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We have a mix of bad news and good news on the White Ale. The bad news is that we are still having ‘label issues’ with the printer, and we missed the printing this month. So it will be THREE MORE WEEKS until we have labels to bottle the Ale with. Makes me sad. Oh well, in that time, we will have gone through over 30bbls of the beer in just kegs!

The good news is that Beer Across America really liked the samples of White Ale that we sent them, and they want us to do 80bbls for their beer club in May. In fact they liked it so much, they told us to “not change the recipe one bit”.

So you beer club members will get a chance to have our new beer, even if you live half way across the country!

Here is the label as it currently looks:

Chris has the flu. So we are not bottling today. Its okay, we can wait a few more days. Its better that he get sick this time of year, than in the summer.

This morning i’m going to clean the taps in the sales room so the beer is nice and fresh for the tour that we are giving to the employees of New Pioneer Coop tonight. We feed them brats and give them free beer, its a good way to treat your important accounts!

Not much going on this week. The maifest is done fermenting, and i’m going to put the cooling on it on wednesday.. we are not going to have time to brew this week. I’m going on vacation on friday to take a trip to New Mexico, so we will have to brew when I get back. We need to get more malt in before we can brew anything, so its just as well.

But Teresa is busy planning for this summer. So far she has a bus trip lined up for the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison. Tickets will be 50$ and will include free beer on the bus. The bus doesn’t want us to bring kegs, only bottles though. Strange I would think it would be the other way around. Email teresa if you are interested (teresa@millstreambrewing.com).

Also we are doing a brewery to Johns Grocery Bike Ride. This used to be the brewery to brewery ride, but with the closing of Stone City, its has a new destination. We have a new name for it, the Tour de Brew. This will be on July 17th, so mark your calenders. We’ll have more information coming soon.

On the legislation front, it seems the chance to change Iowa’s law on alcohol percentage has slipped by us again. Instead we are narrowly avoiding an increase on the beer tax, and are probably going to get stuck with this silly keg registration law. Sigh. Next year we are going to have to get more people involved, our voice was just not heard.

If you would like to read more about the Keg Registration Law, here is the House version.
http://www.legis.state.ia.us/cgi-bin/Legislation/Bill.pl

We are making the annual 30bbls of Maifest today. Our Maifest is a ’spring bock’ style of beer. It is composed of 50% munich malt, which is less than the Scholade Bock which is nearly 100% munich style malt. The munich malt is important in adding that spicy, malty bock flavor. Otherwise it is designed to be a dry, refreshing beer, with no caramel malts to sweeten it. Its a big grain bill, so I am here late while it slowly runs off. The two Bocks and the Oktoberfest are the biggest grain bills we have, and they are always a pain in the butt to get to lauter off. The Stout used to be nearly impossible but we cut down the batch size to 8 bbls from 12 bbls and now it is manageable.

The new Crystal hops that I am using this year smell wonderful. They have a bit of both Hallertau and Cascade to them. I wish I could put their aroma on the web page, but they do not have smell attachments for computers.. yet!

The beer is already fermenting like mad downstairs at 53 degrees F. This beer will definitely be ready by April 15th!

Today I am sending out our World Beer Cup entries. This event is held every two years by the Association of Brewers. This year we have entries from 40 countries and hundreds of breweries. This time around we are entering our Schild Brau Amber, Schokolade Bock, and the Generations White Ale. I spent most of my time today hand bottling and labeling the White Ale.

I hope we do well. I just looked at the previous four competitions that have occurred in the last ten years. Some beers are so good, that beating them is just not really possible, or atleast not with materials I have at my disposal. I don’t have a tasting panel, for example, to track flavor drift.

In the White Ale category, Hoegaarden, Allagash White, and Celis White routinely win medals. Hoegaarden wins every year, and one of the other two beers take a medal, and one medal goes to a random brewery. So I figure we have a one in three chance, in a sense, of winning a medal.

In the Vienna lager category, where we are entering our Schild Brau, the only beer that wins regularly is Leniekugels Red. Kind of odd, don’t you think? Snake River only won once, and they routinely take the Gold at the GABF. So I am not really sure how my beer will do. I was so pleased about taking a bronze at the GABF, that this seems definately worth going for.

In the Traditional German-Style Bock category, there are no clear pattern winners. Every year its seems to be up for grabs. This could be due to the fact that commercially produced REAL bock beers are pretty hard to find. I have the most hope for this category.

The best thing though is that the number of entries is less than the GABF. It seems that the entry fees and competition is so stiff, that few breweries bother to enter their beer, unless they really feel its good!

I for one, feel that our beer is that good, so we will see!

Aaron

Today we bottled 60 cases of Wheat, 60 cases of Schild Brau, 90 cases of Cream Soda, and 180 Cases of Root Beer. We haven’t bottled in two weeks, and last time we bottled off lots of Stout and the last of the Bock. Yep its pretty slow! I spent a few quality hours scrubbing the ceiling in the lager room last week… but otherwise I have concentrating on sales.

I did a product demo at the New Pioneer in Coralville on Friday. It was pretty slow in the store, probably because it was so cold and windy out. The previous week I was at the Hi-vee on First Ave in Iowa City and it was slow because it was so WARM out. Well you just never can tell.

Anyway, I sold three cases of beer, and everyone who tried a sample bought a six pack. The Schokolade Bock and Wheat seem to sell the best. The people who go to the Coop are quite different than those at Hi-Vee. It seemed that people who bought the bock, had already bought our Schild Brau in the past. People who bought wheat were typically people who had never had our beer before.

At Hi-vee’s people always want to try the wheat, because it is light, but they usually buy the Schild Brau because it has ‘more flavor’. About one out of every three people buy a sixpack if they try it. Many people will not try our beer though.. many say its “too early” even in the late afternoon. Well I guess that is why we make root beer.

I heard that at a demo in Dubuque this week we sold something like 7 cases of beer. Now that is something I’d like to be able to do! People in Dubuque are more accepting of alcohol in general, so maybe that is why. They are practically in Wisconsin!

This week is the week that our World Beer Cup samples go out. It look like I will be hand bottling the John’s Generations White Ale We still don’t have labels… We rejected having them quick printed from a small printer, because they wanted an arm and a leg to do, because it is a 4 color process. So we are waiting for the big printer to do a “run”, as they call it, and that could be a few more weeks. We can’t wait, people are just screaming for it!

Finally, the virtual tour of the brewery is finished. So you may want to check it out.

My next project will be to add a FAQ section to the page, for like those questions like “what is the difference between an ale and a lager”.

Cheers
Aaron