What A Year.. Exciting Things Are Happening!

Well what a year it has been. Before we get started, grab yourself a beer, this is gonna be a long read!

We are almost at the end of another year. We have gone from being pretty much a one man band in a 6bbl brewery to opening our first pub being the Dog House in Caerleon & employing 5 people within the brewery and pub.

Now we are growing again but with a fresh start for 2019.

We have recently appointed Lee Dunning as our new finance director who comes to the business as a very keen home brewer himself. Lee comes from a background in engineering as well as owning a property investment business with both residental and commercial properties around South Wales. With looking for a new market to invest into, Lee saw the opportunity to invest into Mad Dog.

Some of you may recall back in September/October that i was considering calling it a day? This was based on the brewery being at a point where it could no longer survive in its current size and needed investment to move on to the next phase. However, with the investment from Lee we are now very proud to announce that our brewery is increasing capacity to 12 bbl. We have very recently also installed two very large conical fermentation tanks to make a total of 4 new tanks in the brewery this year taking us up to a total of 6 tanks in the brewery.

We have also taken the decision to change the way in which we package our beer. Research into our market has helped us make these decisions as cask beer becomes harder to sell. Landlords want to keep buying at cheap rates because there is an over saturation of the market. They have the choice. Anyway, we will be producing less cask beer and focus more on keg beer. For this we have upgraded our equipment so that we can package into Keykegs and will also use Kegstar for those customers that are not equipped to serve via Keykeg.

From January our core beers are changing! Yes we will be keeping the majority of them but we will be increasing the amount of hops used in Third Eye Blind and Now In a Minute. We have sadly made the decision to remove Bohemian Hipster and replace it with Marmalade IPA which has been a huge hit when it has been brewed as a special. So when it comes to packaging well....

Third Eye Blind 3.8% – Cask, 30L keg, 440ml cans.. YES CANS!!

Marmalade IPA 4.5% - Cask, 30L Keg, 440ml cans

Now In a Minute 4.2% - Cask, 30L keg, 500ml bottle

Stouty McStoutFace 4.5% - Cask, 30L keg, 500ml bottle

We have also decided to give Now In a Minute a face lift with the hops we use to brew it. Out with the old Magnum, Cascade and Chinook and in with Fusion, Olicana and Jester. These hops will give this beer the flavour and aroma burst it so needs.

As many of you know, most of our beers are vegan friendly. We will be taking this one step further with our core beers to make them gluten free as well. No comprimise on flavour or quality. In actual fact you will not know any difference. It just means for those that have gluten allergies, they will soon be able to enjoy our beer too! Available at the sametime as our can launch!

Along with the canning of Third Eye Blind and Marmalade IPA we will also be canning the first of 24 ‘one off’ specials for 2019 which will be our DDH IPA ‘Pupa Don’t Preach’ which will be a super hot 7% abv.

You will be able to get all of our cans at our official can launch at Craft Beer Rising in London in February as well as many other selected stores and online retailers at the same time.

Talking of Craft Beer Rising, we already have many food & beer festivals arranged for 2019 including Tom Kerridges Pub in the Park in Bath.

We have an awesome team here at the brewery. Stuart Watkins our head brewer will hopefully soon have an apprentice who he will train to become just as awesome as he is at not only brewing beer but operating the brew house efficiently at the same time as creating some truly kick ass beers. We also have Samantha who is my tea maker. Only joking! Sam who is our new business development manager will be working alongside myself in helping to get our beer in the furthest corners of the UK and the rest of the world as well as setting up our events and attending them too! If you see her, go and say hello. She likes Oreo biscuits and Belgian triples ;).

Anyway, it has been an extremely stressful time for myself over the last year which almost became a final decision the close the brewery. With such a dedicated and passionate bunch of guys we have here and of course Lee’s investment we will be around for a long time yet.

We have a great future ahead of us, one i feel so excited about to the point i have not felt this excited since first starting the brewery almost 5 years ago in my home kitchen.

Please follow our journey with us. Join us at our events, drink the beer and just be awesome!

Here’s to a very exciting 2019! Happy Christmas & New Year everybody and thank you for all of the support you have given Mad Dog and myself. You legends....

Alex..

Mad Dog Founder & MD.

The future of Mad Dog Brewing Co...

Well believe me this is one post that is quite different that i almost wrote just last week.

Let's just say the past few months for the brewery have been extremely difficult financially, mentally and physically. Things are now changing for the good..

Let's reflect.

As some may already know i started the brewery in August 2014 after constructing my own brew kit and brewing just one firkin (40 litres) at a time. In January 2015 i moved into a small industrial unit and had the money to invest in a 100 litre brew kit which then allowed me to brew 2 firkins at a time. 

It was a very hard slog brewing 7 days a week and brewing twice a day. Who'd believe that for me to complete a pallet of casks for wholesale it would take 9 brews to do this instead of today's less than 1 complete brew! 

Anyway, demand got great that i sought finance in the way of a loan from the Welsh Assembly Government to help me with expanding the brewery to a new brew house and have a new brewery installed. This saw brewing capacity go from 100 litres to 1000 litres by December 2015.

Since then i have continued to grow the brewery employing more staff and buying more tanks as well as new equipment for the brewery whilst even to this very day paying myself very little or nothing at all.

Fast forward to this year where i have been faced with many challenges such as finding the right person to fit a sales role, opening our first ever pub in Caerleon, employing 6 brand new staff as well as customers we supplied with beer either going bust or simply just not paying up and going into hiding. 

This past two months has been more than just a roller coaster of emotions as well as thoughts as to where to take the brewery. Taking on so much single hand is no job for any human being and this is what i have tried to do. It came to a point that just last week i had almost decided to call it day with Mad Dog and completely walk away from the industry too. Yeh let's face it, for any business there is a level of stress and sleepless nights. Heck, i can't even remember where i went to bed at a suitable hour and slept all night! Well, let's face it, for anybody who has experience with the beer industry, it is very challenging to say the least.

Over the past few months i have gained a new friend who coincidentally has a passion for business and an even bigger passion for good quality beer. After many discussions to say the least, it was decided between us both to form a joint partnership for the brewery. This is to share the more important decisions and hopefully half the stress as well as investing in the brewery with a solid plan for the coming future for the business.

I would like to Welcome Lee Dunning as not only a new director to the brewery but as somebody who genuinely has a real passion for beer and is keen to get stuck in as much as the rest of the team.

We have a stack of plans which i will tell all about come the end of this year. But for now, Well, we will be starting by doubling the size of the brewery from 6BBL to 12BBL which will allow us to brew a maximum of 47BBL (10,340 litres in laymens terms) a week if required.

From feeling very low to finding the point to push on and battle against the worst can be extremley hard when all you can see is mist in your eyes. I'm not one for just giving up. 

We have a fantastic team of people here at the brewery. I am extremely proud of every single crew member we have. 

Anyway, i've rambled on too much. Very exciting things are about to happen with the brewery in the way we do things. Watch this space!

Alex

Mad Dog Founder & MD.