Greetings from Peter and Holly!
A little update on the activities of your Anglo-American friends in Brittany…
First of all, and most important, I hope you, your family and friends are staying safe and healthy amidst all the chaos the world is going through!
Covid of course has stopped our wine-tourism business stone cold, but luckily we were able to get back to our little place here in north-west France, with fresh air around us and plenty of things to keep us busy. Before the virus changed the world, we had started plans to add a micro-brewery to our B&B. We first planned a tiny (100 liter) set-up, just to enhance the experience of our guests, but since everyone seems to love our beer, we decided to expand our plans to a 500 liter capacity.
As our tourism revenue evaporated, our focus has sharpened on the brewery project. Limited funding makes for slow renovation, so as the transformation of the stable into the brewery continues to advance, we are still making beer in the kitchen… not easy!
So this message is to let you know that we are still “in business” for Wine Tours, as soon as the world allows us to resume. In the meantime, we’d like to show you what we’re currently doing, and share with you some of the fun stories that we encounter along the way. You can follow the story on our new blog, here:
https://brasserielaboyere.com/?page_id=9
Also, note that two of our B&B rooms can be totally isolated, with private entrances, beautiful en-suite bathrooms and room-service for breakfast, either in the room or on a private terrace. With the fresh air and peaceful environment, we can tell you from experience it’s not a bad place to be in a pandemic!
Right now we’re planning the brewery’s soft launch for mid-September. Our Lager and IPA are in the bottle, maturing nicely. The American Brown Ale and the Rye IPA are nearly finished fermenting, and we hope they will be bottled next week. These first four beers will launch the opening of the brewery, and we will add the others as we go – Stout, Smokey Porter, Weissbier and ESB (Extra Special Bitter).
We have also created a crowd-funding page on a local site “Kengo”, dedicated to helping small businesses in Brittany. Basically we are pre-selling packages, of course including beer, but also apparel and stays at the B&B (more practical for our friends based outside of France). Please take a look – the story of the brewery is there, with no obligation to purchase!
www.kengo.bzh/projet/2614/brasserie-la-boyere
We have just a few days left to raise funds and pre-sell beer with our Kengo project, and if you’d like to help us, you can send the link to your contacts. There are offers there for our friends outside France! All the offers are “full value” – at or below retail prices, so helping us get going is good for you too!
The revenues from these sales will help us accelerate the construction, so we can keep improving our beer, and make it much more easily – and, Holly can have her kitchen back!!!
In the meantime, if you have any wine or wine-travel related questions, feel free to drop me a line, I’d be happy to share our advice and experience, or just to chat about wine, which is still our passion despite our excitement with brewing!
Thanks, your sharing is appreciated!
Peter and Holly
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