Euan Simpson, Butchery Manager

This year has been a very busy year in the butchery and hasn’t left much time to carry out as many courses and finalise other plans, but as we move out of the holiday season things will settle down a little.

We will be running a few more butchery courses before the madness of Christmas sets in. The dates for these will be finalised soon. If you want to be on one of the courses or kept up to date then drop us an email. The feedback we have received about them from the previous attendees has been amazing and is certainly showing that we are going in the right direction.

A project we talked about all summer long was making Biltong to sell along with our Jerky. We have just taken delivery of our purpose built Biltong box and will be doing a few sample runs in the coming weeks to see how the products will turn out.

Another thing that has just been completed is the Balcaskie award board. This has all the prizes that the Balcaskie team won showing the Lambs, cattle etc at the shows throughout the year. It is a great talking point and shows the quality of the products that we are getting in to the butchery. Along with the provenance board it, helps to show how integrated the butchery and the wider estate are.

This summer has been our busiest period for bringing in carcasses from the estate. It has also been great as the customers are really taking on all the information we have for them about the different cuts. With many more customers coming back time and time again to buy the non-prime cuts or to ask us for advice on what they should try next. 

Everyone knows how good the quality of our beef, lamb and mutton is, but now we are receiving lots of praise about the amazing quality of our pork. It truly is outstanding on the taste level and makes great bacon.

Friday the 15^th is the second of the Grass to grill events being held by Balcaskie and Bowhouse, and it is great to be involved with it. Preparing all the meat that is going to be cooked, marinading it overnight, and of course, eating it the next day (every job has its perks), but also to be the final part in the tour. After the participants have been round the estate they then see the final stage before getting to taste some of the amazing meat. I would fully recommend keeping an eye on the Bowhouse events page to book up for the next ones.

As I’ve already said, Christmas is starting to loom on the horizon and we already have had a few tentative enquiries about meat, but we are also starting to work on our Christmas order sheet so we can be fully prepared for it.