Some pre-holiday ramblings

I haven’t had much time for writing this week as there’s been rather a lot happening, both at work as well as on the home front. The two things coincide, but as there never seems to be a “best” time, events have conspired to produce an extremely busy and rather hectic week.

The lad and I are off to foreign parts on Saturday; I won’t say much more at present, but I’m sure many of you will have guessed beer will feature quite highly on the trip. As if getting everything ready was not enough, we’ve an important quality audit coming up at work, which happens to take place the week I’m back.

I’m not one of  the major players in this event, but I’ve still got an important role to play. Making sure procedures, instructions and other quality-related documents are up to date is quite a task at the best of times, but when you’re being assessed on this, and your continuing certification is potentially at risk, it does tend to focus minds extremely sharply.

We’ve also had some visitors over from our parent company in Japan, and the night before last we took them out for a meal, plus a few drinks. As our guests were staying in Tunbridge Wells we met at a place called The Barn, which is just a short hop from the town’s main railway station.

As the name might suggest, The Barn is an old farm building, which has been re-constructed using some of the original bricks and beams. The place functions as both a bar and a restaurant, and whilst I have drunk in the ground-floor “pub” section on several occasions, the other night was the first time I have ventured upstairs to the restaurant.

It wasn’t particularly crowded which meant we had the full attention of the waiter, The food was rather good, and seeing as the firm was paying, we opted for the fixed price three-course menu. I stuck with fish for both starter and main course, but my Japanese colleagues braved some of the meat dishes, (steak and  duck).

We were asked which wine we would like, but all opted for beer, as we know from experience that our visitors enjoy a glass or two of beer. Harvey’s Sussex Best was the only cask ale available, but it was pretty average. It wasn’t off, but it was definitely a bit tired, so I only gave it a 2.0 NBSS. I switched afterwards to Cinque; a 5.0% lager from the Shepherd Neame stable, which is brewed using five different grains.

It was a good evening and whilst some of the talk was obviously work-related, a fair chunk of it was not. We know that our colleagues from head office relish their visits to the UK, as alongside the opportunities afforded by inter-company cooperation, it gives them a break from the insanely long hours which  many of then work.

Companies in Japan, as well as the Japanese government are finally waking up to the problem of workers putting in far too many hours. The country is faced with an increasingly elderly population because of a rapidly declining  birth-rate. With the crazy hours put in by many Japanese workers, (one of our colleagues regularly works a 15 hour day), people are too tired to form meaningful relationships with the opposite sex, and even when they do, there is little time for procreation and raising a family.

This is obviously a cultural phenomenon which is beyond the scope of this blog, but it is easy to see why there is no shortage of volunteers from our parent company, to come over to England. and work on various research projects in the pleasant rural setting of our factory.

Leaving these and other issues aside, our colleagues could have picked a better week to visit, given the audit preparations which are going on.  For me though, it was fortunate that the project they had come to oversee, involves mainly production staff, although they did insist on using my laboratory for their in-process testing !

Wikimedia Commons

So with one more day to go, and the suitcase almost packed, I thought I’d knock out this quick blog post just to keep things up to date. There are several interesting developments occurring in the world of brewing, not least of which is the news that the monks of Grimbergen Abbey in Belgium, are looking to start brewing their own beer again, after a gap of well over 200 years.

Blogger Matt Thompson, over at “When My Feet Go Through The Door”, covers the story in much greater detail, but it seems more and more people are realising the value of “provenance” for their products, and the holy fathers of Grimbergen Abbey are no exception.

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36139901

A related story is that of the Leeds Brewery taking on the brewing of a number of historic Tetley brands. Industry watchers will be aware that brand owners Carlsberg-Tetley,  closed the iconic Tetley Brewery, in the Hunslet district of Leeds, back in 2011. Now the Leeds Brewery, which only commenced brewing in 2007, is to take over the production of a number of Tetley beers based on recipes found in the company archives. This article, from the Yorkshire Evening Post, again goes into far greater detail than I’ve got time to relate, at present.

Well that’s all for now folks, but there will be plenty to read about when I return from my travels next weekend