Brewing White Ale
Yesterday we brewed John’s Generations White Ale. It was also Kevin Buckleys second crack at brewing by himself. The poor guy has not had good luck so far. You see, the first time I let him brew, someone managed to bump into the handle of the mill upstairs, tightening it down further. A tight mill produces fine particles that tend to clog the screens of the Lauter Tun, so his first brew was quite a long one. Well yesterday, I somehow managed to bump into the mill in the morning, and we had a very difficult runnoff again! Oops! I think this is the only two times this has ever happened at the brewery, and Kevin is very unlucky… but I can be sure that he will personally inspect the mill gap everytime before he mashes in from now on!
We are breaking ground on the new warehouse on Monday… How cool is that!!!! We really need the space. Last week, the beer club was late in sending a truck to pickup their ten pallets of beer, and we really had some difficult storage issues…. We actually had to bottle less than we could because there was simply no place to put the beer!
Also, we have a new salesroom help. I heartily welcome Chris Hickman, he will be starting.. um Today! Chris let us know how your first day was!Its hard to find reliable help in the salesroom, we are very dependent on our two regular sales ladies, Deb and Gaycia. I think it has something to do with finding people who want to drive all the way to Amana to work every other weekend. Well you know the story.. good help is hard find in any business. We have been pretty lucky to get the people we have.
A friend of mine stopped by the other day and dropped me off some New Belgium beer. I have to say.. it the best New Belgium beer I have ever had! I bought several six packs of it the last time I was in St. louis, and it was all stale. It sort tasted a bit ..brothy! I assume their distributor down there must put the beer out on the dock to make more room for AB. This stuff was fresh from Nebraska, and really good stuff. I really enjoyed the 1554 Black Ale and the new Bier De Mars. The Bier De Mars was like a Wit/Saison with a hint of pepper and Lemon. It is still hard stuff to find in Iowa. I think I heard that they moved into Ohio this year… skipping over Iowa yet again. Oh well, I guess we don’t need the competition! I do find it very interesting that they have entered every state around Iowa (including MN, WI, IL, MO,KS and NE) but have skipped us. Last year they entered California rather than here. If you don’t know, New Belgium is now the third largest Craft brewery, after Boston brewing and Sierra Nevada.
Yes we are still Iowa’s largest brewery. Looking at the numbers from last year in this issue of the New Brewer, I can see that we are still the Largest brewery in Iowa, though Rock Bottom in Des Moines is not far behind. Everyone was in this issue… I will publish the numbers later on.