The Great Chinese Hop Buy 2009

[bradsbrew]

Was A good day guys. Well done to all that organised and participated. Big ups to bribie for all the the work he has put in an absolute top shelf effort. And to Chap Chap for his generous hospitality yet again.

Has anyone heard the current local news update regarding a Mazda 2 being pulled over with what is suspected to be over three hundred kilo's of processed cannabis? The driver is currently being cavity searched.............guys I think their gunna find where we put a certain persons hops!

 

[kram]

That explains the brown hop pellet.

One lucky customer has received this with their Saaz.

 

[winkle]

Thanks to Chappo and family for putting up with the hop breakdown & Tidal Pete.
Bet the pool goes green this arvo .
Gee I stink of hops.

 

[townsville]

Guys

To all a great job

On the packing side, I need some feedback.

1. Was the prepaid self addressed satchels the way to go or not
2. How did 5kg go in a 5 kg bag, or 3 kg in a 3 kg bag
3. Anything good or bad in general
4. any recommendations

Craftbrewer

edit bugger it - This goes for the whole process. Any feedback, good or bad. suggustions etc, give it to me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[chappy71]

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their efforts in getting this done!!! Looking forward to making some beer.

 

[NickB]

Sorry to all that I couldn't make it over to help, unfortunately the timing was just out for me today

Looks like you guys smashed it, and with Uncle ChapStick bossing you all around it's no wonder!

Sterling effort fellas, really appreciate the effort put in, and a big thanks of course to GLS for the whole BB!

Cheers

 

[brettprevans]

wow fellas great work. i bet the smell in the car was awsome
thx to everyone involved

 

[Bribie G]

The satchel system was bloody brilliant, the actual picking and packing of the orders was the easiest part of the day. Everyone twigged to the idea of sending slightly more satchel per kilo to avoid paying for excess weight. For example, send a 5k satchel for a 3 or 4 kilo order. However whilst not having a shot at any individual buyers - because many of them had genuine difficulties such as being overseas whatever - I would suggest next time:

A cut off date for supplying your satchel. If not received by that date you are out of the buy and get a refund on any monies already paid as the biggest PITA and time consumer from the organisational point of view was chasing up latecomers. I was more than willing to do that, but next time around I (or whoever else) might not have so much time to spend on fine tuning and special pleading.

Local pickups worked well and at the end of the day there were only a couple not yet picked up, again for genuine personal reasons, but they will be burning rubber to get round to Chappo's - no doubt.

 

[AndrewQLD]

well done guys and gals, really appreciate the effort you all put in, it's a big ask at the best of times, thanks for putting yourselves out.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[bradsbrew]

Forgot to mention another big helper today. Chappo your young girl is an absolute champion and did not stop from helping with the bags and boxes to carrying the full post packs( I am sure at times she was carying 10kg+) to Bribies car. Actually I think she done more work than her old man.

Cheers

 

[davewaldo]

A big thanks to Townsville, BribieG and Chappo (and anyone else who helped), from my perspective this bulk buy has run extremely well.

Sorry I had to ditch half way through the packing, I really wish I could have stayed for the BBQ and beers....

Now to think of how to use 2KG of Chinese cascade

 

[MarkBastard]

I reckon next time it may be worth at least investigating getting the Chinese to do the splitting / sorting etc at their end, then organising the freight as 'Remail' such that the importer splits the bulk and delivers each order to peoples doors. This sort of thing happens all the time and may even work out cheaper than the current way we are doing it.

 

[Bribie G]

OOPS

Would the owner of the above scales please PM me with your address and I'll pop them in a satchel for you

 

[Bribie G]

Hop packing codes

When your hops arrive, it may be a bit hard to sort out which is which so look carefully at the pack before ripping apart and you should see the following scrawled on the pack:

• Marco Polo MP
• Saaz SZ
• Cascade C
• Cluster CL
• Nugget N

:icon_cheers:

If you should see CZ on a pack, it was probably me, I was obviously daydreaming about Pilsner Urquell and put CZ (Czech Republic) by mistake. :blink:

 

[QldKev]

As everyone has said, excellent work; thanks heaps :super: :super:

Look forward to some experiments with these hops.

QldKev

 

[dgilks]

I'm just wondering what happened with the Marco Polo. I don't have a big problem with missing out (though I would like some) but am curious about why my confirmed order went missing.

Thanks for the great work guys and I hope this works even better next time.

 

[Bribie G]

I'm just wondering what happened with the Marco Polo. I don't have a big problem with missing out (though I would like some) but am curious about why my confirmed order went missing.

Thanks for the great work guys and I hope this works even better next time.

We first split up all the hops into 1kg lots and put them in cartons, by type, then went on to picking and packing the orders. There were two packing lines, and each packer would sing out the hops required from the cartons and the hop bitches B) would bring the called hop to the packing table. We started with order no. 1 (first received) and proceeded through the list in strict chronological order.

Yes the Marco Polo was a worry, there were around 30 bales of hops and the total hop quantity worked out almost to the gram, and we ended up with little or no excess. However as we reached the last couple of orders (yours was no. 108 in the last few orders) we ran out of MP for some reason, but had a couple of extra Cluster and Saaz.

I can only put it down to possibly picking a couple of wrong packages earlier on in the process which rebounded on us as we reached the end of the packing process. As it's the first time we have done this then it's regrettably a 'quality control' issue and next time we should probably put in an extra checking step. Also, it could have been my own stuff up as a 'transcribing' issue when I transferred the original text file of orders to the Access Database I used for printing the packing slips etc.

Apologies on this occasion.

edit: of course, logically, someone who ordered a Saaz or Cluster has probably ended up with your MP.
edit edit: on contacting you, you gracefully accepted a substitute - the other MP guy was un-contactable on the day and received a cash refund in his satchel. At the end of the day we ended up with 1kg Saaz in excess (which we would have offered to the un-contactable guy) so we had a vote and donated the hops to a valuable and long standing forum member who has been unable to brew for a long time due to a massive health problem and is now on the mend and back into brewing. :super:

 

[Darren]

Guys

To all a great job

On the packing side, I need some feedback.

This goes for the whole process. Any feedback, good or bad. suggustions etc, give it to me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those in the Southern States may be a little concerned how "3-4kg" into a parcel may have been decided on the day.

Perhaps splitting the batch South/North destinations would be better?

After all, everyone know that Queenslanders can't brew a decent beer

cheers

Darren

 

[bradsbrew]

Those in the Southern States may be a little concerned how "3-4kg" into a parcel may have been decided on the day.

Perhaps splitting the batch South/North destinations would be better?

After all, everyone know that Queenslanders can't brew a decent beer

cheers

Darren

Yours may not be in the post yet as your "nugget" hops were still fresh and the green paint wasn't dry

 

[bum]

All jokes aside, someone did knob his hops right?