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Today we are bottling Black Cherry, Rootbeer and Cream Soda. Yes the Cream soda is back, and we are going to try our hand at having three year round soda’s. We are also bottling all of our soda in clear glass for the first time. We think this makes our soda look more like.. well soda! Also, the Black Cherry and Cream Soda are much striking in clear glass. The Cherry even has pink foam head on it!

We had an interesting day today. We were expecting a shipment of six pack carriers for the Cream Soda this morning. But because of delays in shipping (some of which was caused by the tornado mess in Iowa City), the packaging didn’t get here until 2pm, which is usually when we are done bottling for the day. When it arrived, we all got to work, and began to unfold 240 cases of six pack carriers and started bottling the Cream Soda. Four to a case, that is about 1000 six packs to unfold and put into boxes. We had a friend come by to see the brewery, and we pressed them into inflating the six pack carriers! So be warned, if you come by to see us at the brewery, we may have to put you to work!

We have been doing lots of brewing too. We have a Beer of the month club order for next month, they are taking 160 bbls of John’s Generations White Ale and Colony Oatmeal Stout. That is about 10% of our annual production! We will be bottling the John’s in short bottles for the first time. This will make it easier for us to run on our line, as the tall bottles tend to tip over and cause traffic jams! Also we will be able to include John’s in our redesigned sampler packs. You will still see John’s in long necks outside of the sampler packs for a while, until we run out of the packaging. We will then (probably next year) convert them into short (known as ‘heritage’) bottle six pack carriers.

We have not brewed any funky things like the Mystery Saison or Dopplebock that we did last year yet, as we have been plenty busy with other projects, such as the finishing touches on our warehouse. However Buckley and I are itching to do something different. Right now we are planning to make a very small batch of Saison. We have a new yeast strain (thanks to Buckley) that we are playing with, and I think it will make for a very tasty Saison. We are only looking to make about a barrel, and I may reserve it only for beer festivals, to keep something special for those truly devoted fans! John’s Grocery and Old Capitol are having their Belgian Beer festival in May, and we will surely have it for that.