millstreambrewing.com

Not not pumpkin beer, but pumpkin our new brewery cat. She is an adorable little thing, very curious. The breeder named her pumpkin, and we all think its a pretty good name, so we are planning on keeping it.

We’ll have her out on display at the THIRSTY homebrew contest this Saturday. We have recieved over 70 entries so far, some from as far away as New York! Its still not too late to get your entries in…

Today we bottled and kegged the Schokolade Bock. It has been downstairs lagering for five weeks. We know there has been an unusual gap inbetween our seasonals, but we did not expect to go through so much Oktoberfest so soon! All good things must wait, and so we resisted releasing the Bock early to cover the seasonal ‘outage’.

This year the bock is malty and has its classic chocolate malt undertones, just like it should be! Its nice to have it back.. it must mean that fall is here!

Today our best of show homebrewer Mark Rippe stopped by. Unfortunately we were in the middle of a very large bottling day, and we were unable to give him a tour. But we did talk about having him come and ‘help’ us brew sometime… and maybe even help us make another belgian beer sometime. It would be nice to replicate his great Belgian Trippel that got top place at the Oktoberfest beer contest, but he said it was between 9-10% alcohol, which would be a problem in this state. I think a lighter version would just not be the same… too bad!

Meanwhile we have been finishing up our new warehouse. Chris has put the ceiling in on the new lab, and teresa has finished dry walling the connection area between the two buildings. I have been promising to paint the new employee bathroom green and orange! No one else seems to thrilled though.. strange.

As we grow, we would like to have someone distribute our beer for us, but there still is no ’small’ distributors around that can give our short shelf life products the attention they deserve. I think this is one of the reason you see so few small breweries being distributed in Iowa. Don’t ya think its kind of strange how many interesting Wisconsin beers you can find in IL but not in Iowa? We just finished a trial with a new distributor in Des Moines, but it really didn’t seem to work. So we are back doing it ourselves again. Sorry if there were any hiccups in the supply line. No worries though, Dan, our salesman, is back in the van taking product to Des Moines, and everything should be back to normal soon.

Well that is all for now. Things are slowing down and there is not that much to report. The next big event is the THIRSTY CLASSIC competition on November 5th. I think we will be getting our new kitten, Pumpkin then too. That would be good, because the mice have really started to come into the brewery, and I have become a full time trapmaster…. instead of Brewmaster!

Were back to brewing again, after all these crazy festivities. We can always use some more beer in the cellar. Things are starting to wind down in the salesroom… hmmm summer must be over!

We are still putting the finishing touches on our new warehouse. A little dry wall here, some spackle over there. Today I saw Teresa mudding drywall on a ladder while on her cell phone… what a multitasker!

Really though we can’t say just enough how great the warehouse is. Its like.. how did we ever get along without this?

Its been a good year. This month we surpassed the total barrelage that we did for all of last year… and its only October… I can’t wait to see the end of the year total!

Today, Tom found this great article written by a Grinnell College student about our Iowa Beerfestival. I really enjoyed reading it, it is very nicely written (and positive)! Much better than that wacky review we got from the DI about the Iowa City festival last year….

Today we bottled two pallets of Cream Soda. The idea is that it would be cool to do a soda sampler pack with Rootbeer, Black Cherry and Cream Soda. Each soda has a different color crown, making a pretty sharp looking six pack. The Cream soda will be for sale by the case also, although we have no plans to order any real six packs for it. We would have to order a three years supply of packaging as a minimum order, and we currently are not that dedicated to keeping it around. Also, it will not be on tap at the brewery, since we do not have enough tap faucets to serve three soda’s!

We have received many complaints about the discontinuing of Cream Soda, and we are listening to our fans! However we do lack the tank space to keep many soda’s around all year round… this is something we are hoping to remedy someday. Hopefully the big fans will be satisfied in being able to buy it by the case at the brewery… if you love it so much.. then you should want lots of it, right?

Speaking of whats on tap, we now have a special guest tap. Lost Duck Brewing of Fort Madison, Iowa dropped off a five gallon keg each of their Porter and CanvasBack Lager. If you remember, the lager was voted best of show at the Iowa Beer festival back in September. Its a nice change of pace having someone elses beer on tap… so come down and check it out before we drink it all!

Oktoberfest was quite a smash this year! We had some of the best weather, and the one of the best turnouts that we have ever had! The thirsty masses drank plenty of beer, devoured lots of brats, and danced to polka all saturday long.

Infact, it was soo good, that we are now out of oktoberfest! That right, we are completely sold out.. so if you see any in the stores.. snatch it up. Next year we will have to try to make more. Its always hard to judge how many people we will have and how good the weather will be… If we still have Oktoberfest on the shelves in November it just doesn’t sell, so we don’t want to over do it.

We also put the last kegs of 20th Anniversary Dopplebock on tap.. all of those kegs are now empty. We still have some cases of bottles though, so come don’t forget about those. The last one we tried was starting to develop some sherry notes.. this is a beer that will age very well!

Thanks a million to Russ Dietz and the Stray Cats from Minnesota for coming down like they do every year and putting on such a good show for everyone on saturday. They really know how to keep a crowd entertained!

The Homebrewers competition went very well. We had just shy of twenty entries.. all of them very good beers. The winners were:
Ales
1st Belgian Trippel by Mark Rippe of Cedar Rapids (declared “pure heaven” by the judges!)
2nd Jack’s “9″ by R.J. Taylor of Walford (an aged bourbon barley wine)
3rd Pale Ale by David Waite of Lisbon ( an excellent british style pale ale)

Lagers
1st Tazmanian Light Lager by PJ Laschansky of Cedar Rapids (very crisp and light)
2nd Amber Lager by Wayne Behne of Louden (a nice caramel flavor)

Teresa standing with Mark Rippe as he shows his 1st place and “Best of show” awards at the Festhalle on Saturday afternoon:

Well the beer cellar is looking pretty dry.. we are going to have to get brewing again and try to fill it back up!

Update: We won a Bronze Medal at the GABF for our Schild Brau Amber! Seems like we are on a roll, since this beer won a bronze in 2003, and a silver in 2004. We were sort of hoping for a gold this year, but third place out of 27 very good beers is nothing to complain about!