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Over the weekend we had a big old storm come through Amana. It apparently dumped lots of rain and hail on Main Amana, but Homestead just a mile or so away didn’t even get a drop. Typical Iowa freakish weather! Sorry I missed it, I do love storms. This year has been especially storm free, so I guess we were overdue.

The downside is that brewery lost power during the storm, and no one was able to come in to turn the cooling compressors back on until the middle of the day Sunday. I was planning on filtering today, but the beer was not quite cold enough yet, so that has been put off until tommorrow.

We are going to try squeeze in four brews this week. This makes things kind of crazy around here. I think it will go something like this:

Monday I transfer beer, dry hop Warsh Pail Ale, and harvest yeast for the week. Buckley cleans tanks and Chris works on the filler all day.
Tuesday Chris starts Pail Ale, I come in and run the filter, and Buckley covers brewing for me, and I finish the batch.
Wenesday I start the second batch of Pail ale, Chris runs the bottling line (with his and Teresa’s kids to help bottle), and Buckley finishes the batch.
Thursday Chris starts Oktoberfest, I finish it, and Buckley and all of us help bring up ten pallets(!) of malt.
Friday Buckley cleans tanks, Chris and I brew some Schild Brau Amber.

As you can see were are pretty busy! But the beer is really moving and we just need to do what we can to keep filling up those tanks downstairs. It is also time to make our first batch of Oktoberfest, since we would like to release it as soon as mid-August this year. Also I like to get it out early so I can enter it into the GABF. I can not enter the Schild brau into two categories, like I did recently at the NABA, so I like to enter it into the Vienna Lager Category, and put the Oktoberfest in the American Oktoberfest/Marzen Category. That way we have all the bases covered in our best style(s). The Octoberfest has done very well in the past, but has always been just shy of winning a medal. Maybe this year?

The batches of Warsh Pail that we are making may be the last we do for the year. Its really not moving that fast. We had hoped to put the beer in its own six pack, but that got delayed until next year. I think many people still don’t know that we are making it. New products sometimes take a few years to catch on, so its not really bothering us too much.

Right now we are in the middle of redesigning our 12pack Sampler Boxes since they are so popular at Super Target. The ones we have had for years are pretty economical and drab looking. We are going to try our hand at a white, two color box. Most importantly it needs to have a slot on the side so people can see what sort of beers are in the Sampler box. This way we won’t have to stamp them anymore, making up samplers packs is already plenty of work as it is.

I had to take the Saison off tap this weekend, because it was way, way , WAY overcarbonated. It was coming out of the tap as pure foam, almost like we had a keg of whipped cream or something. I managed to blow down a few kegs of it over the weekend, and it is back on tap now. So if you missed it this weekend, sorry!. This was sort of half expect, as the Saison yeast we used to in the beer is absolutely notorious for taking months to finish its job. I really thought it was finally done when I primed the kegs, but it fooled me! It wasn’t done then and it still is not done! The good thing is that the flavor of the beer has been literally changing every day while on tap. Its has been a really fun beer!

Good news is that we tried the first bottle of the Dopplebock last Friday. It was very good! I was bit nervous at first, but I was happy and relieved to hear the bottle make a hiss while prying off the cap. The beer was about half-carbonated, as I predicted, but more importantly it had some amazing caramel malt notes! It was really fantastic!

We will try another bottle this friday see how its going. We will repeat this ritual every week until the beer has completed its secondary fermentation. At that time the beer will finally be for sale… So stay tuned!

Well the Bottling Party was complete success. Infact, it was such a great turnout, that maybe we should do it again?

I got to work early Saturday morning, and by 8:30am I had everything setup and ready to go. One of the first people to arrive was Bob, a homebrewer from Cedar Rapids. I had never met him before, but I was glad to see him! We started right away, filling and capping the first bottles. We had told most people to arrive about 10am, because we thought it would take a while to get going, and I didn’t want people to show up and have nothing to do (they might leave!). The plan worked well, because by 10am we had lots of bottles already filled and capped, and we put the new people to work doing the really hard part, labeling!

At the peak of things, around 11am, we had more than twenty people lending a hand. It was great. I would almost call it a ‘flash mob’, especially since I since I didnt know many of the people there. With all the help, we were finished bottling the 1300 bottles by about 12:30. Pretty good time! The “frankenfiller” that Chris designed work really well, and most of the homebrewers there seemed pretty impressed by it. I learned pretty quickly that if I filled the bottles and closed the main valve, that all of the fill levels in the bottles would even out (due to atmospheric pressure). So getting a consistent fill level was actually quite simple.

Well we will know how everything turns out in two weeks. Thats the standard time it takes for bottle conditioned beer to reach full carbonation. I’ll let you know when its ready, and when we have it for sale in the salesroom. We’ll have to do this again in twenty years!

Me filling the bottles four at a time. Buckley is behind me pre-rinsing the bottles in a bucket.

Our capping crew going at it with there own cappers. We had way more capppers than we could use!

Labeling the bottles by hand was the really important part. First they had to be dried, and then the backing peeled of each label and applied with a steady hand.

The finished product!

Chris, our new salesroom help, stacking the finished bottles onto a pallet. We made two pallets, they are now in our warehouse conditioning.

People lingered after we were done and celebrated the event.

Things are really hopping here at the brewery! Today we are brewing wheat, same thing we brewed yesterday and will be brewing tommorrow. Our cellar is looking a bit empty, and we really need to catch up!

On friday we will be brewing Warsh Pail Ale. It will be special version because I will be using a small amount of it for krausening the Dopplebock. The dopplebock is actually 30% Briess Pale malt so that is a more appropriate thing to do than you would think at first.

Here is the plan. We will collect and boil the first two barrels of unhopped Warsh Pail, which should be about 20 degree’s plato. We will then send it downstairs into special ‘krausening tank’ and inject some fresh lager yeast into it. It will sit in that tank for 24 hours until Saturday morning. I will then take a gravity reading on the wort, and decide how much wort I need to add to the dopplebock to achieve carbonation in the bottle. After I mix the krausen in… the bottling fun will begin! Its important to that we bottle everything that same day, since if we wait too long the yeast will ferment the sugars and we will have carbonated beer… but it will be in the tank and not in the bottles!

Chris has built a hand bottler that will fill four bottles at time. Chris has given it the name of ‘the Frankenbottler‘ since it is a bit crude looking. But its not looks that count here, its functionality. If we could do four bottles a minute, we will be done in no time!

If you wish to help, just show up around 10 am, and we will put you to work. Remember, there will be free food and of course free beer for anyone who gives us hand (or two). We already have some great commitments from the THIRSTY homebrew club of Iowa City, but we could still use more help and moral support. As a Plus, Teresa called the local TV stations and several of them sounded interested in making a story out of it.. so you could be on TV!!

The construction is going well. They are pouring the floors!

The brew went smoothly today. We really need to get brewing though, the beer is really starting to move out of the cellar.

Our Marketing Guru, Teresa Albert, is coming on full time now for the first time (she is giving up her old teaching job) and we only expect good things from this. So Congrats to Teresa! She will be very busy creating great POS material with our new 48 inch printer that we puchased this winter. Bud and Miller and the rest spend lots of moola on custom banners for bars and retail accounts that say happy {insert holiday or event here} day and such for bars. We will now be able to offer the same type of stuff.

Its pretty much confirmed that we attempt our great dopplebock bottling on June 18th. By that time it will have aging downstairs for a good 80 days, a proper lagering time for sure. We are going to ask for some assistance though, in the actual bottling and hand labeling of our special beer. Of course, we will pay you, in beer! More details to come soon.

Wow more good news.. we hit a triple at the North American Beer Awards this year! This is a pretty stiff competition held in conjuction with the Mountain Brewers Festival in Idaho. I bravely entered our Schild Brau Amber, Maifest, John’s Generations White ale, Colony Oatmeal Stout, and Rootbeer into six categories. If your reading this, thats only five entries… I entered the Schild Brau twice, because I think it lies on the border of the Vienna Lager and Martzen Oktoberfest categories. Well guess what, we recieved a Gold Medal in each category! Look at the 2005 winners list! Hooray!

Also the John’s Generation’s White Ale got a Silver Medal! This is just great… we have entered for the last two years, and only recieved two medals, a silver and a bronze.

I hope this is a sign of good things to come at the GABF and World Cup competitions later this year. Those competitions don’t allow you to enter one beer into two categories, so i’ll have to make some tough decisions. Vienna, or Martzen?