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We just completed two days of bottling. Yesterday was all soda, Rootbeer and Black Cherry. Today we bottled Schild Brau, Warsh Pail (last of the season) and Colony Oatmeal Stout (first for the season). We would have liked to release our Oktoberfest today, but we had some bottlenecks in the cellar, so we put that off until next week. We were almost completely out of Stout, and there are these certain customers who get quite cranky when the stout runs dry in the summer… you know who you are! So we bottled stout just for you guys!

We seem to have more Warsh Pail Ale left than we intended. This always creates a problem for us since the Warsh is in the same six pack carrier (with the same UPC code) as all of our other seasonals. When the Oktoberfest comes out, you may see our Pail ale dissappear from your local store.. but don’t despair, there will still be Warsh here at the brewery for quite some time!

Actually we often have more kegs than bottles on our seasonals. So if you really want a beer, you can always come out and get a growler even after we move onto the next season.

Our warehouse is nearly done! That is good because the busiest time of the year is nearly upon us. Teresa and Chris have already filled it up full of stuff. All thats left to do is to install the walk in cooler, and get our plumber to finish the electrical and wiring.

I know it looks huge, but really is not. Buckley and I were reminded of this when we payed homage to the old Dubuque Star Brewery on the way back from Madison. The building is located right down by the river, and is pretty damn cool looking. They made beer there from 1899 to 1998, which if you ask me, is pretty damn long time. Chris worked there for several years, and if you ever want to hear some good stories, he has a quite few about the ‘character’ of that old brewery.

September is going to be a busy month for us. Here is the short list of Festivals.
September 3rd Festival of Iowa Beers in Amana
September 10 Field to Family Dinner in conjuction with Devotay
Sept 17th Quad Cities Brew Haha and The Mt Horeb beer festival in Wisconsin
Sept 24th The Iowa City Beer Festival
Oct 1st Oktoberfest here in Amana (oh yeah!)

Oh, one more thing. Not only do we have festivals, but we have two Homebrew competitions coming up. The first is one done during the Saturday of Oktoberfest. The brewmasters judge the beer and hand out awards for the best brews during the festivities. We will be accepting entries at the brewery from 9-5pm from sept 27th until sept 30th and then from 9am till noon on Saturday Oct 1st. We need 24 oz of your beer, in anyway you deem fit to enter it. The number of awards will depend on the number of entries. Last year we gave out 6 awards, three for lagers, and three for ales.

And then we have the Thirsty Classic homebrew competition held here at the brewery on November 5th. This is the real deal, a BJCP sanctioned event, organized and run by Iowa city area hombrewers (THIRSTY). You can find out more details on their website http://www.thirstyhomebrew.org/

We are all back and recovered now from our trip to the Great Taste of the Midwest last weekend. I think everyone had a very good time!

The Main event was, of course, a knockout! Its really hard to say just what happened, when you are so busy sampling so many beers, and talking to so many people. I can say that our Mystery Saison was a pretty big hit. We ‘released’ a five gallon keg of it at 2pm. Within an hour, it was gone as people lined up for their two-ounce sample of our strange beer. There were so many people, it was impossible to fully explain the process or the mystery behind the beer… but everyone seemed to really think it was a good one. Infact, our Saison was by far the driest and most authentic example of the style that I found at the fest.

Our Colony Oatmeal Stout was also very popular..as was the John’s Generations White ale.

It did try to rain, but it was unsuccessful. It think we can still safely say that the Festival has had practically no rain in its 19 years.

Here we all are enjoying the day. (left to right: my friend Rob, myself, Teresa, and Buckley)

We did some exploring of Madison by night. We checked out the Great Dane, Angelica, and the Come Back Inn. The amount of interesting beers on tap is truly incredible. Buckley and I finished off Saturday night with a Breakfast Stout from Founders Brewing. Its was a good beer, but when Whispering Jeff from Cream City Suds got excited and gave me a big shake (I can’t remember what for) my beer ended up all over Buckley! Paul from Old Capitol seemed impressed by Kevin’s beer tye-dye!

Tickets went fast this year, and I just want to remind you all that next year they are expect to go even faster. So plan ahead and we will see you next year!

The next festival we are going to is going to be much closer… as in right Across the Street from our Brewery! Here is the info that is going out in our mailing list soon.

FESTIVAL OF IOWA BEERS
September 3, 2005
At the Millstream Brewing Co

Experience the flavor of Iowa beer! On Sept 3rd, from 1-5pm, all of the best beer that Iowa has to offer will be assembled in one place to tantalize your beer tasting taste buds all afternoon. Individual craft breweries will have their own brew masters pouring the beer and answering questions to enlighten you on their brews and the beer making process.

For $12 a ticket (purchased at the day of the event) you get a souvenir glass that can be filled over and over with more than 25 different beers brewed right here in Iowa.

Live music will be provided at the brewery by both Nick Stika (1pm to 3pm) and Dogs on Skis (4pm to 8pm).

What more could you ask for on a relaxing Saturday afternoon than the sampling of Iowa’s top brews, music and food?

There will also be a door prize for collectable items donated by each brewery. Proceeds from the door prizes will go to the Lift the Limit organization being formed to try to raise awareness and further educate the public and legislation on craft brews. Tickets to enter are only one dollar!

But wait, there is more…the grand finale will be up to the public as you get to choose and vote for your favorite brew at the festival. All the votes will be counted and the coveted “Peoples Beer Choice Award” will be given to the brew that receives the most votes.

So come join us for an afternoon of sampling, food and entertainment as we showcase what tremendous craft beers we make right here in Iowa!

You must be 21 with id available to attend.

Finally, in a very sad note, our brewery cat, Millie, passed away yesterday morning. She became inadvertently caught in the malt hoist, and before we knew what was happening, it was too late. We are all shocked and saddened. We all really enjoyed having a ‘family pet’, though, and so we may get another kitten… and lock them up before loading malt into the brewery.

Its a hot day, and I’m GLAD i’m not brewing today! I looked outside at 2pm, and the thermometer said it was 103 degrees (and the thermometer is in the shade!).

Today and yesterday we have been busy filtering and cleaning tanks in the nice cool cellar, to get to ready to do some brewing tommorrow and Thursday. So nice and cool, I really enjoyed it!

We can’t brew on Friday, because Buckley and I are leaving to go to Madison, Wisconsin for the Great Taste. Are you excited? I know that we are! On Saturday Teresa will be coming to the Taste with a whole busload of people from Iowa… It was a great time last year, and I’m sure it will be fun this year. This has to be the most sought after festival in the country, judging by ticket sales. This year the 6000 tickets sold out in a few hours!

Its hard to beat the beautiful scenery, and the 500 plus beers to sample in one afternoon!

This year there will be Two breweries from Iowa. Us and the Old Capitol Brewpub from Iowa City. Ever since Stone City closed, we’ve been the sole representative of Iowa at the Taste. It will be good to have company again!

We are going to make good use of the trip by delivering 60 Cases of RootBeer to Brennans in Madison. They have been carrying our beer for sometime, but last time they took some rootbeer and it has gone over very well! They usually come to us to pickup product, which is very cool and unusual, but why waste a trip, there is always room in our van.

A little closer to home is the 1st annual Festival of Iowa Beers on September 3rd (Labor Day weekend). We are going to be hosting it right here across from the brewery in Amana! We chose that date, because it is normally a busy day in Amana… so hopefully we will have a good turnout for the first year. So far we have 8 breweries from all over Iowa confirmed as attending. For 12 dollars you get all you can sample at will in your commemorative tasting glass. It should be nice to finally have beer festival dedicated to the brewers of Iowa. This one might be small, but I was just reading that the Great Taste started off with only 450 attendees in 1987. Great things start small!

When I got back from my vacation, Wow was I surprised at how much had been completed on our new warehouse. Its strange, but somehow putting up the walls makes the thing seem so huge!

We are just itching to fill this thing up full of stuff!

Right now Tom is busy kegging off lots of Schild Brau Amber for the Iowa State Fair that starts next weekend. I think last year they went through some 30 kegs or so… so don’t miss out!

RAGBRAI was a great time. We started with about 5 people, and ended with about a dozen. They were all people from other teams who defected to us because we had better beer! Next year we hope to get a bus running and make a full team of it.

Of the highlights, one was meeting the gubernatorial nominee, Ed Fallon. He was riding Ragbrai every day, and was a really down to earth nice guy!

Every night we setup camp and invited our neighbors to try a Millstream beer. Most people asked where they could go to get some, but unfortunately we don’t have any distribution right now in northern Iowa. That would be really good, because I found it hard to find good beer up there. Once I found some Guinness, but they were out. We hope to have some distribution soon. Here I am enjoying a cold one in Sheldon, Iowa.