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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!