LATEST UPDATE – CANS ARE HERE!
We’re delighted to tell you, a mere three months after first announcing we’d bought it, that our brand new canning equipment has now arrived at GCHQ – doesn’t it look great!
Obviously this isn’t the time-frame we had in mind, indeed we’d hoped to be able to launch cans alongside opening our brewery tap for a bit of the summer, and now here we are with a somewhat autumnal launch instead. But we’re really pleased with the machine, and can’t wait to get cracking on it.
We’ve chosen to support a young British engineering company, who make their kit down in West Sussex, and who we’re excited to be working with. This is a brand new design that they’ve only produced twice before, so it’s understandable there were teething problems and some delays with its manufacture.
The machine itself has a label-applicator and date-coder before the five-head CO2 purge and filler, double-seamer, and inbuilt weigh station, where the can is checked for weight and a lid, before continuing out to the rinser and dryer or exiting through the reject shoot. (If this isn’t technical enough info for you, drop us a lline and Bob or Liam will no doubt be more than happy to talk you through it in more detail. This does for me (Kelly), though! And hopefully you’ll be able to see the machine for yourselves next summer when we re-open the brewery tap.)
So you’d probably like to know what cans you can get your hands on, and when! We’re kicking off with FOUR fantastic beers:
To start with, one of the first beers we ever brewed here at GCHQ. FIELD WORK is our rustic, refreshing 5.1% saison, more a state of mind than a style. Light and flavourful with a tart finish, we love these Belgian-style beers and are really pleased to showcase this one to so many more people now than we could back then.
This has already been packaged and we can confirm, it made the brewery smell amazing as it was going into can!
Our brand new pale ale, PURE OPTIMISM, is the beer for today. At 4.2% it’s easy-drinking, and packed full of Citra, Cascade and Mosaic hops. We wanted something to help us look forward, regain some positivity, and reward the resilience and strength everyone’s shown in getting to here.
Packing a bit more of a punch is one of our favourite IPAs, IMPERFECT BEINGS. This smooth, juicy, full-bodied 7%-er is brewed with liberal amounts of oats and wheat for mouth-feel and haze.
And to round off our opening four, another beer from back in the day. BUSINESS CASUAL was first brewed in May 2016. It was envisioned as a contemporary end-of-day beer for busy workers in need of refreshment, an idea that still fits in 2020, whether you’re working from home or out in the world.
We’re really excited about our September quartet of joy, and hope you’ll enjoy these beers as much as we have putting them together. But of course it’d be remiss of us not to mention our most popular beer and Bristol’s favourite pale ale, Kokomo Weekday. This will be available at the beginning of October, so get your Hawaiian shirts and yacht rock playlists ready!
And watch out as we head into winter, as we have yet more really exciting beers lined up to bring you in can, that we can’t wait to tell you about.
Field Work, Business Casual, Imperfect Beings and Pure Optimism will all be available exclusively at The Good Measure from Wednesday 23rd September, and out across Bristol at the end of that week. We’ll be shipping to our out-of-Bris partners then too, so they should be on sale over the weekend across the country. Keep an eye on our social media for who’s got it, as we’ll be shouting from the rooftops about the amazing independent, small, local, specialist businesses we’re working with – but if your fave shop doesn’t seem to have our beers let them and us know!
Our online shop for you guys will be launching in due course too, so you can buy our beers direct from the brewery and straight to your door. Again, check out our social media (or ‘shop’ page on here) for details of this. (If you’d like to be a trade customer, drop us a line to accounts@goodchemistrybrewing.com and we’ll send you the wholesale webshop details – cheers!)
Like many small breweries and other businesses around Bristol and across the country, your support has meant everything to us over these last few very difficult months. When you bought us out of cans at the end of March we were worried about not having small pack beer for sale when the pubs were shut down. Your purchases of our cask Bag In Box and Kokomo mini-kegs over the summer helped us to cover most of the costs of our existing stock, and some of our ongoing overheads. And the joy we’ve felt at seeing our pub, The Good Measure (Runner-Up CAMRA Pub Of The Year in Bristol this year!), successfully re-open, first for take-away and now for drinking in as well, has been immense. But we still need you. The next challenge that’s going to face all your favourite small breweries, barring another lockdown, is the changes proposed to Small Brewers Duty Relief. You can read about it here, and we’d urge you to please share the petition across your networks, so your beer-loving friends, family and colleagues know about it too. We really want to still be here to celebrate, with you all and with our brilliant pub and brewery teams, our sixth birthday next August. (Amazing illustration of us by the ever-awesome Jayde Perkin!)
But for now – lets drink Good Chemistry beer out of cans!
Cheers,
Kelly & Bob, and Dan, Liam and Amber
