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!)

So you know what that means, there will be loads and loads of silly named beers available in your local with every brewery trying to outwit each other.

But we have decided to follow old suit and keep with our brews that we sell every Christmas. So we will have available: Red Robin 3.8% abv, Old Cock 4.4% abv & Norfolk Black 4.8% abv.

Don’t forget that you will also be able to buy our ales in 18 pint tappits / 36 pint Polypins from the following.

www.greenjackshop.co.uk
Triangle Tavern, St Peters Street, Lowestoft Tel:01502582711
Stanford Arms, Stanford Street, Lowestoft Tel:01502587444

We have been busy brewing this last couple of weeks, Tim has pulled and older recipe out of the vault (watch this space for further info), Our Australian Summer 3.7% will be ready by the end of this week this is a brand new brew with ‘Summer Hops’ from down under, Red Robin and Norfolk Black are also ready.

The next Seasonal beer to be brewed is our old ale ‘Old Cock’ 4.4%

Busy week this week with racking Trawlerboys, Orange Wheat and Mahseer IPA. We have also been brewing our Hop harvest and our Lurcher Stout.

We are awaiting delivery this week of our new lorry allowing us to deliver more and further a field so if you are in the Cambridge area and would like to stock some Green Jack then let us know.

Our most recent project at the Stanford Arms is getting on. We are having a wood burning pizza oven built outside to offer fresh homemade pizza. We are looking at around the end of November to be up and running with this so follow the stanford arms on facebook and soon we will be tweeting from the stanford to keep you up to date with what is going on.

As we have signed up with www.bigbarn.co.uk we have managed to slash our courier prices meaning it will be cheaper to send our award winning ales out to you.