Prelude to Christmas
Its Prelude to Christmas today, tommorrow and Sunday. Every store in Amana will be doing some special things, and staying open late. We will be open till 8pm.
Its been quiet but busy around here lately.
I have been working hard to dial in the proper sweetner level in our new diet rootbeer. I have been making 10 gallon batches in kegs. So far Splenda is the best sweetner I have worked with, it has a great aftertaste that I can only describe as being like powdered sugar. Unfortunately it is also more expensive to use than regular cane sugar (which is already very expensive itself.) After seeing this article I’m not sure if we will be able to do it. This stuff is mind boggling expensive. I calculated that 50lb sack would cost us 15,000 dollars! Hopefully production will be increased and a competitive product will come out to bring the price down.
But everyone here is excited by the Diet Rootbeer. It just really tastes much better than any of us imagined. We expect to ‘launch’ our product in selected markets this winter.
Chris has been busy trying to squeeze in a few winter projects inbetween brewing and bottling. He repiped a few water lines, that have really made my life much easier downstairs. Now he is learning how to install some thermal controllers that we have had lying around here from the previous owners. Thats right, we will have some AUTOMATION for the first time ever at Millstream. The first thing will be a thermal controller for the mash tun so we don’t miss our step mash set points. Then we are going to finally have some automatic temperature control on the 40bbl tanks in the basement. It has been difficult to control the fermentation temperature in these thanks before, since heat produced by fermentation in the double size batches can heat up the tanks in a hurry. I’m sure some of our ale fermentations have gotten well above 75 degree’s overnight before. These thermal controllers will automatically kick on the cooling for us. I wish we had these on all the tanks!
Also we have been spending extra time here playing with our new mascot, Millie Millstream. She is attentively watching me type this out right now, always one step away from pouncing on the keyboard. She is doing very well, the last time I took her to the vet, she had gained 1lb of weight in ten days!
Here she is, playing with her favorite toy, mouse on a string:
