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description=Dave Bailey used to brew beer, but then found this to be a silly idea if money is to be made, so went back to electronics. Now living with cancer.;

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ething else was going on so i contacted the doctor and things moved on very fast indeed to be continued 1 we remain good friends with scott who s brewing talent continues to go from strength to strength fell brewery beers are extremely good and very much to my liking i hope hardknott has helped him to be where he is today 2 we all had symptoms and later fran tested positive for the antibodies so covid did play a part nonsense by hardknottdave at 17 13 1 comment this is possibly about covid electronics running a brewery skiing friday 17 july 2020 a most upsetting experience i originally wrote this post somewhere in the spring of 2017 at the time we didn t feel it was appropriate to publish time has moved on and there are many things that have changed obviously the closure of the brewery but many other things too that may bring me back to writing if you are friends with me on facebook you will know meanwhile it is time to tie up the loose ends with the brewery and move forward this post describes possibly one of the most upsetting things i have ever decided that i must do spring 2017 i don t cry often i guess it s a blokey thing i mean it undermines any macho image one might have and probably has some sort of deep long engrained social conditioning but sometimes just sometimes the need is there to really just weep buckets and damn what anyone else might think about the fact i was stood in the kitchen of the cottage i felt cold it looked like it was a functional kitchen if in need of a bit of repair here and there the fridge it was suggested didn t work the hob and oven built in probably did the washing machine which was too big for the space and so stuck out a little apparently would wash clothes but might leak a bit the owner of the said property had made some gallant efforts to clean the place it looked good considering we had earlier claimed to not care a jot the ground floor consisted of a kitchen and lounge in a semi open plan format if there was an open fire it would be cozy but some idiot years before had removed the wall at the base of the chimney presumably to make a little more space heating was by a combination of storage heaters and electric wall heaters god i thought i had left this sort of primitive life behind growing up i remember cold winter days in a house heated solely by storage heaters the only room that ever got warm in winter was the living room and only then when we lit the open fire and had the flames roaring up the chimney so just on temperature alone i was feeling just a little bit underwhelmed upstairs was a bathroom and two reasonable bedrooms fitted wardrobes and a double bed in each room meant we could move in at a drop of a hat as it was we were due to move in imminently possibly the next day this was to be a new start a solution to some fairly large problems a chance to wipe a few slates clean and move on i felt a huge sense of sadness only surpassed by the death of my mother some 17 years ago we were selling our lovely four bedroom centrally heated house complete with fully fitted kitchen large garden for the dogs garage en suite master bedroom and enough space for me to have a creativity room and as the kids had all but moved out ann was likely to get her own space too all quite lavish really we had recently increased our pet population from one crazy energetic but incredibly intelligent and fairly well trained collie dog called jester by adding a slightly less well trained rather strong and bullish if very friendly springer spaniel called teddy they got on well too well nothing was safe from their romps and were very firmly banned from the living room as the tv and associated multimedia equipment that are trappings of a comfortable life were completely at risk of annihilation these two boisterous adolescent dogs tried out play fighting tactics well beyond any reasonable creature s fatigue levels would have kicked in the lack of a garden for them to run around in was by itself starting to fill me with dread the fact we had teddy was in itself a symptom of what was really a very positive influence on my life a recently new friendship was certain to make 2017 a hugely pivotal year life is bound to be different in many ways and there are some incredible positives that should be capable of making me very happy indeed none the less i was filled with the biggest and most dramatic sadness the old over used cliché of having a heavy heart felt so apt the feelings were tangibly physical and i really really wanted to cry i could find no other way of making myself feel better but still that deep routed macho thing was holding on to it s stupid street cred engrained principles we had convinced ourselves that we didn t need all our capital locked up in the house and huge unserviceable and expensive debts in the brewing business creating losses that were inevitably likely to take us down if we didn t do something as a result of the way our debts were structured we d risk loosing everything within a few months suppliers were loosing patience some had already removed credit facilities and others had us on stop risking the halting of beer production hmrc was owed some money and that is always a bad position to be in a very good customer of ours owns the cottage we sell them beer we go into their pub and drink our beer just the way it should be it s a good pub good beers friendly staff wholesome home cooked food great bunch of locals and azimuth on tap the cottage front door is less than 8 seconds at a brisk run to the door of the pub what is not to like we had mentioned to these good people that we might need a bolt hole as we were due to sell our house they have various properties and we just needed somewhere to rent we agreed a mutually satisfactory rental and so planned to move in we knew it wasn t great but just somewhere for now would do we were 48 hours away from completion we still had a lot to do to get out of our house we had moved some furniture to a friend who was a little in need and had moved some more to store in the brewery i knew there was a mammoth task ahead of us to get it finished we had not done anywhere enough packing i guess because we really didn t want to make the move i still felt cold the cottage looked unbearably small where was i going to put all my guitars the idea of setting up my baby grand piano in the centre of the kitchen whilst possible was clearly bonkers whilst we were at liberty to borrow bandwidth from the pub wifi i knew it d not be as good as our fiber broadband having cooked in a commercial kitchen even the rather spacious and by domestic standards well equipped kitchen we were leaving behind irritated me the kitchen i was currently standing in was sure to drive me mad i don t know if i said anything to ann regarding my regret at having to make this unfortunate change of circumstance but it felt like a huge fall from grace was in progress and all because i decided to attempt to make an honest living out of a passion for beer ann was trying to console me but to no avail the despair just deepened and deepened i still felt cold the thick stone walls had yet to yield to the increasing spring temperatures outside and just prayed we would not still be there come the autumn but had still to find that magic plan that would ensure we are not the uncertainty about the business our living arrangements and the general future just weighed very heavily let s go home i said looking around in desperation for something to cheer me up and then it came i realized this would be home very soon and what i had just called home had already been emptied of large amounts of sentimentally precious stuff i had yet to dismantle the glass fronted bookshelf that survived in my grandparents house through a v2 rocket attack in 1944 once that was done the place was certainly not to be my home anymore i walked upstairs mainly i think so as not to let ann see my face daft really why on earth would she think worse of me a grown man crying over a justifiably upsetting experience is probably i expect quite endearing to his partner but cry i did was it the thought of moving into this undeniably cold house a house that was really just a little to small for our needs a house that could be heated without much trouble and anyway summer is on the way i ve done this before and been very happy about it ultimately no it is the uncertainty of knowing where we are going with the brewery this move is being made to free up capital to enable us to make the next step with the brewery relocate somewhere where we can more easily sell more beer and then who in their right mind would sell their house with over saturation of breweries in the country and significant price wars being raged driving down the wholesale price of beer below sustainable levels only a madman am i right am i mad enough to risk my all here is the crux i am not sure i am quite that mad to add to the mêlée of melancholy confusions i am left wondering where it has all gone wrong where did we fail with hardknott we were once the boldest and most progressive craft brewery in cumbria perhaps we still were but somewhere commercially there is a lot of work to do and the beer landscape filled me with a sense of doom with an industry that is most certainly broken and despite attempts to get great beer out to great people the barriers presented by legislation taxation and dirty deals by bigger breweries leaves me uninspired i looked around upstairs and still couldn t quite see where my guitars stage piano and mac were going to be accessible by now i was really quite full of tears and knew i had to just get out no longer could i hide my total grief from ann her attempts at consolation resulted in a frustrated brush off from me the instinct to be ashamed of my crying was still very still strong we don t have to do this she said yes we do i replied with inappropriate anger i was angry with myself how has this happened how are we going to make things better when will i again live in a reasonable house which i own am i making a huge mistake in being dogmatic at keeping the hardknott dream alive nonsense by hardknottdave at 20 09 5 comments this is possibly about failing in business running a brewery wednesday 19 september 2018 letting go it is often difficult to accept defeat indeed when one has been working on something for a long time it can be almost impossible to actually make that final decision that the end of that road has finally been reached however until that ultimate decision has been taken it can then also be difficult to move to the next phase that part of life that doesn t contain the thing that is holding everything else back 1 one of our tanks new value now close to 7k we only want around 3k i have been working on various solutions to keeping hardknott alive mostly these consist of trying to find a partner a brewing business that has holes in their makeup that we can fill and in turn perhaps they would bring something to us that we lack we have followed various leads offered to talk and we ve also approached some who we feel likely to be a good fit sadly this has not worked out and largely has lead us down blind alleys wasting time and resources we can not afford 2 i am certain that there are now too many breweries in the uk there are some successes and those that have managed to get everything right will continue to flourish and grow however i firmly believe that the vast majority of breweries below the 5 000hl mark will find it difficult to find true sustainable success that is unless there are some significant changes to the culture within the industry my recent experiences searching for a solution to our own position i feel is proof of certainty of this let me explain this in a little more detail below 5 000hl annual production profitability is extremely slim 3 it s a sliding scale and closer one gets to this important number the more likely a brewery is to make profit but that profit is still likely to only really satisfy an owners short term living requirements below 2 000hl my research strongly points towards a loss making operation what this means from a business valuation point of view is that within the range of brewery sizes we are talking about any exit strategy for the business owner looks poor making return on investment is highly unlikely without some sort of growth consolidation is in my view the obvious answer to this critics of progressive beer duty as it stands points to a cliff edge at 5 000hl which it is claimed creates a negative incentive for mergers and acquisitions i dispute that for various reasons in actual fact the real barrier to such normal business activity seems to be in the very psyche of the owners of microbreweries this is my baby we think we ll make this work all by ourselves is a paraphrased and slightly exaggerated message i ve heard now from the majority of people we ve talked to meanwhile there are also talents and passion being lost from the industry as people like me become disillusioned with the hopelessness brought about by the massive over supply of beer and undervaluation of hardworking micro brewers there are around 2 000 breweries in the country the vast majority around 1 400 of them are below 5 000hl their total volume of production is currently around 1 3 million hl per year if every single one of them were to produce 5 000hl per year we d see them have to increase their total share of the market from around 3 to a whopping 16 this stark and fairly scary thought omits to include that fact that if all 2 000 breweries wish to grow as indeed we assume they do then massive share of the market must be taken from both multinationals and regional brewers alike this simply cannot happen as despite attempts to the contrary and bluff from some quarters the shape of the beer market hasn t really changed as much as we d like to think it has in actual fact pointing a finger at those under 5 000hl is a bit unfair and it seems to me that no one in the brewing industry is really terribly interested in mergers and acquisitions until we get to the very biggest massive publicly listed breweries are snapping up some of the more successful brands but unless i m missing something very little is happening other than that my prediction is that most breweries will struggle to grow and therefore leave the owners without a plausible exit strategy if you couple this with the realisation that no one is going to be laughing all the way to the bank why then does anyone still plug away with the dream when the probability of burnt fingers is so high it all leaves me somewhat confused me as a climber free and happy i spent 3 weeks in the french alps this summer something i would have failed to be able to do if i was trying to put in the effort i d need to to make our business work i achieved a life long goal of reaching the summit of mont blanc a story i shall get around to telling on here i expect 4 i have other life goals...