Farmers' market news from Gerb Gerbrands.

BEER fans may have noticed that Artisan Ales of Minchinhampton have been attending twice a month for the last year but I thought I’d highlight them this week.

Jon has been a professional brewer for over 12 years.

Although his previous career as a software/systems engineer designing head up display and head down display systems for Military Aircraft now seems a life-time away, the same care and attention to detail that he used to develop safety critical avionic systems is now used to develop ‘tasty critical’ beer!

The brewery has won a number of awards since inception - Best Bitter in West of England and Wales, Champion Beer of Gloucestershire, Beer of the Festival - South Downs Beer Festival and several CAMRA Golds and Silvers along the way.

Naming the beers proved to be a tricky one. With over 2,000 active breweries in the UK and each brewery brewing 4 or 5 different beers there may be 10,000 different beers to choose from! To keep things simple Jon decided to name the beers using a mixture of meaningful Acronyms and Numbers; so, PA-01 is the first Pale Ale he brewed, PA-02 is the second, while BB-02 is the second Best Bitter brewed etc.

The beer is available at the market in bottles but if you are planning a party all beers are available in casks from the brewery (9 Gallons - 72 pints). To avoid having to let the beer settle they will stillage your beer in the beer cellar ahead of time and once clear, will decant your beer into a clean cask to take home.