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We just sent out our press release on the Tour De Brew. This year we are going to be taking the bicycle trails to North Liberty and skipping that ugly hill on Dubuque street. We are expecting a stellar turnout, every year the ride seems to get bigger. This year we are going to have two excellent ‘refreshment stops’ on the way. Its also the week before RAGBRAI, so its a great chance to get warmed up for that big ride if your doing that!

On next monday, we will be providing beer for the Old Chicago Golf Outing in Coralville. The will be doing nine holes of golf, with a beer for each hole. We are providing John’s Generations White ale, and a Wheat Radler. A Radler is beer Lemonade mixture, that if very popular in europe because it is very refreshing! I don’t have any more info, so you had better call Old Chicago to find out more about the outing.

The 2005 industry review is out. Craft beer grew 9% this year! Hooray!  Big Boring beer companies were down 1-2%.. things are definately changing!  This rapid growth in the Craft segment has been apparent to us in other ways.. it has been hard to get our raw materials because our suppliers are pretty maxed out (for example most craft breweries are calling the same bottle suppliers).

Anyway, I thought I would show you all the Iowa barrelage numbers for your entertainment.  I pulled these out of the lastest issue of the New Brewer.
Brewery                                                2004                                     2005
Firehouse Brewery, Red Oak                 60                                  23
Lost Duck Brewing, Fort Madison           75                                  60
Upper Mississippi Brewing, Clinton          225                                 225
Cedar Brewing, Cedar Rapids                575                                 326
Front Street, Davenport                      282                                 340
Court Ave, Des Moines                        527                                 488
Old Capitol, Iowa City                         140                                 500
Old Main Brewing, Ames                       320                                 513
Granite City, Clive                              747                                  651
Granite City, Cedar Rapids                   801                                  692
Racoon River, Des Moines                     674                                  699
Granite City, Davenport                       819                                  701
Rock Bottom, Des Moines                    1,149                               1,019
Millstream Brewing, Amana                   1,220                               1,602
Total                                               7479                                 7756

Just over the border:
Bent River, Moline                               500                                     900

After doing the math, Iowa is showing a 4% growth over last year, not bad! Some breweries do not report.. missing from this list is Becks Sports Bar, Waterloo, The Depot Deli and Lounge, Shenandoah, and Bricktown Brewing, Dubuque, but I do not think their barrelage amounts to much. Its good to see some strong growth as in Old Capitol’s numbers. I know Cedar Brewing changed hands last year and that explains their drop.. however I hear that this year things are doing much better.

Someone told me a while ago that Upper Mississippi Brewing in Clinton is closed, can anyone confirm this?

 I heard that the brewer at Bent River in Illinois just finished Brew School, and that explains their sudden growth.  They have been around a long time, its good to see they are doing well (though they do not bottle their beer anymore).

Good News, we took a Gold and Silver medal at the North American Beer Awards! This competition is held at the Mountain Brewers Fest in Idaho Falls every June. There are many different beer competitions, but we now only enter the three most professionally well run. These would be the NABA, the GABF (held in the fall) and the World Beer Cup (which is only held every two years).

I personally like the NABA because it is held in June, which is nice for seasonals that are out of season in the fall or winter. The North American Beer Awards are growing pretty quickly. The full results are here.