Ballyhoo: Hey... Can I Try Your Beer?
It’s a bummer not having anything to show for progress. But we’ve been hard at work! Things such as negotiating cleaning supplies and maintenance contracts. You’ll get just as bored reading about it, as I would be typing about it. We’re hoping to start demolition shortly, but schedules are so fluid it’s hard to get a read on when anything is going to happen. Patience is a virtue? I have colorful metaphors for that phrase.
So, let’s talk today about something interesting. Beer!
I’ve read a ton of books, internet articles, and participated in many internet forums through this startup process. Most “bad” things that come up I’m not too surprised about, since the horror story has already been told somewhere. But one thing I did read about, early on, is closing the deal with a landlord, bank, etc. by providing a sample of homebrew. I cast this aside as news reporting drama, but since then, I’ve noticed three things happening more and more frequently:
1. Everyone likes to meet at a brewery for business meetings. I completely endorse this, and it’s a pleasant surprise. With over 400 craft breweries in Colorado, it’s been cool to visit a few around Denver I wouldn’t have normally stopped by.
2. With a circus theme, everyone asks about beer names. And clowns. The clown deal is quickly clarified. Beer names, not at all. Truth: we’ve thought about it, but we’re maybe 4% settled on ideas. That’s still more than our progress on construction! Beer naming is a post all its own. I’ll probably touch on that one at some point since I have passionate opinions about this.
3. Everyone wants to try one of our beers. Yeah, let’s talk about this one a bit. Of course, it requires some backstory…
Our homebrewing has certainly evolved over time. About two and a half years ago, we started to shift into recipe design where we knew we could scale up. Unfortunately, we left some great beers behind. As an example, we would make a strawberry-kiwi wheat beer that was fantastic. But it was six pounds of kiwi hand washed, sanitized, and scooped out for five gallons of finished beer. Make it commercially? Better go to Costco for the kiwi, we need roughly 260 pounds. OK, maybe we use puree, but the fundamental recipe changes. In another recipe we’ve made, there’s no easy way to scale up zesting fresh lime for a 217-gallon batch of our Agave Mexican Lager.
After a period of focusing on scalable recipes and developing a deep bench of possibilities for the brewery, it started getting boring to homebrew. With any hobby, even if you enjoy it, inspiration is required from time to time to generate excitement. Especially when lots of equipment needs to be cleaned and maintained. This forced the recipe pendulum to swing drastically the other way. Suddenly we’re adding an entire box of Captain (excuse me, Cap’n) Crunch cereal to a stout mash. The results were interesting, but nothing I’d get excited about. Maybe if it had crunch berries.
Now we’ve landed somewhere in the middle. We’ll do a batch of something solid and pro-worthy, then it goes on tap with our kegerator at home. Then we’ll do a batch of something really out there, like a Graf, and we’ll bottle condition (carbonate) it. Our kegged beer is yummy, and it doesn’t last long enough to bottle some before the keg is kicked. Meanwhile the random bottles of beer experiments sit in the cool basement like a Russian roulette of flavor.
Back to the point:
“Can I try your beer?”
“Uh…. sure. Do you have an empty growler I can give back to you later? You don’t want any of the bottles I have.”
“Um, nevermind.”
It’s painful enough being in the same room when someone reads what I write, it’s even worse when someone drinks what we’ve brewed. This is something I will need to get over quickly. But having someone drink a beer I’m impartial about, as a representation of what we can make? That’s more terrifying than Paranormal Activity 12. To prevent the desire to say, “why not?” and hand over a bottle of suspect beer, we just had a bottle amnesty day and poured out the deep archive of random homebrew. Lots of labor went down that drain, but it was a cathartic experience.
So last weekend, we made the first homebrew with the intention of distributing to those who ask. A safe, fruit-forward, NEIPA-style beer. It should be ready around the end of the month. Then yes, you can try our beer, but I’ll still have anxiety as we hand it over. Meanwhile, it’s National Learn to Homebrew Day this Saturday, Nov 2nd. It’s not when we started, but we’ll be making a “Cotton Candy Milkshake IPA” anyway to celebrate, and that will also be shareable.
We know we’re quickly getting to the end of our homebrewing career… which is weird to think about. But find a homebrew shop and see if they are having an event Saturday. It’s worth checking out. Because I’ll have some equipment to sell you soon.
Happy Halloween!
-Jeff
October 31, 2019
Written while drinking an Intergalactic Juice Hunter by Odd13 Brewery.