Didn’t we have a lovely easter? Well this week doesn’t look much better the weather here in Lowestoft today has been dreadful rain, wind and hail doesnt feel like the April we had last year.

It’s been pretty busy here in the brewhouse this week, with our new steam generator being fitted we are down to brewing on our 10 barrel plant to keep stock levels up. Our beer is heading all over the place this week for beer festivals with even some of our Baltic Trader going to Tokyo!

Our new beer was racked last week and is being delivered to out customers this week Green Jacks ‘Golden Best’ is a light hoppy golden ale weighted at 3.8%.

We have taken loads of bookings for beer festivals this year with the Jubilee weekend fully booked, there still are places available for the rest of the summer so if you want to take advantage of our free hire of stillage and cooling equipment then give us a call.

So long time waiting, we just had to pull this one out of our recipe vault. Canary Pale Ale winner of Gold | Standard Bitters | Portsmouth 2001, Bronze | Golden Ales | Norwich 2006 and Silver | Golden Ales | Norwich 2007. The Canary Pale Ale, is a delightful straw-coloured pale ale with a big flowery hop character (Styrian Goldings). The Canary Pale Ale is a fantastic session beer and at 3.8%.

Canary Pale Ale is also availble in Conditioned 500ml bottles available at Our Online Shop and all good quality ale houses.

Well to say the first part of this year has been quiet would be a lie. As most publicans will tell you January & February are quite but sales of Green Jack Cask and Bottles are flying out the brewhouse. We have been very busy with bottle sales and bottling so have had some more bottling equipment delivered to help us with the demand for our bottle conditioned ales.

Currently we have three 500ml bottles available Orange Wheat Beer 4.2%, Trawlerboys Best Bitter 4.6% & Mahseer I.P.A. 5.0%
Sale of our 750ml Fliptop Conditioned Bottles have gone sky high with the inclusion of our latest bottle ‘Red Herring 5.0% Smoked Ale’

Plenty going on in the brewery 230 new casks to be painted, tagged and marked with another 500 coming in soon and the usual brewing, bottling and selling our award winning real ales.

Dont forget with Fathers Day coming up our Brewery Tours would be a great present along side a presentation box of our real ales or maybe a Green Jack Fleece / T-Shirt. Visit www.greenjackshop.co.uk for further details./a

All at Green Jack wish you all a happy new year for 2012.  We have started this year off with some great new beers and offers our Australian Summer is on promotion during January and with the arrival of our latest brew Red Herring has gave us a great new start to the year.

Look out for some new brews this year but not forgetting the other great award winning real ales from Green Jack.  Looks like weather wise January will be mild with the possibility of no snow at all here in East Anglia.  It wont be long before we are all getting our gardens ready for summer so think positive and soon the warmer weather will be with us.

January also means that our ales are heading to the winter beer festivals, with our beer heading to Chelmsford for there winter beer festival Wednesday 1st-Saturday 4th February 2012, Colchester winter beer festival January 19th – 21st to name but a few.  Look out for our collaboration beer between Green Jack & Oakhams under Pickup 7.5% Greenoak Brewery, Jackham, England.

In the brewery we are busy with maintenance, marking up of new casks, bottling (our Red Herring Smoked Ale has had some really good reports and will be soon available in 750ml fliptop bottles)and plenty of Brewery Tours that have been purchased for Christmas Presents

Don’t forget you can still purchase Green Jack Ale online from our Brewery shop Visit www.greenjackshop.co.uk

 Red Herring 5.0% abv Smoked Ale

Keep an eye out for our newest brew in the new year.  Tim, John & Daron have been busy crunching numbers, formulas and using there experience to craft our latest brew.  Red Herring, using German smoked malt and Challenger Hops this 5.0% Smoked ale is fruity with a smokey dry finish.

This is a one off brew and only 40 Firkins are available we will also be bottling this ale in our beautiful 750ml Fliptop Bottles.

This brew will be available in the new year.

I had this tweet this week that I found quite interesting and thought I would share it with our followers. 5 drinking stories through history:

1. Admiral Edward Russell’s 17th-Century throwdown
Think you can drink like a sailor? Maybe you should take a moment to reflect on what that truly means.
The record for history’s largest cocktail belongs to British Lord Admiral Edward Russell. In 1694, he threw an officer’s party that employed a garden’s fountain as the punch bowl.
The concoction? A mixture that included 250 gallons of brandy, 125 gallons of Malaga wine, 1,400 pounds of sugar, 2,500 lemons, 20 gallons of lime juice, and 5 pounds of nutmeg.
A series of bartenders actually paddled around in a small wooden canoe, filling up guests’ cups. Not only that, but they had to work in 15-minute shifts to avoid being overcome by the fumes and falling overboard.
The party continued nonstop for a full week, pausing only briefly during rainstorms to erect a silk canopy over the punch to keep it from getting watered down. In fact, the festivities didn’t end until the fountain had been drunk completely dry.

2. The London Brew-nami of 1814
The Industrial Revolution wasn’t all steam engines and textile mills. Beer production increased exponentially, as well. Fortunately, the good people of England were up to the challenge and drained kegs as fast as they were made. Brewery owners became known as “beer barons,” and they spent their newfound wealth in an age-old manner — by trying to party more than the next guy.
Case in point: In 1814, Meux’s Horse Shoe Brewery in London constructed a brewing vat that was 22 feet tall and 60 feet in diameter, with an interior big enough to seat 200 for dinner — which is exactly how its completion was celebrated. (Why 200? Because a rival had built a vat that seated 100, of course.)
After the dinner, the vat was filled to its 4,000-barrel capacity. Pretty impressive, given the grand scale of the project, but pretty unfortunate given that they overlooked a faulty supporting hoop. Yup, the vat ruptured, causing other vats to break, and the resulting commotion was heard up to 5 miles away.
A wall of 1.3 million gallons of dark beer washed down the street, caving in two buildings and killing nine people by means of “drowning, injury, poisoning by the porter fumes, or drunkenness.”
The story gets even more unbelievable, though. Rescue attempts were blocked and delayed by the thousands who flocked to the area to drink directly off the road. And when survivors were finally brought to the hospital, the other patients became convinced from the smell that the hospital was serving beer to every ward except theirs. A riot broke out, and even more people were left injured.
Sadly, this incident was not deemed tragic enough at the time to merit an annual memorial service and/or reenactment.

3. New York state of mind: The Dutch ingratiate themselves to the natives
In 1609, the Dutch sent English explorer Henry Hudson westward for a third attempt at finding the fabled Northeast Passage. A near mutiny forced him southward, and upon reaching land, he encountered members of the Delaware Indian tribe.
To foster good relations, Hudson shared his brandy with the tribal chief, who soon passed out. But upon waking up the next day, he asked Hudson to pour some more for the rest of his tribe. From then on, the Indians referred to the island as Manahachtanienk — literally, “The High Island.”
And not “high” as in “tall;” high as in “the place where we got blotto.” Most people would agree that Manhattan has stayed true to the spirit of its name ever since.

4. The worst aftertaste in history
In 1805, British Admiral Horatio Nelson was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain. Most sailors were simply put to rest at sea, but as an admiral, Nelson had to be brought back to England for an official burial.
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson’s body in the ship’s vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson’s body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson’s Blood.

5. Indian elephants raid the liquor cabinet

No wonder they don’t sell beer at the circus. Apparently, elephants like to get wasted. In fact, an outpost of the Indian army in the jungle region of Bagdogra has been under attack ever since a local herd of elephants raided the base in search of food and discovered the soldiers’ entire winter rations of rum.
Since then, the pachyderms have regularly raided the base for a drink and have smashed down all defenses put up by the army, including electrified fences and firewalls.
According to The Daily Telegraph, “An officer recently posted there explained that the elephants broke the rum bottles by cleverly curling their trunks around the bottom. Then they empty the contents down their throats. They soon got drunk, he said, and swayed around. They enjoy themselves and then return to the jungle.”
This is by no means a singular incident, though. The animal kingdom is well-known for its ability to identify fruit that’s begun to ferment. Anthropologists even believe this is how early man discovered alcohol — by observing the strange behavior of animals on a fruit bender.

Today our new dray arrived at the brewhouse. Our new dray (a 7.5 tonne Renault will help us with our delivery as our customer base and sales area has increased. It has been sign written in with our logo by Seletar Signs, Colville Road Works, Colville Road, Lowestoft.

We have purchased a personalised plate for it which will be put on soon B00ZER quite apt me thinks. So you will see our new dray on the road this week delivering all of our award winning real ales.
Our new brew the Australian Summer has gone down very well this week, along with our Christmas brews with everyone preparing for Christmas. Look out for our Red Robin 3.8%, Norfolk Black 4.8% Spiced Stout and our Old Cock 4.4% old ale will be ready by the end of this week.

Look Out for Tim this Saturday if you are visiting Aldeburgh for the Christmas Lights switch on at Russel & Newnes @Russell_Newnes on twitter where Tim will be hosting a Ale Tasting Session.

So finally our new brew Australian Summer is hitting the pubs today. Australian Summer is a crisp pale ale 3.7% Abv brewed with summer hops from down under in Australia.

If you would like to stock this then please call 01502 562863 as stock is limited.

So you get your usual paintballing & Go-Karting as team building days but in typical Green Jack style we all went fishing last Sunday. So being an early Sunday morning start one of the crew was M.I.A. So we all met at the Norfolk and Suffolk Sailing Club in Lowestoft and met the guys that run the Cleveland Princess who also own ‘The Sailors Home’ in Kessingland (one of our customers). We had a great day out with loads of good sized Whitting and a 6 Codling.

Thanks to everyone for a great day out I’m sure will be doing it again. Unfortunately Tim had double booked and couldnt make it.

Final figures:
Al (The Cod Father) – 2 x Codling 1 if which was the biggest & Loads a good sized whitting
Dave – 1 x Codling & Loads a good sized whitting
Martin – 3 x Codling & Loads a good sized whitting
Rob -Loads a good sized whitting (Robs first time out fishing on a boat and didnt barf!)