Make up day
Today we did a short batch of the Colony Oatmeal Stout. Last week, when Chris was mashing in, he realized that we were short on the black malt for the Stout. So we had to UPS a bag of black malt here, and today we made a short batch of SUPER black malt stout to blend into the other batch. I’m still not sure how we were short on the black malt, it must have been an inventory mistake on my part. Since we normally do short batches of Stout anyway, because it is such a big beer, there was plenty of room in the fermenter for another half batch. Infact, the tank is now as full as a normal batch of beer!
You have to be flexible and creative to solve your problems in this business! I’m completely confident that this will work out fine. Without enough black malt, the roasted barley comes through the beer to strong. Roasted barley has a round, burnt-smokey flavor. Black malt is the essential Stout grain, it has a more blackened caramel/coffee flavor.
The Stout and Bock are selling really well. Infact they will be putting the Schokolade Bock on tap at the Old Chicago in Bettendorf this weekend! A treat if you live in the Quad cities!
However our overall barrelage is a bit behind last year. I think this is due to the fact that last year we did two Beer Clubs, and this year we only did one. Its really not something we can control, i’m amazed that the Beer Clubs pick us so often as it is. Still, I would really like to show that we ‘made more beer’ this year than last year. Our overall sales and profits are up though, so I guess that is what really counts, eh?
The soda is doing really great. So far it is just a tad ahead of the beer in overall gallons sold this year. Just as I had predicted! My opinion on Soda has changed though, i’m now much more positive about this place becoming a soda factory. I think this is because of how excited I have become over the possibility of doing new flavors.
I’m still working on our new Black Cherry and Diet Root Beer flavors. I’m still not sure what sweetner to go with, though my mind is slowly closing on Splenda. Its exhorbinately more expensive than regular Nutrasweet. But to non-diet drinkers, it seems to be preferred. The weird thing in my tests is that people who frequently drink Diet Soda seem to prefer my Nutrasweet Diet Root Beer over Splenda. I think this is becuase they are used to the bitter aftertaste of Nutrasweet (aspartame) and unconsciously prefer it.
Well I have not updated this page in awhile. The reason is because I have been so hard at work at my NEW webpage. I have been working with Mike England to start a non-profit organization to change Iowa’s beer laws. The best way to get the word out about anything nowaday’s is through the internet. So I have been working hard at designing Lift The Limit.org. Let me know what you think.