slowly in the back of my mind for a while. In some ways I am quite conservative about beer. In other ways, well perhaps not.

What I’ve been wondering about is gassing beer with gases other than carbon dioxide. Nitrogen is used in Guiness and Kilkenny, so there is a precedent. What about a beer gassed with helium? Would a helium wheat beer gassed to about three volumes be enough to give you a squeaky voice? Or better than nitrogen, what about a beer gassed with nitrous oxide? Inhale deeply then drink. How much beer and how much gas would be needed for the giggles? What would the sensory effects of different gases be? For example the tingle in a standard beer comes from the carbonic acid created by the carbon dioxide. Would different gases produce different physical sensations in the mouth?

Something to think about.

Yesterday morning, August 17, I went to the pre-lodgement meeting with Penrith Council. Very interesting, and worthwhile. There were five Council staff present.

Their main concerns were environmental, hardly surprising. Top of the list was spills and the possibility they might run into the storm water system. The other concern here was storage of spent grain, especially if it were to be stored outside. The reason for the concern here is that improper storage and rain will again cause runoff from the spent grain into the storm water system.

As the storm water ends up in the Nepean River their concerns are quite understandable. However, their concerns are easily addressed by installing flexible bunding at the entrance to the unit. The spent grain will of course go to stockfeed. While waiting for pick-up it will be stored inside the brewery in bins that will allow excess liquid to drain out. The bins will be kept in part of the wet area of the brewery where there is a sloping floor to collect floor wastes. Stuff going down the drain was far less of a concern than the possibility of anything ending up in the storm water system.

The second environmental concern was odour. They seemed satisfied with assurances that the strength and duration of odour will not be great. Odour is produced during the mash and the boil. Odour produced during mashing is generally contained within the confines of the brewery. The odour produced during boiling is stronger, and typically the kettle in a small brewery is vented to the atmosphere. However the odour disperses quickly. They seemed to accept that odour from fast food outlets is stronger and more persistent.

Several other issues were canvassed. The most important one was whether the brewery would have to comply to Australian Standard 4674, the standard for food premises. A lot of the work as a matter of course would comply with the standard, things such as floor surfaces, coving, no drains in coolrooms, elbow activated taps for hand washing facilities etc. Whether or not things such as lighting would need to comply or not is at the moment unclear. One item called for in the standards is for toilets to have double doors. However, one of the topics raised was disabled access to toilets. The view was put that the toilet cubicles are existing structures, but disabled access would be good if possible. Double doors would rule this out.

The other issues included parking, staffing, exit signs and signage. All in all it was a valuable meeting. I will receive a report with Council’s recommendations in a fortnight or so. There is also the option of a further meeting if I want.

This morning I lodged papers with Penrith Council for a Development Application pre-lodgement meeting. The papers include a plan of the brewery layout, and information about parking, traffic, signage, waste disposal, staffing, installation work etc.

The purpose of the meeting is to identify the issues Council will want the DA for the brewery to address. The meeting is held with three Council officers, they also send you a report after the meeting.

The meeting is next Tuesday morning at 11. And they said there was about a fortnight wait for an appointment, does this mean they’ll process the DA quickly?

August means it’s time for the CPI adjustment of excise rates. Of course in economic and finance speak “adjustment” is just a euphemism for “increase”.

For beer exceeding 3.5% alcohol by volume, excise per litre of alcohol has increased from $29.34 to $29.78 for beer packed in containers greater than 48 litres, for any other container size it has increased from $41.68 to $42.31.

It is an increase of about 1.5% for the six months. Here are all the new excise rates for beer.

Last Monday, July 26, took the gear out of storage from Johnstons. It was a 7am start at Smithfield so rather than battle the traffic down from the Mountains I stayed at my parents’ place at North Ryde. It still meant getting up at 5 am. In past life 5 am was a time for finishing work rather than for getting up. The joint joys of taxi land and thesis writing.

The brewhouse, glycol chiller, mill, four jacketed cylindro-conical fermenters, six conditioning tanks, mash tun stirrer motor, and assorted bits of pipework and conveying system were loaded on to two semi-trailers. An eight ton forklift and associated gear were loaded on to a smaller truck and off we all headed for Penrith.

The unload was fairly straightforward. All the tanks and the glycol chiller, which was on a pallet, were a simple lift with the forklift. The mill and the motor were lifted with chains and a small crane attachment on the forklift. The brewhouse is skid mounted, it is about 4.8 metres long and 2.2 wide. Easy enough to pick up sideways, however it is too wide to go through the roller door of the premises. And it was not possible to pick it up lengthways because it would be unbalanced. So the prociedure was to lift it off the truck and turn it so that it was lined up lengtheways. The brewhouse was then lowered on to two sets of skates placed under the end nearest to the building and several pieces of timber at the other end. In the meantime the semi-trailers had left and the forklift was able to come around to the other end away from the building. The forklift lifted the end of the brewhouse skid and just pushed it on the skates in to the factory unit. Pieces of rubber had been placed on top of the skates and the forks so the brewhouse wouldn’t slip.

Once inside and in position, the brewhouse was lifted a little bit higher at the end near the door and several larger pieces of wood were placed about 2/3 of the way along the length of the skid from the forklift. The forklift lowered the skid so that it pivoted on the pieces of wood allowing the skates to be removed and some wood to be put in their place. The other end of the skid was raised again so that the larger pieces of wood used as a pivot could be removed and smaller pieces of wood put in all round. The brewhouse was then lowered and the forklift removed.

All done by midday.