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Buffy's
brewery is located at one end of the long, straggling Norfolk
village of Tivetshall St Mary, situated between Diss and Norwich.
Tivetshall has no pub. This may be a cause of some consternation
for the remainder of the village's inhabitants, but it does not
unduly worry Roger Abraham. He needs no pub. He has a brewery. He
can leave the wood smoke warmth of his fireside, walk to the brewery
pour himself a pint and retreat from the cutting Norfolk wind in
under a minute.
The
absence of any proximate secure retail outlet for his beers is a
matter of indifference to him. There are no shortages of outlets
for his beers, he says, and he does not need to go and sell it.
Expansion over the past three years since the brewery was set up
has been almost entirely by word of mouth.
A
keen amateur brewer looking to opt out of the rat race Roger, like
a number of craft brewers who were brewing ever increasing volumes
for friends and fetes, saw the direction his passion was inevitably
taking him. He did the sums and decided that he could make it pay.
Those friends who clamoured for his beer could start to pay for
it at last, and the hobby that got out of band could turn a coin
or two.
Set
up in November 1993 as the Mardle Hall brewery, it was pressured
into a change of name by a churlish Woodeforde's who brewed a Mardler's
mild (mardle is Norfolk dialect for chat). The new name came from
the old boy - Buffy - who owned Mardle Hall before the Abrahams.
The two first brews were over 6 and 7 ABV, and here Roger raises
a smile, like most former amateur brewers, he explains, he likes
strong beers and had little experience of weaker brews.
However,
his business plan had provision for a 4.0% ABV bitter, and when
a wine bar in Norfolk actually ordered some he was forced to brew
it. The wine bar has taken the beer ever since, and it is perhaps
a sign of the times that the brewery's best customer is a wine bar
and not a pub.
With
the exception of a few pubs who have the beer on for a significant
portion of the time, the rest of the output goes into the free trade
via wholesalers. Buffy's sell to lock, Stock and Barrel, Beer Connoisseur,
Small Beer, Crouch Vale, Beer Seller, and Hogs Back.
Roger,
with a background in cut-throat sales, has two very simple safeguards
against falling into the clutches of the wholesalers and keeping
his overheads low. The first is tight cask management. The brewery
has a four and a half barrel boiler (it is not made of copper so
it is not called a copper) but a fifteen barrel mash tun, and plenty
of fermenting capacity. Production capacity is determined by casks
not by brew length. By tightly monitoring cask movements he can
keep the ratio of casks in brewery to casks out down to a tight
1:6.
Every
two months he spends a couple of hours working Out where every cask
is. If any are taking too long to come back he gets on the phone
and chases them up. To date cask losses have not been a problem.
The
second strategy is to spread his exposure. He uses a wide range
of wholesalers and structures his discount scheme so that he is
not under pressure to offer low margin deals to one or two key customers.
Roger reckons that if he were beholden to any one wholesaler for
more than 10% of his output, he would start to hear alarm bells.
By only offering discounts on four and eight unit sales he hopes
to safeguard himself against becoming vulnerable to sudden changes
in the wholesale market.
As
a salesman he knows that each year's sales profile is different.
He is not going to drop five pounds a cask to keep an account, as
he knows that once the discount is in place it then must stay. The
other side of the coin is that he will be as flexible as possible
on dispense. All eight beers are available in 4Opt pressure vessels,
9's, 18's, or 25 and 50 litre kegs (admittedly no one has yet asked
for a keg of 8% Festival 8X).
Roger keeps his overheads low and avoids the clutches of wholesalers
Buffy's
plant was sourced through an advert in the Grist. Originally from
Harviestoun, Roger admits that he managed to get it for a bargain,
and that Ken Brooker almost certainly got better offers for it than
his, but he got in there first and Ken was true to his word. Malt
comes from Munton and Fisons in Stowmarket, with brewery supplies
from Sutton and Philips in the same town. There is a floor maltings
only a few miles away but it makes sense to buy ready 25kg sacks
of crushed malt, rather than 50kg uncrushed even though he has his
own mill. Hops come from Charles Faram, as part of the SIBA bulk
purchase scheme. He tried US hops from Charles Faram previously
but they did not suit his own palate. He then tried to buy Fuggles
and Goldings outside the SIBA scheme but found them too scarce,
and as he was wedded to them as his chosen varieties he was happy
to use, and recommend, the SIBA scheme. Yeast is dried Nottingham
Ale yeast, again discovered through the pages of The Grist. Roger
is typically pragmatic about his yeast strain. It works well and
is exceptionally safe. He has yet to loose a brew through yeast
infection, and reckons this alone justifies the yeast’s use.
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