Pivo in a half shell, Tortoise power!

This isn't one of those.

This new beer is called Geoffrey the Tortoise, and is named after Geoffrey the Tortoise. It may not be sophisticated, but at least it's a fairly straight forward story to follow.

Over the Christmas period our MD, David, was given a seven year old African Tortoise who was subsequently named Geoffrey. A popular African name, apparently. At around the same time, our Head Brewer, Colin was entertaining the idea of brewing a new beer for a bit of fun.

That is where the link between the two ends, and ends quite abruptly. We'd love to say that Geoff (as he is known to friends and colleagues) helped with the brewing, or went for a wander and found Colin in his office, or something else highly unlikely and probably contrived. None of those things would be true though. We simply named the new beer after the tortoise, and the tortoise is called Geoffrey.

What is true however, is that we have new beer. It is a 4.8% pale ale, it is hopped with Cascade, Pilgrim and Nelson Sauvin then dry hopped with New Zealand's finest just to make sure. It has the fantastic aroma you'd expect from the Nelson with the prerequisite bitterness in the finish you'd hope for in a proper pale ale. The word 'moreish' was heavily used during our tasting session.

We haven't bottled it, so if you'd like to try Geoffrey you'll have go to a pub and be sociable. To account for all tastes it is both keg and cask with a healthy smattering around Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle over the next two weeks.

As for Geoff, he is settling in to his new home nicely. Only today he saught solace by the Aga only to be sat on by one of the dogs and then almost trodden on when Mike was frying eggs.

Watch Geoffrey in action as he scales the mountainous hearth and heads for the fire.