Ballyhoo: A Pile of Perspective
Ah, Oktoberfest. How we love ye.
There are memes and random internet comments wondering why Oktoberfest starts in September. I’m simplifying, of course, but it’s a wedding thing. Back in 1810, a fancy couple married in early October but threw a monster multi-week party beforehand. It was so much fun they decided to do it every year, like a Bavarian Burning Man. Fun Fact: At the 100th year anniversary in 1910, 120,000 liters of beer were consumed. That’s 31,700 gallons, or 1,022 barrels (BBL) for us brewery-types. I consider LUKI a success at 500 BBL a year while modern-day Oktoberfest guzzles over seven million liters of beer. Sadly, of the many things we’ve done with homebrewing, we always seem to miss the timing to create an Oktoberfest beer. We’ll do a lot better once we get open and focus on a release calendar. It’s pure coincidence that we tapped a traditional German Helles last weekend, so I’m going to call that our Oktoberfest beer.
October usually brings another event... it’s time for the Great American Beer Festival, or GABF to the cool kids. We’ve been going to this off-and-on over the years since the late-90’s and we’ve enjoyed watching it grow into the week-long celebration it is now. It’s still a great opportunity to taste beers we wouldn’t normally get in Colorado. I’m happy they decided to go back to grouping breweries by geographical region this year. Now I can spend some time with East Coast breweries without having to use the app to find them. The app is cool and all, but I’m just not serious enough to put in that kind of work at a beer fest.
The GABF has meant something much more personal to LUKI. Since we decided to start this adventure in 2016, it’s been the annual reminder of what we HAVEN’T accomplished. Sure, this past month we’ve gotten deep into permitting, selected our General Contractor, and started making design choices for the interior of the taproom. But you can watch eyes glaze over with boredom when we start talking about it because it’s not sexy enough. So, with a sigh of “maybe next year”, we’ll get in that ridiculous line that goes around the entire building.
I met up with a few friends from my past life (what I call my old job) a few weeks ago. It was great catching up, but a scary part of it was realizing how long it’s been since I dedicated myself to getting this brewery open. It happens to everyone who’s left a job, you eventually meet up and hear their stories about people you either: (a) haven’t met or (b) can’t remember at all. Not really a big deal, but it does bring things into perspective. Life keeps moving, meanwhile you’re doing permit paperwork in a home office, delivering your comedic views on life to your dog. Try as I might, she’s just not laughing.
That’s not meant to sound sad, it’s just an observation. I’m incredibly lucky for this opportunity, and there are plenty of perks to my current situation. I know a year from now we’ll have a much different perspective. I’ll probably be laughing, looking back at this and remembering how easy I had it, and realizing I’m not funny at all. It’s not the dog, it’s me.
If you’re headed to the GABF, enjoy and be safe!
TL;DR: Oktoberfest=Good, GABF=Good, LUKI doing a lot of paperwork right now=Boring.
Prost!
-Jeff
September 30, 2019
Written while drinking a Homebrew Helles.