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We have released our annual fall seasonal, Oktoberfest.  This beer is bit ‘bigger’ than our Schild Brau, and has an extra smooth character, and is complimented by american Liberty hops, one of my favorite hops. We know its coming out a bit early, but after running out last year, we made extra this year.. So you all should have a chance to get some!   We lagered each batch for over two months.. we were making Oktoberfest back in June!  We are a little short on tap handle space in the salesroom, so we have taken off the Stout temporarily so we can have Oktoberfest and Warsh Pail Ale at the same time.  Good News for you Pail ale lovers, we made an extra batch of that too, I expect we will have Pail Ale available at the brewery well into the fall.
This is just in time for the Iowa Festival of Beers this coming Sunday, Sept 3rd.  We hope to see everyone there!  We are looking at having nine Iowa breweries, each with about four beers..that will be 36 plus Iowa beers to sample!  Also we will have live music by Nick Sticka and entree’s by Devotay of Iowa City.  Of course Millstream will have its regular line up.. plus something secret that Buckley and I have been brewing up..

 So come out and check out the beers of the following breweries: Millstream Brewing of Amana, Old Main Brewery of Ames, Rock Bottom Brewery of Des Moines, Court Avenue Brewery of Des Moines, Raccoon River Brewery of Des Moines, Old Capitol Brew Works of Iowa City, Cedar Brewery of Cedar Rapids, Lost Duck Brewery of Fort Madison and Granite City Brewery.  You’d have to do lots of driving to go and sample all these beers in one day any other day of the year!

Another year, another Great Taste of the Midwest.   For the 20th year, the weather in Madison was simply astoundingly good.  The fest was as popular as ever, all 5000 tickets sold out this year in 30 minutes. 

Once again the two most popular beers were the John’s Generations White Ale and our super secret Mystery Saison.  This year the “Mystery” was actually four different Saison’s made up with various Spices.  Buckley and I were not even sure what they would taste like until the moment we tapped them. The beers had changed quite a bit since we first released them at the Belgian Beer Experience in Iowa City back in May.  They had become much more tart, and had some phenonemal ‘belgium’ character to them, including the famous/infamous ‘barnyard’ aroma, thanks to some interloping Brettomyces yeast in the culture that we used.  Our Schild Brau and Warsh Pail Ale were also well recieved, even though there were literally a hundred different Amber beers and Pale ales to try at the fest!

 We had plenty of pre- and post festival fun with our pals from Old Capitol Brewworks, who were just a few booths down.  We were the only two breweries from Iowa out of the 100 breweries allowed into the fest.  We also visited some Madison favorites, such as the Great Dane, Essen Haus, and the cigar bar Maduro.  Maduro has an amazing selection of beers from Bells, including cask conditioned Two hearted ale… yum!

Here we are serving it up at the fest:

Buckley checking for quality control in the morning:

On Friday night we went to visit the new brewpub in Madison, Ale Asylum .  Chris and Otto were very nice in talking to us about their new setup and gave us a full tour.  I have to say, we were very impressed by both their beers and their artwork.  The pub itself has a bit of a ‘mad house’ theme and their catch phrase of “fermented in sanity” is pretty wild.  Actually, Otto related to me they had a bit of fight over that phrase with ATF, who finally relented when they put they seperated the word ‘insanity’ into two words.  Go figure.  If you are into ‘full attitude’ beers ala Stone Brewing, you should check these guys out.  They will be bottling their beers this fall.  Here they are living it up at the fest:

 And then there were the thousands of regular beer nuts at the fest.  This one fits the bill! (this is Steve Slach from Bettendorf, leader of Team Good Beer.)

 And then there were those that maybe had a bit too much.  This guy was pretty much done at around 4pm  0_o

We look forward to doing this again next year.  Remember, when you get our email about the bus trip to Madison, you need to sign up with us immediately!

This is bit late, but two weeks ago we had the first annual Toys for Tots fun run.  We worked with District 24 ABATE and organized a 100 mile motorcycle ride.  We had 45 bikers and raised 320 dollars for the Toys for Tots program which gives toys to needy children at Christmas time.  Everyone had a great time playing ‘poker’ as they rode around area.  We look forward to doing it again next year on July 28th, so mark your calendars now!