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We are getting ready around here for the main event.. .OKTOBERFEST. I hope you all are planning on coming out for the festivities. If you want to know what else is going on, I found that the Amana Society page has some great info… lots of stuff to do. Of course, the best part will be right here at the brewery. Gemütlichkeitis a german word that does not translate well into English, but is often referred to as the “feeling you get during Oktoberfest”. I think that says it all!

The Iowa City Beer Festival last weekend was a good time. I got to meet the folks with O’Fallon Brewing. They are really nice bunch, and the make really great beer to boot. Everyone seemed to enjoy their Pumpkin Beer, and it even got me itching to make one for ourselves. Glad to see them in Iowa.

Last Saturday we had a great time at the Quad City Brew Ha Ha. The turnout was much more than expected! I was a little surprised at about 12:30 when I noticed a line of people to get into the fest… I had never seen that before! The next thing we knew, we were swamped with people. Person after person kept sampling the White ale. I would say, it was 5-6 White ale to any of our other beers. By 2:30pm, the John’s Generations White Ale was gone! We quickly moved the 20th Anniversary Dopplebock over to that tap handle.

Looking around, I saw that some other booths were out of beer. I was glad that I sampled some of the fine homebrew from Galesburg and Macomb, because they were pretty much gone by mid-afternoon. The Macomb Homebrewers had a fine Honey Ale that was made with Orange blossom honey and had orange peels in it… yum! They also had an experimental beer that was made with 50% Mountain Dew.. that was pretty unique and original. The MUGZ crew was really well organized.. they had 85 gallons of homebrew on hand! Very impressive. Eric Ware and Steve Slach really are doing a great job over there… congrats!

Bud had an impressive booth this year. It seems they are focusing more attention on Craft beer.. I think we can take that as a good sign, because their statistical trend watchers have been right many times before! Their booth had plenty of flashy stainless steel…

Check out their fancy tap boxes… they are pretty cool looking (and expensive!). Kind of a waste of a good keg though if you ask me.

Our 30 gallons was gone by 4:30 pm, next year we will have to bring more beer! In a way though we felt pretty good about it all!

Next week is the Iowa City Beerfest, behind Old Chicago in Coralville. Advance tickets are on sale now! I hope the turnout is as big as it was in Davenport. I think that Craft beer is really on a upswing, and this could be another sign of that.

Good news, we are brewing Schokolade Bock today. Dont get too excited though, because it will not be out on tap for over a month, as we have to lager it for 5 weeks before we can release it.

Today was pretty good brewing weather, nice and cool. I hope all that hot weather is behind us for good!

The bock ran off nicely, I think our new recipe is working pretty well. We are making it in smaller batches, so it does not stress the limit of our mash tun so much. Today our final yield was just a hair over 16 bbls (we normally do 20bbl batches). Back in the old days, we made 20bbls, but sometimes it took all day, and night, and maybe some of the next day! The lauter was so slow! Ahh the good old days… i’m glad they are just memories!

Tommorrow I’m going to the Quad City Brew Ha HA Beer festival, and Chris will be at the Tall Grass Praire beer festival in Waterloo. I was planning on doing the Mt Horeb beer festival, but I had to cancel that at the last minute. We were just stretching ourselves too far. We don’t have enough tap boxes, vans, and people to do this many things at once. Well, we could, but noone would be having any fun Buckley was going to be doing the Quad City festival all by his lonesome, something he has never done before… Beer festivals can be exhausting when your the only one there, so I decided to go with him. To make it more fun, we are bringing more beers than we said we would bring. Besides Schild Brau, John’s White Ale, and Wheat, we are also bringing Warsh Pale Ale and Dopplebock! Maybe we will be the hit of the party!?

This also leaves Chris the use of a tap box for his festival… last year he used picknic pumps for all of his beers and it was a messy, foamy affair! I have some more info on the Tall Grass Praire Brewfest. It is sponsored by the Grout Museum District in Waterloo, and it starts at 5pm to 9pm, in Soldiers and Sailors Park in downtown Waterloo. Last year Chris reported we were on the only real brewery there. Hopefully this year Chris will have company from the new brewpub up there, Beck’s Sports Bar and Grill.

I have more good news! Today we accepted an offer for a new kitten for our brewery! Matt Franklin was the winner of best of show at last years THIRSTY Classic and he also raises Maine Coons. One look at these little dears, and you will see how we could not refuse! http://www.geocities.com/wildpride/kittens.html

Matt did a great job describing why these guys are so special:

I was sad to hear about your loss of Millie. My wife breeds Maine Coon cats which are large beautiful cats. The Maine Coon is the only native North American longhaired domestic cat. The Maine Coon breed is thought to have originated in Maine, where they developed into a sturdy cat ideally suited for harsh winters. The Maine Coon is known for it’s loving nature, kind disposition and great intelligence. They are often referred to as the “Gentle Giant”, and posses dog-like qualities. Maine Coons are great with children and dogs, as well as other feline friends. They were brought the Iowa as mousers and referred to as the Iowa Barn Cat many years ago. I think one would make a great addition to your brewery. My wife and I would like to donate one of our kittens to become the new Millstream Brewery cat.

Furthermore the kitten will be ready to apopt on around the time of the next THIRSTY Classic (in early November!).. how convenient! We really appreciate this gesture from Matt and his wife.. thank you so much! It has been really quiet and uneventful without good old Millie around… though i’m sure the mice are just loving their reprieve!

Last night I was at the Field To Family Harvest Dinner at the Izaak Walton League, located just south of Iowa City. This dinner was the culmination of a series of events to celebrate and promote the Slow Food movement in Iowa. Slow food is organization opposed to the fast food culture of modern times and advocates eating local produce and supporting sustainable agriculture.

The Izaak Walton League dining hall is in a very scenic location with a nice view of the river, although I forgot my camera . Preparing the dinner was reknowned chef Odessa Piper from L’Etoile in Madison WI, as well as Kurt and Kim Friese of Devotay. I can attest that the food was very fine indeed!

I was busy serving Johns’ Generations White Ale, Oktoberfest, Warsh Pail Ale, and Root beer. We poured the beer into large wine glasses… something I really liked! For one thing, wine glasses don’t have a flat bottom and so the beer foams much less when poured. Also I think it gives our handcrafted beer the respect that they truly deserve! The Oktoberfest was the most popular, judging by the wieght of the kegs after the event.

I spent some time talking to Sherri Brooks Vinton author of The Real Food Revival. I found there were many parallels between the craft beer movement and the slow food movement. They both are trying to change consumers tastes from mass marketed stuff, to the higher quality local goods. Its seems both movements are making steady, if slow progress. Its really a matter of determination and time, for a grassroots organization to really make a change, especially in face of such entrenched things as radiation sterilized meat and fizzy yellow beer.

I suppose one could say that since beer is a food that it is essentially contained within the slow food movement, except that many of our ingriedents are not local, since they cannot be locally grown. Hallertau hops, for example, are only grown in Germany, and I bet they use many chemicals on them. Odessa Piper gave an excellent speech that essentially said that its important to follow the principle of the slow food, not every detail. Its currently very difficult for someone to use only locally grown produce, but to use some is better than the alternative. She gave the example of taking a frozen pizza, crisping it, and tossing the cut up pieces into a salad of local greens. I found that very enlightening!

Ok so much for philosophy. Also at the event, there were two ladies from the Czech Slovak Musuem of Cedar Rapids. They reminded me that October 7th is their Brewnost Celebration, which is a fund raiser for the musuem. Last year it was a heck of a good time, with plenty of good beer (courtesy of John’s Grocery) and food. I am looking foward to doing it again.

What great day! After much fussing and hardwork, the 1st Annual Iowa Festival of Beers was an unstoppable success. I would estimate that over the course of the day we had 200-300 people… not bad for a first-time event, that included such distractions as the opening hawkeye home football game!

Here are the breweries that showed up to pour their beer.
Old Capitol Brewpub of Iowa City
Raccoon River from Des Moines
Court Avenue Brewpub from Des Moines
Rock Bottom Brewpub from Des Moines
Olde Main Brewing from Ames
Lost Duck Brewing from Fort Madison
Granite City Brewing from Cedar Rapids
And of course ourselves to make a total of eight breweries. Thanks to all for making this possible!

We also had the honor of having the IBU/Ames hombrew clubs, and Iowa City’s THIRSTY homebrew club serving some of their hand made brews out to the public.

Everything worked out so well. The weather was great, the music was good (thanks to Nick Sticka), and we even had Ed Fallon jump on and play some accordian for us all!

Actually we did have some bizarre problems in the morning with some of the serving boxes. Thankfully we were at a brewery, and we had all the equipment (like rare tap gaskets) on hand to fix them.

We’ll be doing it again next year.. though we may change the location. We are planning on expanding our beirgarten next year, since Alliant has moved their gas substation from behind were our current biergarten is. That way, we’ll even have a scenic view of millrace!

After the event, all off the brewers seemed to agree it was good time, and everyone certainly enjoyed trying everyone elses beer. There was not a bad beer among them. Some of my favorites were the Canvasback Lager from Lost Duck which was very clean and crisp, Olde Main’s Scotch Ale which had an intense peat malt flavor, and the Amarillo craziness of the IPA from Rock Bottom.

We had the 20th Anniversary Dopplebock on tap, as well as the very last gallon of the Mystery Saison. The dopplebock was quite popular. I have saved the rest of it (including one entirely full keg) for serving during the next few beer festivals.. so you’ll get a chance to try it on draft again.

All the breweries set-up and ready to serve. Note our brand new tap box cover (handmade by Teresa!)

The guys from Lost Duck were quite friendly!

We all got to meet the brewers from Olde Main, one of Iowa’s most recent brewpubs.

The guys from IBU, many familiar faces… I’m sure we’ll see them all again at the November THIRSTY Classic:

Update: The results are in from the Best of Show vote. Lost Duck took first place with their Canvasback Lager.. good for them! Our Dopplebock came in second, and Old Capitol’s Straight Pipe Stout came in third.

We also raised over One Thousand Dollars for the Arthritis Foundation Charity. Next year we hope to do even better!