2005
Well it has happened again. It happens every year. After the first big snowfall following new years eve, the beer business pretty much just drops off a cliff. The salesroom has been quiet all week and so we have been busy brewing and taking on some new projects.
Brewing has been sketchy thanks to the weather. Today we were supposed to brew, but we had freezing rain. Tommorrow, perhaps.
We did manage to make a batch of John’s Generations White Ale. I tweaked the recipe a bit this time, adding 5% raw wheat in place of some flaked wheat. The GABF judges told me the beer is not cloudy enough and I am hoping this will do the trick. If not, i’ll increase the percentage a bit more next time. I personally can’t see how flaked wheat (which is not malted) is different than raw wheat, but we’ll see. I do know that because raw wheat is very hard it makes one hell of a racket when you put it through the mill! I also almost forgot that we needed more coriander to finish the brew. Thankfully our supplier, Frontier COOP is only 8 minutes away in Norway, so I was able to run over and get some more. We are lucky to be so close to one the major spice suppliers in the US!
Next week we will be having our big annual meeting. We have many things to discuss. Our Total Production for 2005 was up to over 1200 bbls. Rootbeer grew to 918bbls, getting closer to overtaking the beer. The good news though, is that we were more profitable this year than last year. I think this is due to our expansion into the draft market, since kegs have a much better margin. I would have like to seen more growth, but its better to have Quality than Quantity, thats what I always say!
I can say for sure that we will not be doing a Diet Rootbeer this year. I have talked to other people in the Soda industry, and those who do have access to Splenda are spending all the extra cash to hoard it for this summer, when there is expected to be a drastic shortage. I simply cannot get any of the stuff. The good news here is that the price people are paying is less than half of what I thought, so hopefully it will be reasonably priced when I can get some. They are talking about June of 2006 as being when it will widely available again.. so we are forced to delay the Diet Rootbeer until then.
Nutrasweet just is not good enough to mimic our famous Rootbeer flavor. I have also come to understand that Nutrasweet only has a three month shelf life in the warm summer months. If it gets warm it breaks down and becomes really bitter. Our regular soda has a very long shelf life, so long we don’t really pay much attention to it. I would hate to be trying to monitor the shelf life of this new product, we already have our hands full with monitoring the product date(s) of all of our beers!