South Plains Organic Brewing Company

For those of you that don't know, I am in the midst of opening a micro-brewery. You may remember one year ago I posted a recipe for a English ale. Well my friend Anders Paulsson, who owns the Fridhem Gaard farm that the restaurant 'Three Lily Buds' is located, that I write so much about, thought my beer was absolutly fantastic, thought I should enter it in competitions and ultimately convinced me to open this brewery to sell to restaurants, bars, pubs, and the state run alcohol store, Systembolaget. We felt we had a niche by brewing organic since that is so popular here and there is almost no organic beer for sale here. Also there are so many Ecological/Organic restaurants here that can't find organic beers, at least not locally, so that means they have a carbon footprint which kind of defeats the whole purpose. So we started talking to the authorites last summer to determine what it would take to open and start selling & serving. A woman flew down from the Swedish Public Heath and we met, she had a great many questions and inside I expected to run up against a wall of bureaucracy, but to my complete surprise, she gave us her blessing. She had a list of things we needed to do, and we were able to complete that list and to make a long story short, we got final approval and can now (after we get all the tax regulations in order) brew beer in the restaurant, sell it on tap in the restaurant, and I can sell it to other places. Of course, I still have to order grains & hops..brew it...bottle it...so it may be some time until it actually happens, but at least I feel like were there! Where I can make the beer, Anders is connected and networked. He can make things happen while I would struggle with them. A example is the labels. He had a graphic designer named Tomas Dalgren create them, I think they are absolutly wonderful! To date I have made about 20 experimental batches, 15 of them excellent so we plan to open with six. That will be...

                           Bohemian Pilsner

                           Pale Ale

                           Golden Bitter

                           IPA

                           Altbier

                           Porter

   We plan on starting small and buying some larger equipment in the spring. At first we thought we would name it 'Paulson & Brown Organic Brewing Company' but now have thought to have it be 'South Plains Organic Brewing Company' and P&B will be one of several labels under it. The area we are in is called south plains (söderslätt in swedish). Thats my update on the microbrewery for now....chao!