As we’ve decided to be a brewery specialising in (but not limited to) Scottish beers, I focused on that today. I read Scotch Ales by Greg Noonan in its entirety and then honed the flavour profiles that I want from each beer style.

Then I wrote 3 new recipes for a 60 /-, 70/- and a “Scottish IPA” based loosely on the traditional brewing techniques and their impacts on bitterness etc. as well as modifying my existing recipe for an 80 /-, tamed my wee heavy recipe to be a dark and smokey 90 /- and modified my reluctant lager recipe to be more interesting.. don’t need to modify my porage stout recipe, it’s good as it is.

All theoretical of course as I can’t homebrew here but they look good and I think they will hit the flavour profiles I have in mind.

Pretty productive day.

Our youngest kid is 2 now and as such we are encouraging her to make choices on her own as often as we can. Choices such as what clothes do you want to wear today? what book do you want to read? etc.

Somehow this has recently been extended to asking her to choose who changes her nappy after she has pooed.. I did not introduce this.. and yet, for some reason she ALWAYS chooses me.. I do not approve of this branch of the game.

It has been a while since my last note here, been a very busy period. Basically, we have found a brewery location that we like and are able to buy (the owner is eager to sell), however we have concerns about the strength of the land supporting the foundations of the building (just the frame/skeleton as the floors have none).

The area was previously affected by floods, which now should no longer be a thing, and the warehouse has subsided by about 20cm on one side. We are discussing it’s safety and options for securing the foundations with various engineers and should soon be in a good position to make a decision and return to the negotiation table.

We are also considering a new build on a different plot in the village just in case this warehouse is not safe. However, we both really want the warehouse to work out.. it will be like a 3 minute walk from our future house! So I am slowly transferring funds over to Japan in the hope that we can close this deal over the next month or two.

On our flights to Hokkaido I designed, and we tweaked a tartan which I think we are going to register as our brewery’s official tartan.. because.. why not?

We are off to Eastern Hokkaido for a business trip for a few days as of tomorrow morning.. if we are lucky we are looking at a max temp of 0°C so that’ll be nice..

Felt my first earthquake today, it wasn’t overly strong but nonetheless unsettling. It is somewhat of a surprise that I’ve spent almost 3 years in Japan (over various visits etc.) that this is the first time. Lasted about 20-30 seconds, of gentle shaking, most folks were unperturbed, but my wife looked pretty rattled.

Happy to wait another 3 years or more for the next, thanks.

There is a Shogun movie coming out in 3 days time?!?!?

Right then, time to watch the original TV series! It is after all probably the reason I eventually ended up living in Japan.

Well our youngest daughter has tonight learned how to say “please, Papa” , so that’ll be game over then.

After waiting for months for my wife to have time to cut my hair, I have this evening, the day before my 47th birthday decided to commit to long hair.

If I unfurl one of the fire locks it now reaches under my chin, my hair is pretty curly so it doesn’t necessarily look as long as it is but for the first time we were able to tie it up at the back and it isn’t an unpleasant look. It needs a few more months before the sides can be tied into so I maintain a straggly rogue-like appearance, which is a little different than the full on barbarian look that I have been wielding of late..

.. it remains to be seen how my DPS fairs but I am looking forward to my enhanced stealth skills.

I am currently reading a book on craft beer packaging design and trying to design templates or drafts for a proper designer to interpret once we are happy with the general look and layout etc.

The core beers will have some sort of vector art landscape background (Scottish or Japanese themed) on the label and I have been trying to simplify the logo and info panels. Definitely making forward progress. However..

My wife, whilst being happy with the general designs asked a good question. Do the designs highlight the inclusive ethos we want our company to be based upon and I guess they partially do (they highlight that they are vegan and gluten-reduced) but I am wondering how we can incorporate inclusion for groups of people. Obviously we could use the colours of various pride flags for different designs and it is one option of course..but I think we could do more. We could include images of varied people within the label design but hoping to keep the design somewhat uncluttered.

So, does anyone have any recommendations on good websites or literature on inclusive graphic design? I’ll also search of course but would be grateful for suggestions from more knowledgeable folks than me.