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On Friday we had some minor flooding in our cellar due to the storm. The water got about an inch or two high and left a layer of silt behind. So instead of brewing that day, we spent the whole day cleaning both cellars. This involved moving all the kegs out of the cellar into the fermentation room, and then moving them back again after we finished cleaning the cellar. This is something we do every year, but usually in the winter, when there are not so many damn kegs! We must have had nearly a hundred kegs crammed in the cellar!

This is something has happened more seriously in the past. The water backs up on the ramp leading down into the cellar and forces itself in underneath the cellar doors. We are planning on putting a roof of some sort over the ramp when we expand the brewery. That should solve the problem.

So since then we I have been trying to play catch-up to get us back on the brewing schedule. We need to have lots of beer in stock to get us through the next month, our busiest time of the year.

The Warsh Pail Ale is selling faster than expected. We expect to be completely out of it by the start of next week. In retrospect, we should have made another batch. But there was no way to tell just how fast it would move. There will be a gap of about a week inbetween the end of the Pail Ale and the release of the Oktoberfest on September 15th. I am reserving the last 1/6th bbl of the Warsh Pail Ale for the Iowa City Brewfest on September 18th, so that will be the last chance to try it until next year!

Finally, I nice hot day today for brewing. It was 104 degrees in the brewhouse at 4pm today. Whew! I had almost forgotten what that felt like. Its a part of brewing, in every brewery I have ever been to, it is just part of the job.

We have solved a mystery! Ever since we started selling 1/6th barrel kegs of White Ale over at John’s Grocery we have gotten a few of them returned to us with a mysterious complaint. The complaints are always that the beer was dark, and tasted funny. The kegs are always nearly full. And the strangest thing of all is that the beer tastes and looks just fine to me!

The answer is that the yeast in the kegs has settled, and the first pint of beer that the customer drew off the keg (since the keg diptube takes from the bottom) was pure yeast, which might taste pretty strange. We have had the same problem here, and we have started to store the kegs upside down, otherwise we get a full pitcher of yeast slurry of the first pull of a full size keg. I mentioned to John’s that they should start storing their 1/6th’s upside down as well! That way not only is the first glass good, but the yeast will be evenly distributed throught the beer.. remember yeast is good for you!

We did it. We finally bottled the Warsh Pail Ale. I had to filter it in order to bottle it, but it still retained its hoppy goodness. We packaged it on Tuesday, so you should find it out around the state this weekend. We are hoping that it will all be gone by September 15th, because that is when the Oktoberfest is coming out. We don’t like to have two seasonals around at the same time, since the older one tends to linger. Also it is confusing for our retail accounts since we have the same six pack carrier, but with different stickers on it.

We have unanimously agreed that it would be good to stop producing Cream Soda when the packaging runs out at the end of this year. It sells, but it is a slow seller. I made up several “test” batches of new flavors of soda this week. Included in my tests were Lemon Soda, Black Cherry, Ginger Ale, Orange Cream, and Blue Raspberry. I made up six gallons of each in a 15 gallon bung sided keg and carbonated them by putting them under 30PSI for two days. The fun part was the taste testing. Everyone had their favorites. Chris liked the Lemon Soda and the Cherry, but could not stand the Orange Cream. He said it reminded him of baby aspirin! Teresa liked the Orange Cream and Cherry, but didnt’ care for the others. Tom liked the Ginger ale, and three random kids all liked the Black Cherry. Everyone agreed that the Blue Raspberry tasted like an Ice Pop that had melted, and you wished it had not. I like the Black Cherry too, so I think that is the winner, since no one disliked it! Our intensive market research is now over.

I will order a gallon of this flavor and continue working on formulations. Maybe one including cream or vanilla flavors. I am also very interested in toying with some of the new artificial sweetners. I don’t care much for aspartamine (nutrasweet) but some of the others I have had were pretty good, I think one was Sucralose. I have to be choosy, as this stuff is 50 to 100 dollars a POUND! Ofcourse a little goes along way.

Diet pop would really be something new for us, and I don’t want it to taste like diet pop. Our sodas are incredibly sweet, and I think something a little ‘drier’ would be good for a change, since enourmous amounts of sugar tend to coat your tongue. I am intrigued by the ‘big guys’ new mixed sugar/sweetner products, like C2 and Pespi Edge. I may play with that. Soda is easy, I can formulate new one in an afternoon. Beer, on the other hand, takes weeks just to get your first result!

We had a great time at the Great Taste Of the Midwest this year. The weather was perfect, sunny and cool. This year the 6000 tickets sold out in five hours, and the people who got in were all big beer fans. I even heard some stories of people buying tickets on ebay for 80$ (originally 25$).

Fifty lucky people here at the brewery came up on our chartered bus. But Dan and I had to be there ahead of time to set everything up. We dropped off our gear on friday night, and made a tour of Madison, going to the Great Dane, the Capital Biergarten, and Angelica. The beers at all three locations were pretty outstanding, as usual. My favorite of the evening was the Crop Circle Wheat at the Dane. It just had to most incredible silky mouthfeel, and wonderful banana flavor, truly a treat.

The next morning we got set up, and starting the “Brewers Tasting” from 11-1pm. This is the time that us brewers get to run around and try each others beers before the festival explodes when they let the crowd in. I tried as many belgian white beers as I could, and I did not think any of them were quite as intense as ours. Some of them were downright thin. I also looked for beers like our Schild Brau, and really did not find any. The closest thing was the Elliot Ness from Great Lakes Brewing, but it was more sweet than ours.

This year all three of us owners at Millstream made up to the fest. Chris and I signed up Teresa for the brewers dunk tank, but she refused to do it! Chris and I have both done the dunk tank in previous years, so maybe next year I’ll have to do it again next year. I think it is really fun!

The Taste always seems to go by too fast. Dan and I were stuck with cleanup as everyone else took the bus back to Iowa. After we got that done, we went out to dinner to JT Whitneys with my friend Eric Watson, a fellow siebel class mate. He makes some awesome beer at the Main Street Brewery in Evansville, IN. The food and service at JT Whitneys was good, and the beers were very respectable ales, though at that point my sense of taste was pretty much overwhelmed.

Next year I would not be surprised if the moved the festival north of Madison to a larger park. It can’t be any bigger at the current park, and having the tickets sell out so fast is a sign that its popularity has exploded. While I love Olin-Turville Park with its scenic view of downtown Madison, I would rather have more people attend. Everyone who attends gets a education in the incredible variety in the world of beer. We need to educate as many people as we can if we want this industry to grow.

Chris and Dan getting ready to serve some beer

Chris and I checking some cool labels from another brewery

Well everything did not work as planned on tuesday. When we tried to bottle the Warsh Pale, the small bits of hops in the beer clogged up the filler. I guess I had forgotten that each valve on the filler has a small screen! So Chris had to spend most of the day tearing it down to clear the screens out.. We only were able to bottle a few cases.

I guess we have bottled unfiltered beers before, and dry hopped filtered beers, but we have never tried to bottle a dry hopped unfiltered beer. I think next time I will dry hop in BAGS so that this is a non-issue.

I really do not want to filter this beer. So we are letting it sit until next week and see if it settles out. Also Chris is installing a small screen before the filter, so hopefully that will clog first and he won’t need to tear down the whole machine.

We are not too concerned about the delay. At this point, getting this beer into a 12 ounce bottle is sort becoming a comedy of errors!

Anyway, our whole focus at the brewery is now on the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison this Saturday. I am packing up the van and heading up there with Dan tonight. I hope to see you there, it is an incredibly fun beer festival! I just read on the flyer that if you have two ounce sample of each beer at the fest, that will be 25 quarts of beer for you drink!