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When I drive into Amana, and see license plates from all over the country, I know its tourist season. This whole week has been very busy, and will be so into school starts again. Its times like this that I wonder why the builders of the brewery put the only stairs to the cellar in the sales room. I have to squeeze by people lined up to get beer on my way in and out of the cellar. Well I guess everyone gets to see the brewmaster this way!

Yesterday Dan, our salesman, said he needs 60 1/6th barrels to fill all the orders he has for the next week. Thats way more than we usually have around at any one time. We are going to have to buy more! Its seems like this industry is really going to the 1/6 barrel (5 gallon kegs). I notice that even brand new bars don’t put enough room in the back for full kegs. They got 9 taps but not enough room for nine full size kegs. Its good for us, because we make more in selling 3 1/6th barrels anyway, but it does require more capital, since 1/6th barrel kegs cost the same (if not more) than regular 1/2 barrel kegs.

Today I order malt from Briess.. in the order are the grains for the first batch of Oktoberfest. I want to get it ready early, and also send it in to the GABF for judging.

Speaking of that, I have been thinking of making a special brew for our 20th anniversary. Any ideas? I was thinking of maybe making a Barley wine and selling it all to the ABD. But then I realized that we couldn’t sell it here becuase we don’t have a liquor license. As I read the rules there is nothing preventing us from brewing a beer over 5%, but we can not hold any other type of liqour license other than a class “B” license. We cannot even get a class “A” license to let us sell someone elses wine. But I could make a strong beer and sell it out of the state, no problem. I’m not sure if it be worth trouble though. I love Barley Wine and Dopplebocks though….

The Tour De Brew Bike Ride this weekend was a success. We started by gathering at the Motley Cow (across the street from John’s) at 11am. We had a few beers there, and some nice conversation. After an hour it was time to put our gear on and start the ride to North Liberty. We had about twenty people, plus another twenty who took the bus from Amana to John’s Grocery and started a bit later than us.

I wanted to get a head start on the main body, because I was hauling this 1/6th barrel of Pale Ale. I had it strapped into a burely, with a keg blanket strapped over it. I was pretty impressed at how well the keg blanket did at keeping the beer cold! However the keg was heavy, and the wind resistance on the burely was high, so it was really something else to haul it up the hills of Dubuque Street to North Liberty. I cranked away though, and made it in good time.

We stopped at Bob’s Place for a few drinks. It was a nice place for that. But soon it was time to head out, because we needed to get this keg into position infront the main party. My brother Eric was a huge help in this, hauling the burely 16 miles past Greencastle Airport to the junction of Old Highway 6 and Highway 6. He hauled it, and I tried to keep up! There is a stand of tree’s at the junction known to the local’s as Crofta’s Corner. This is where the old bootlegger cars used to gather to collect whiskey from the local stills before they made their runs into Iowa City during Prohibition.

Naturally it was a perfect place to stop and tap the keg. The beer was cold, but very shook up from some of the bumps on Old Highway 6! After awhile it settled down. I was sort of annoyed that the sankey tap would not go all the way down on the 1/6th barrel, that is a problem with some of the old style tappers and these new steel kegs. So it was a two man job to tap the keg and pump it to serve the beer. We persevered though, and waited an hour and half for nearly everyone to come by and drain the keg. I sure was not going to haul that keg 6 miles down hilly Highway 6 until it was empty. That way, everyone would be helping to move their own portion of it!

Back at the brewery we enjoyed some brats and sunshine. Thanks to Team Wimpy for their bus and help with the ride. They are a ‘drinking club with a bicycling problem’. We let the riders all have a free glass of Radler (beer mixed with lemonade) to help refresh them. Most everyone seemed to enjoy it best mixed with Pilsner. I made two kegs of lemonade, so that will be around at the brewery for a few weeks if you would like to try it.

Next year we will do it again! There was some talk of taking a different route.. but all the other ways are even more hilly.. Leave your suggestions/comments below!

Here are some more pictures!

Today I transferred the next batch of White Ale into two 20bbl bright beer tanks to get it ready to bottle and keg. I also transfered the second batch of Pale Ale into a lager tank, where I am going to hold it until we get labels in.

I harvested both yeasts. The Wit yeast had some big chunks of ice mixed into it. We have a issue with these big 40bbl tanks, when you turn on the cooling, it takes some time to figure where the valve should be or you end up getting a significant amount of ice forming on the inside of the tanks. I wish I had my camera on me, I pulled probably 15 gallons of ice chunks out of the tank, so I could get at the yeast to harvest them! The yeast look good under the scope, and I think they will be very well chilled until tommorrow, when we are going to use them in another 40bbl batch of white ale.

I showed the ice to Chris, and he says he thinks he can hook up some automatic thermostats to these tanks. He is getting more confident about the things he can do around here! Thats good, because I would like to have more fermentation temperature control. Lagers are easy, but these ales can take off in a hurry, and get really warmer that I would like. And we just happen to have some steam-rated thermostats laying around the brewery from the previous owner.. but thats another story.

The pale ale yeast was in very good condition. I only wish I could brew with it again soon! I put a cylinder of it in storage. Tommorrow, i’m going to put a couple liters of fresh wort in the keg with it, and keep it in a ice batch. By feeding the yeast, you can store them for much longer, up to a month. I had good luck doing this with our lager yeast a year ago, when we were down for a month re-doing the fermentation room floor.

I’m very excited about the Bike Ride. I am borrowing a friends Burly and I am going to use it haul a 1/6th barrel of beer all the way to Amana! I know that Jeff over at Stone City said that it was a real pain in the butt back when he used to do it in his “beer chariot”. I never actually saw him do it though, so I guess i’ll find out. What type of beer should I bring on the ride? Right now i’m thinking Pale Ale would be the best.

We made 80bbls of beer this week, all of them lagers. Two Schild Brau, one Pilsner, and one batch of Wheat. We really need to brew more… This is a good problem to have!

Though we do have other problems. My real frustration this week is the realization that the Pale Ale is moving so slow, that I will not be able to make a third batch of it, even though I have the ingredients. I completely overestimated the sales of it (without labels) and underestimated the sales of Pilsner, which we are now running short on. This brings along another headache: without Pale Ale labels, and without Pilsner to bottle, we will not have three bottled beers to put into our sampler packs. I think our only choice will be to put six Wheat and six Schild Brau in each one.

The lack of labels will become a heated discussion, i’m sure, during this years winter annual meeting. This has happened far too often, and we are going to have to do something to make sure we don’t get caught like this again.

The good news is that we have a beer club indicating it would like our Pale Ale in January, so perhaps I will not have to keep a thousand pounds of pale ale malt around for a whole year. Also we WILL have labels in August, and perhaps we will sell a huge amount that month.. we will see.

We really can’t do the Pale Ale and Oktoberfest at the same time, since they go into the same six pack carrier. This causes a headache at stores since they both ring up as the same beer. I am planning on making the Oktoberfest early again, since it was such a big success last year, and I would like to enter it into the GABF. It should be ready in the first week of September.

I have also been working on making a lemonade to mix with beer for the bike ride. This is called a Radler in Germany. It should be pretty tasty. If anyone reading this knows where I can get a little bit of citric acid locally, i’d be pretty happy to hear about it. Its ordered but i’d like to have some sooner than when it will arrive.

Don’t forget that this month is American beer month. The American Beer Month website is very nicely designed and pretty informative. Check it out. Americanbeermonth.com

I had a great time working my 13 hour shift at Jazzfest in Iowa City this year. Even despite the complete downpour that we experienced during the afternoon. Thankfully we had one of the best tents, and we did not get washed away like some booths across the street! What was really amazing though was all the people who stood in their chairs with umbrella’s while waiting for the music to start again!

Attendance seemed good, and I really liked the ambience of the new location on Clinton Street facing the Old Capitol. The music was good as always. The good news is that we made nearly a thousand bucks selling rootbeer floats and “make your own sundae’s”. That should be enough to break even (the booth fee is 500$) and then some.

We had quite few people ask ‘what flavors’ of ice cream we had. We only had Vanilla, but we had all the toppings you could ask for. It seemed to put alot of people off… but we couldn’t possibly be a mobile baskin robbins! But for every sourpuss like that, there was about two people who wanted a rootbeer float. Of course we also had plenty of people who wanted beer, and I always enjoy explaining the situation on that!

Our snazzy booth

These old guys started the music off… they were really good!

I’m at work today brewing a batch of Schild Brau. I know its a holiday, but we really need the beer!