millstreambrewing.com

“Wishing everyone Happy Holidays from everyone at Millstream Brewing Company!”
Front row left to right: Kevin Buckley, Dan Carpenter, Gaycia Neubauer, Denise Schulze, Tom Albert
Back/Middle row left to right: Teresa Albert, Jerri Priebe, Brian Sly, Aaron Taubman, Roy Schulze, Chris Priebe

Millstream will be on the Radio next week!

Please join us as Katherine Perkins of WOI of 640 AM talks to Iowa brewers. Katherine will talk to the brewers live about Iowa Beer, the making of it and the love of it. All this happens on December 28, 2006 from 9-10am during the Talk of Iowa Semi-Annual Beer Show!

We have had a good year here at Millstream and we are looking forward to next year. There is already some talk about further expansion of the building. We just purchased a new labeler, just in time for a large beer club order that we have in January for the John’s Generations White Ale. This new labeler should put an end to those crooked and whacky labels you sometimes find in our six packs.. good riddance!
Wheat name contest update: an announcement is pending.. we had a flood of entries!

Please note: The Schokolade Bock and Oatmeal Stout have been out for two weeks. If you have not had any yet.. you are missing out!

Last weekend we hosted the annual THIRSTY classic homebrew competition here at the brewery. Entries were up this year to 160 entries. We had BJCP judges from all of Iowa’s Homebrew clubs plus some from outside the state participate in thoroughly evaluating the entries. Best of show was determined by evaluating the top beer in each category against the top beers in all the other categories. With 16 fine beers to choose from, narrowing it down to three outstanding beers was very difficult. We persevered though, and awarded top place to Barrel aged Stout by Steve Fletty of the St. Paul Homebrewers Club. He also took second place with his IPA. Third place went to Scot Schaar of MUGZ (and also a member of Team Good Beer) for his Weizenbock.  Full results are available at the THIRSTY website in PDF form.

 
Judges carefully evaluating homebrew at Saturday’s competition at the brewery

We have a new tap account in Cedar Rapids. The Red Robin Gourmet Burgers chain has opened up a store and has kindly put our Schild Brau Amber on tap. Click this link to get directions to have a burger and a beer!

In othernews, a little bird has just told me that Upper Mississippi Brewing in Clinton Iowa will be re-opening soon under new managment.

The Millstream Brewing Co Is Looking For A Name Change

for our Wheat beer!

We thought it might be a fun thing to do and make it into a contest. We are looking for ideas from all of our Millstream drinkers who want to get their creative juices flowing for a good cause. The guidelines are simple: the name has to be Iowa related somehow and the name should be short, to keep it simple and easy to remember. The word “Wheat” is optional, you can leave it in or go on without it. With a big name change to this beer we will have to make new labels for the bottles so let us know your best ideas and drawings for a new label to go along with the name. Try your hand at the name, artwork or both. Be creative, give us your best shot! All ideas and entries must be submitted to Teresa by November 30, 2006.

And there is more! We would like to announce the winner(s) in the spring with a big publicity announcement. We would also like to invite the winner to join on us our first bottling day of the wheat beer under its new name. You can pull the first case off the line and take it home.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 319-622-3672 at the brewery or email me at teresa@millstreambrewing.com.

Our Wheat beer is technically a lager made with 50% wheat. We have tried to come up with a more descriptive name name but so far nothing has struck us as outstanding. The best so far is “Harvest Wheat”. However, that is not truly Iowa specific, and it also sounds like a seasonal, which our wheat beer is not. Maybe if more wheat was really grown in Iowa.. instead of corn and soybeans, neither of which are very good ingredients for making beer. We are hoping one of you out there can do better!

This year the weather was a blessing for Oktoberfest at the brewery! It was warm and sunny every day. Friday was had the largest turnout we have seen in many years, probably due to the big Iowa game last weekend.

Our seasonal Oktoberfest beer was very well received.. so much so we were filtering another batch on Saturday morning to make sure we did not run out! As it was we sold quite a bit of it, so if you didn’t get any you better try to get some this month, because it will surely be gone by November!

Friday night, Dogs on Skiis packed in a great crowd. Some people asked ‘where’ the polka?” but many more people seemed to enjoy a bit of change of pace. On Saturday our usual Russ Dietz and the Stray Cats played Polka all day long! Teresa was out in her Dirndl putting our new temporary tattoo’s on people in the beer garden. Our new tattoo’s our pretty slick with the full color Millstream Logo on them. (By the way, if yours is still on and you would like to remove it, it has been reported that rubbing alcohol will take them off )

The Oktoberfest Homebrew Competiton went very well. We had some nice entries this year, and we could tell that the overall quality of the some of the entries had improved! Congratulations to the winners,

Lager Category
1st place Kirk Setzer of Amana for his Golden Pilsner
2nd place Wayne Behne of Lowden for his German Lager
3rd place Kirk Setzer of Amana for his Bock

Ale Category
1st place Wayne Behne of Lowden for his Oatmeal Stout
2nd place PJ Laschansky of Cedar Rapids for her Belgian
3rd place PJ Laschansky of Cedar Rapids for her Wheat .

We will be Judging homebrew next here again next month at the THIRSTY Classic on Nov 4th.
At 5pm on Saturday we had to stop the band make an announcement. Our Millstream Schild Brau had won its 4th consecutive medal at the GABF! This year it was bronze medal, although the judges did not award a Gold Medal in Category 23, Vienna-Style Lager. That should give you an idea of how strict the judging is at this competition; out of 20 similar beers, they decided that NONE of them were worthy of a gold medal! That being the case, only getting bronze means much, much more!

Sunday was another great day.. maybe even a bit hot? Kurt Boche serenaded people German style while people enjoyed the weather with hot Schild Brau Sauerkraut on their brats.

So Eins, Zwei, Drei G’Suffa to you all and We hope to see you all again next year!

It was a NICE warm sunny day!

These guys rode their bikes all the way from Iowa City to drink beer!

Denise working hard in the sales room

A toast underneath the Oktoberfest tent

Teresa and friends show off their new Millstream tattoo’s

A good day to sit in the grass and have a pint or two…

Hello Everyone

 Right now we are very busy at the brewery getting everything ready for the big Oktoberfest Celebration that we are having tommorrow.  I sure hope you all are coming out!

Last week there were mutiple beer festivals on the same day.  We were unable to send a personal representative to the one in Mount Horeb, WI, so instead we sent up some of our most loyal fans.  Here is their report:

At the last minute, Dave Gross of Verona, Wisconsin arranged for a Millstream booth at The Thirsty Troll Beer Festival in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Pat McArtor and I (Tim Rask) drove up from Iowa City with a shipment of 3 1/6 barrel kegs—two of Schild Brau and one of John’s Anniversary Ale.

On the drive up, we grabbed a late dinner at Mount Horeb’s Grumpy Troll Brew Put (Mount Horeb has a troll theme, in case you weren’t aware—it’s some kind of Scandanavian thing, but we were there for the beer, not the trolls. On Saturday morning, we took a van over with the Millstream supplies, then the three of us rode our bikes on the Military Ridge Trail from Verona, an nice little pre-fest ride of 13 miles. (Dave’s wife, Cindy, joined drove out separately).

The fest is in its fourth year, and one of the volunteers told us it seems to double in size every year. It started out with 100 or so visitors four years ago and this year they expected 1000 people to crowd the beer tent and festival grounds. Cool, rainy conditions probably kept them under 1000 this year, but a large, festive crowd still packed the tent.

Even though we were familiar with most of the breweries at the fest, we still found a few surprises. Furthermore Brewing of Spring Green, Wisc had a pale ale with hints of black pepper, the Corner Pub of Reedsburg had some bourbon barrel port, and Lakefront of Milwaukee had this year’s version of their famous Pumpkin Beer, one of the great fall seasonals.

Despite our late entry, we had a great location in the tent—just down from the food vendor, and between the wine booth and Bell’s of Kalamazoo (Jason, the Bell’s rep, kept us well supplied with bottles of their fine brew). Our booth was at the end of the tent, and it proved to be the starting point for a lot of the samplers. Some people didn’t get too far, as we had a lot of returning drinkers, and we received a lot of raves for both brews. In fact, the beer proved so popular that we were completely out of beer with an hour of fest time still to go! The music tent was right behind us, too, but the rain put the kibosh on the Kissers (who sounded really good) after only one set.

Sunday morning, Pat and I checked out the beer selection at Brennan’s Market in Madison, where Chris, the beer guy, was very pleased to see us. He said that Schild Brau was one of their best sellers and he’d already had some customers stop in and ask for Millstream, based on sampling it at the fest.

Thanks, Aaron, for letting some veteran festival goers get some time in on the other side of the sampling table! A great time was had by all.

Hmm a grumpy troll?