millstreambrewing.com

If you are reading this and things look different ,that is because we have switched over to a new webhost, Site5.com. So far so good. I did this because I would like to implement a shopping cart on the website for T-shirts and stuff, and our old host was pretty much useless and unhelpful in this regard. Another reason was that our blog software, moveable type, has a commercial license fee that we cannot afford to pay… so I need to move the blog to Wordpress which is Open source and free. However Wordpress runs on PHP which our old provider did not have either. Our new host is cheaper too, so I guess that was the third strike against our old webhost… YOUR OUT!!

All in all its been a fun adventure. I even discovered that person in charge of our Domain Name no longer works here and I could not find him.. So I had to convince that yes, I do own the domain Millstreambrewing.com!

Wordpress is great so far, but I need to find the time to customize the layout to look like the rest of the site.

Things are just exploding at the seams at the brewery, its seems like beer and rootbeer is moving out the door as fast as we can package it. This has led to a few bottlenecks (excuse the pun) this week. The largest one is that we recieved a truckload of cheap glass last week that turned out be too cheap, and we could not use it. Every third bottle on the line was breaking. We also had to bottle 11 pallets of Warsh Pail Ale for a beer club, so that left us short on bottles for ourselves. That was monday! Then on Tuesday we ran out of Wheat kegs. We have a rule around here that we don’t keg out of a tank before we bottle, because that seems to keep us from having micro problems with our bottles. So we have Wheat in the cellar, but no bottles to put it in and we can’t keg it yet!!

The good news is that glass will be here today (Thursday) and we will be able to bottle and keg Friday. In the meantime there is no wheat beer on tap in the salesroom. I hate to see an empty tap handle in the salesroom, so I took the opportunity to move the Miafest nob down to the where the Wheat was, and put the Saison on tap temporarily. So far, no complaints!

On Monday we bottled our Black Cherry for the first time. Its yummy… everyone is very satisified that it is a quality product deserving of the Millstream name. My prediction- its going to sell like hotcakes! Just look at this cute packaging!

Saturday May 21st was the day of the big event. I arrived at 11am at the Old Capitol Pub and Brewery in Iowa City, and started to setup my tap box. On my four tapper box we put my new Mystery Saison, our John’s Generations Belgian White Ale, Duchesse de Bourgogne, and Brasserie Des Rocs Imperial Triple.

The Mystery Saison, so named because it kept changing on me day to day during the conditioning phase, was very well received. I actually had not tasted it properly cool and chilled before the event, and I must say I was pretty impressed myself. It had a real spicey, estery kick to it, that developed some serious fruity flavors as it warmed up. It will soon be on tap at the Red Monk in Des Moines, and here at the brewery (as soon as we run out of Maifest). The Johns Generations White Ale was well recieved as usual, The latter two beers on my tap box were actually from belgium, not anything new here from Millstream. The Duchess was a wood aged double, that a nice sourness to it, and was very popular! Lastly the Imperial Triple was strong stuff, more like a belgian barley wine than anything else I have had before. I tried to warn everyone that it was strong stuff, but that just seemed to make them want to try it even more!

And of course that was just what I was serving. There were many more belgian beers on the brewpub tappers, and even more being served out of bottles by a special table in the restaurant. Paul, the brewer from old capitol, made his a belgian dubble, a cherry infused version called Et Trois, and a firkin aged belgian golden ale. He is a pretty resouceful guy!

All in all, i’d say we had a pretty good turnout for a first time event. I’d say there were over 200 people over the course of the day, and they were mostly of the serious beer geek type, which is the people we need to get in the door in the first place. Hopefully they will tell all their friends and next year we can have an even bigger event. Maybe someday it will even be like the Great Taste, which I heard sold out in three hours this year.

Now some pictures:

First here I am, all setup and ready to start serving!

Here is Kevin Roberts, who helped me brew and design the Saison, standing next to Paul Kruztfeldt, the brewer and host at Old Capitol.

Doug Alberhasky, the mastermind of the event, hidden behind a mountain of authentic glassware from belgium.

DJ, one of John’s Grocery’s many dedicated employees, carefully pouring a rare belgian beer.

Good things come to those that wait right? I hope so, as we did not get our Black Cherry labels this week. There was some issue with the printer and they did not run them. Hopefully they will have everything sorted out by next month, and we can finally get this product released! It is being very well recieved in sales room, although we are still hearing some grumblings about the missing Cream Soda. You’d think we were discontinuing Coca Cola Classic in the way that some people react! I sincerely do hope that someday we will produce the Cream Soda again, but we just don’t have the Tank/storage space to even consider that right now.

Today we bottled German Pilsner and Warsh Pail ale. A good day for fans of our hoppier beers. I thought they were both really excellent batches. So look for the six packs with our new 20th Anniversary crowns on them in a store near you.

I think our ‘were to find our beer’ page is woefully out of date. I’ll correct it soon.. the problem is that our salesman Dan Carpenter has been getting a new account almost every day lately. Also, you can find our beer in all seven of the Super Targets in Iowa now. I think we can say that this is all due to customer demand. So Thank you all, and keep up the good work!

Our Saison is coming along well. I check a few of the kegs outside today and found they were VERY well carbonated. I think they will be ready in time for the Belgian Beer Experience on May 21st. I’m really looking forward to that… its not to early to get tickets!

Well some good bicycling weather has finally arrived! Mark your calenders, the TOUR DE BREW will be on July 16th, and will go from Old Capitol Pub in Iowa City to Amana. I went for a bike ride yesterday to get ready for hauling that keg of beer again. That was about the hardest thing I have ever done in the name of beer!

It has certainly been a while since I’ve had the time and opportunity to write. Between mammoth beer clubs, long overdue upgrades, unexpected projects, and keeping Millie entertained it’s been a very, um, exciting winter. To top it all off, two of my kids were in an Iowa City Community Theater production of the Secret Garden in April. This entailed running them there, an hour each way from my place, three to seven nights a week for March and April. It was an excellent show, but when I finally caught up with myself I didn’t even recognize me! (I hate it when that happens.)

At least Puff, our new-to-us boiler, seems to be working great. The only trouble is we really need to keep an eye on the kettle as it boils over much more readily. It’s even hotter than some of the Amana trustees were about our steel sided warehouse at their meeting this week.

Speaking of that, they did approve our building with only minor stipulations. Most of the Amana trustees understood the expense of siding our new building with wood is cost prohibitive to us. I think they are also looking forward to our keg and junk piles getting cleaned up as the result of this project. I’m glad that hurtle is crossed.

On another topic, the six packs for our black cherry soda have arrived and the labels should show next week. We are planning to bottle it, along with some more pale ale, on Wednesday. We expect the first run to walk right out the door (Hmmm, there’s a pun in there somewhere, I just know it.)

Aaron is in Chicago today; his father is receiving a life time achievement award for his long participation with the cub/boy scouts. Most of Aaron’s family will be there as this is quite an honor for Charles. The rest of us here would like to extend our congratulations as well.

Well, I hear something breaking so I better go fix it, providing I can get Millie off my back, literally.

Well Maifest went pretty well. The weather was not as warm as what we have had in previous years, but people seem to put up with it pretty well. The sun came out later in the day on Saturday, and really warmed every one up!

I released the Black Cherry Soda on draft on Saturday of Maifest. People must have liked it, becuase we went through a whole keg! The comments we have gotten back have been universally positive. On the whole I think that it is a fairly simple soda, and that is what is so attractive. Too many of the ‘high end’ soda’s have weird ingredients in them, like ginseng, and its is refreshing to have something that is just simple and good. We are planning on bottling it next week.

I spent the week training our new Assistant Brewer, Kevin Buckley. He is working out very well. He has worked in the past as an antique jewerly restorer, and it seems that the attention to detail that required transfers well to making beer. He has already brewed and made root beer! I’d post his picture, but he’s kinda shy, and he asked me not to do that.. I’ll just say that Chris is not the only long-haired brewer here anymore. Kevin is a avid homebrewer, and is bringing in a different bottle of beer every week. Its has been quite refreshing!

We have a new floor in the office. Its white tile! It is very nice… It goes to show there is a silver lining in every cloud, even if that rain cloud involved a flood! We had to take out my lab in order to put the floor in, and went it came time to put everything back together, I told Chris not to bother with my sink and bench. We are breaking ground in June on the new building, and that is where I would like my new lab. The office is far to close to the grain mill, and now with our pet cat, its a dusty enviroment to be doing lab work.

Millie seems to especially like the new floor, she has been taking every opportunity to lay on it. Here she is caught in the act of beating the crap out of a roll of paper towels!