Lacada's Bunny kidnapped by Ulster university Students! #Bunnyadventures

Where will this Bunny go next? In a recent collaboration with Ulster University the students took him out for the day.  He seems to have enjoyed his trip.  

Laying down the gold...

It’s been a big few weeks for everyone at the brewery with our first ever special having just been released. We have just launched “Utopian Stout” which is part of our new Limited Edition “Salamander Series” to selected outlets. This stout is an 8%, full bodied, medium dry Export Stout with a silky smooth mouthfeel and dark chocolate & coffee notes. Our Brewer Laurie has been working on the recipe for this for some time and we are very proud of how it has turned out, and it taking pride of place in being the first of many more specials to come as part of this small batch series.

For this new series we wanted to look at a suitable way of presenting these new bottles which will be released in very limited one-off quantities. Due to limitations, both practically and financially, of doing very small quantity print runs of the labelling, we decided to go for a generically branded main bottle label that will be the same across the multiple specials in the series, but to use a small coloured neck and over-cap label that identifies the individual beer, it’s type, ingredients, and ABV.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting our label printing partners NuPrint, based in Derry/Londonderry, who have done such a great job in already producing our 3 main core beer labels for our IPA, Golden Ale and Porter.

Having been involved with the graphic design process of many items at Lacada since the brewery’s inception, it was very exciting for me personally to actually get to visit their production facility and see these new Salamander Series labels being produced on the presses and coming off the print line as the finished product.

As many print designers will know, you normally send a printing job off from the comfort of your studio seat and screen, and in the majority of cases the next time you see it, it’s nicely packaged and delivered from the printers onto your desk or to the client directly. So it was very interesting seeing the process from start to finish, and watching the machines and highly skilled operators preparing our labels.

You really have to see the new bottles and labels to appreciate how nicely they turned out with lots of lovely gold foil being the core design & print elements being used to give this new series that special look and feel.

By using NuPrint we are also very proud to be supporting another local Northern Ireland based business, and that is something that our Co-Operative takes pride in being able to source and use as many local suppliers and businesses as we possibly can. We currently purchase our bottles and cardboard boxes from Northern Ireland companies, some of our malt comes from this island, and we also use printers from across NI to produce our marketing materials and merchandise supplies.

I would like to personally thank Paul, Conor, and all the production team at NuPrint for facilitating my visit, and you can view some photos below of production and the final bottle.

Make sure to go out and buy yourself some Utopian Stout! It not only looks good with our new labeling, but is an extremely tasty and well accomplished beer in my opinion.

Keep an eye out for many more different brews in the Salamander Series being released over the coming months.

Greg Wallace

Belfast Beer & Cider Festival

With such a successful launch of the Lacada beer in October of this year I was thrilled to hear that we would be showcasing our range at the CAMRA Beer & Cider Festival held at the Ulster Hall in the centre of Belfast from Thursday 19th - Saturday 21st November.

This annual event showcases real ales and ciders from the four corners of the UK and NI and from what I had heard from past attendees is a chance for beer geeks far and wide to critique, quaff, drink and be merry. So naturally I was intrigued and felt no better reason to escape the drudgery of work than attending the festival.

I had visited the brewery weeks before the event and watched in curiosity as Laurie and Phil prepared the firkins of ale, these were to be left in the brewery’s warm room to condition in anticipation for the masses. The day had been marked with a big red X in the diary and the time had come for rounding up as many co-owners as possible for this boozy pilgrimage.

The 'Lacada Armada' set sail for Belfast on the Thursday morning, the first day of the event, with the clear intention of tasting as many types of ales as possible. Well that was my intention anyway and much to the bemusement of the others I was armed with a printed list of the ales, all rated with several highlighted as 'must try'.

Having arrived in Belfast early afternoon we filled our fuel tanks with grub from the City Hall market and headed around the corner to the venue for liquid refreshment...let the quaffing commence forsooth!

The stillage was a sight to behold, the tower of firkins stood centre place in the Hall rising up towards the ceiling holding upwards of 90 ales, 26 of which were locally brewed. Wrapped around this was a bar with an unending array of pumps. It was great to see the Lacada pumps as soon as you walked through the door, they couldn’t have been placed in a better position.

The Lacadians rallied and began the marathon quaff! At one stage Heather (our chairperson) was in one corner doing a media interview and Laurie in another deep in conversation with other brewers from Farmageddon and Hillstown in what eventually got coined as 'brewers’ corner'... literally a corner of the bar! All the while another co-owner Roy Willighan was doing his best behind the bar to aid in the quenching of everybody’s thirst.

I made my way through about 20 different beers some excellent some not so excellent. All 3 of the Lacada range tasted fantastic (not biased in anyway) other favourites of mine were the Darkstar range, deliciously hoppy and well balanced, the Farmageddon Mosaic IPA and the Salopian Oracle.

The eventual winner decided by the CAMRA representatives was the Elland 1872 Porter a fantastic rich complex number with coffee and choc flavours, well deserved, I gotta say though (again not being biased!) Lacada’s Stranded Bunny Porter tasted as good if not better than the winner.

Having sampled as many beers as the belly and mind would allow some of us headed back to the North Coast, and so it was up anchor and homeward bound, a fantastic day’s revelry was had by all.

It was great to hear really strong, positive feedback from strangers and CAMRA reps alike about the Lacada range and how well they tasted. Proof being that all six firkins were sold out by the Saturday, a resounding success I would say.

Onwards and upwards.

Neil "Hamy" Hamilton

Topsham Ales Visitor To Lacada

So it finally came to brewing on our kit, now alone to get on with it and prove ourselves.

What a lovely surprise then to be visited by a brewer from another co-operative brewery. Robert Patterson is a brewer with Topsham Ales in Exeter, Devon. He had spotted our co-op brewery on Facebook and, on a visit here he popped into to Kiwis Brew Bar in Portrush and they told him how to find us. The strange thing is, I had spoken to a colleague of his at Topsham Ales about two years ago to pick their brains about how a co-op brewery works and what their experience was. So to have Robert turn up out of the blue was a real surprise.

Robert Patterson of Topsham Ales

And on a long day, after many long days, it was a real boost to hear from him that we had made a great start in setting up our wee brewery.

He realised the amount of planning that went into getting the layout design just right. And he thought some of the small English start-up breweries would yearn for a brewery such as ours.  

So thank you Robert for visiting, we look forward to seeing you again on your next trip home to witness Lacada’s journey and growth. You are very welcome!

You are very welcome!

Building our wee brewery

Here’s the photo album of the journey to get our first ever beers ready for you all.

It’ll not be long now, all the bottling is done. Just some labelling to go and the beer is conditioning away all the while. The yeast is doing its bit getting the beer ready for you. 

Are you ready for it?

All cleared and ready, tidy looking isn’t it?

After Paul and the boys brought their sledge hammers!

The welcoming party

What do we do next then?

ElectricianS at work

Now that’s a tidy job!

Drainage Channels?…check

That’s Paul our builder at work

Our lovely shiny Brewing Kit – just arrived!

Hammy admiring his work with the paint gang

Getting plugged in

Nearly there…

Mark our happy PBC install guy

Hops have arrived!

Happy as Laurie!

Inside the mash tun for the very first time

Getting ready to bottle

All bottled and ready for labelling – Phew!

Co-operative Alternatives AGM

It seems a long time ago now that I made my way to the launch of the Northern Ireland branch of a Co-operative Business Hub in the Nerve Centre in Derry. It was November 2012 and I had gone along with the tentative idea of running a brewery along Co-operative lines, without much knowledge of what structure that would involve. There I met Tiziana O’Hara and Jo Bird of the Hub and their enthusiasm and the inspiring talks at the launch led me to forming a small group to look at starting a Co-operative brewery. At the time, there were very few Co-operative businesses or societies in Northern Ireland so we were entering new territory, particularly when it came to running a Community Share Offer. The examples we had to go on were all across the water.

Fast forward to the present and we are on the brink of installing our brewery and making it to market with a vibrant Co-ownership of 229 of us all eager to see Lacada do well. As for the Co-op Business Hub, they morphed into a new organization called Co-Operative Alternatives UK with an office in Belfast. They are still Tiziana and Jo and they continue to give brilliant and informed support to both emerging and existing co-ops. They had their first AGM on 25th June and they had invited a speaker from each of the four successful Community Share Offers that have run in Northern Ireland over the past 12 months.

First to speak was Matt Dick, the Head Brewer of Boundary. He explained the provenance of the idea of Boundary and talked about the success of their Share Offer. The AGM was actually in Boundary’s brewery on the Newtownards Road in Belfast so that was great as far I was concerned. I had a good look around and a great chat with Matt and we’re going to help each other out with a few things in the near future. It’s really cool to have another co-operative brewery and that is something I touched upon in my little talk to the audience, namely how the success of Boundary’s Community Share Offer was good for us. Of course, I mentioned the other major factors as well – more people joining with expertise in key areas; more Directors again with key expertise; a marketing committee to widen the reach of the Share Offer; more money coming in; the fantastic website; more co-owners joining thus building a momentum.

The other speakers were Karen Arbuckle from Northern Ireland Community Energy. They aim to provide solar roof panel installations to community buildings. Their Share Offer finished on 19th June and they raised £150k. Next was James Orr of Down to Earth.  They will bury you in a cardboard box and plant a tree on top of you - only if you want that, of course. James made some very interesting points about the subject, not least the experience of woodland burial sites showing that they very quickly went from being taken up by pagans and 'alternative' types to being accepted and used by the ‘mainstream’. It was easy to see why from photos of existing sites. What’s not to like about a woodland with its trees and flowers?

So, overall it was a smashing day of Co-operative people coming together. Folks, we are amongst the first people to begin Co-operatives in this part of the world. In the last 12 months there have been four successful Community Share Offers raising a total of over £350k and as we go from strength to strength it will be a great source of pride to us all to say, and show, to others that co-operation works!

Laurie Davies (Director)