Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

Stopped by the Brewery today and got a tour from the brewmaster. Also got to sample some more of the fabulous beers made there. Definately worth a stop if your in the neighborhood or even close. We drove over from Helena and made a day out of it. Greg visited with us and showed us around, good people and awesome time today.

This is a picture of one of the beers I sampled.

Ah yes, the black and tan. In this case I believe Storm the Door Porter and Uptown Blonde Ale.

I was trying to dig up the photo of the triple layer beer that one of our servers made around St. Patty's day but I can't do it off my phone. Now THAT was impressive. I'll have to do it from home later.

Gosh, I'm not keeping up very well, am I?

Ok. Let's talk about stuff you ought to know about. Keeping the taproom stocked is hard. We run a 10 barrel system and you'd think that being able to brew 300+ gallons of beer twice or more a week ought to be sufficient, but surprisingly, it's difficult to keep up with the demands of our customers. The trick is determining what beers they like in any given time period and what you need to think ahead to brew.

We have limited space in our aging room so we have to kind of toe a line in terms of what we can fit in there and age. Of course we LIKE to let the beer sit for a month or so after we keg it and let it mature before we ever send it out to the customer but here's some truth for you, often times we just don't have that luxury. There are times when we only have a week or so to let something sit before we have to send it up to be served because demand on a given beer is so high.

So - inventory management is KEY! I was talking to one of the major guys from Great Northern a few weeks ago. (That was one of the first micros in Montana, heck the country, they opened up darn near 20 years ago.) They have an inventory manager who's sole job is to track the downstairs beer inventory and manage the brewer's schedule FOR THEM.

Can you imagine the joy of being told "Hey Gregg, we're going to need you to brew this for us." Now I know that sounds kind of restrictive, but believe me - it's better than "OH DEAR GOD! WE'RE OUT OF IPA --- AGAIN!" Better yet, Great Northern has an inventory manager just for their tasting room who coordinates with the downstairs guy. The Downstairs guy coordinates with their sales manager who manages the fleet of sales reps who deals with the distributors who sling kegs for them... It's ****ing science and art all worked into a well-oiled machine that I one day hope to not get my hands jammed into and mangled beyond reasonable repair, unless there's disability in it for me. ;-)

So we've put together an in-house keg inventory sheet. Other breweries who use serving tanks can simply monitor the tank levels to see when they reach a specific level and need to make more beer. However since we run on kegs, we really need to monitor our keg counts and brew more beer when we reach a specific count. Unfortunately our process is slightly more difficult in that we move our kegs from the aging room to the serving cooler upstairs. So there are 2 places to keep a count more or less.

So currently, our plan is to track the number of kegs filled when we "finish" a beer. Then, whenever our "aging room" count gets below 10 kegs we plan on making a replacement batch for that beer. That "should" theoretically give us enough time to brew, ferment, finish, keg and age the beer before the final 10 kegs kick. If we find that that's not enough buffer we'll up the base count before we start brewing a backup batch. But there you have it, solving real-world problems 101.

Is it the right answer? **** if I know. I'll tell you in a couple months.

Dear God! Kidney Stones! The Pain. The horrific pain.

MuddyCreek said:

Dear God! Kidney Stones! The Pain. The horrific pain.

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I hope for your sake they aren't too big!
I've been lucky and never had them, but I know a few people who have had terrible, terrible times passing them.

pb

MuddyCreek said:

Dear God! Kidney Stones! The Pain. The horrific pain.

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So you aren't drinking enough beer? Beer is supposed to keep those kidneys all washed out and stone free!!

MuddyCreek said:

Dear God! Kidney Stones! The Pain. The horrific pain.

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I feel you brother. I've passed 14 and had another 23 broken up with lithotripsy, if you don't have access to legit passion medication slam a six pack of moderate abv beer: dulls the pain and makes you pee. Try to collect it once you pass it if it's your first, they can analyze it and you can hopefully avoid more in the future.

jiMithing83 said:

... legit passion medication ...

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Viagra? I'm no doctor, but wouldn't that make it worse?

Haha meant pain medication, damn auto correct

MuddyCreek said:

Gosh, I'm not keeping up very well, am I?

Ok. Let's talk about stuff you ought to know about. Keeping the taproom stocked is hard. We run a 10 barrel system and you'd think that being able to brew 300+ gallons of beer twice or more a week ought to be sufficient, but surprisingly, it's difficult to keep up with the demands of our customers. The trick is determining what beers they like in any given time period and what you need to think ahead to brew.

We have limited space in our aging room so we have to kind of toe a line in terms of what we can fit in there and age. Of course we LIKE to let the beer sit for a month or so after we keg it and let it mature before we ever send it out to the customer but here's some truth for you, often times we just don't have that luxury. There are times when we only have a week or so to let something sit before we have to send it up to be served because demand on a given beer is so high.

So - inventory management is KEY! I was talking to one of the major guys from Great Northern a few weeks ago. (That was one of the first micros in Montana, heck the country, they opened up darn near 20 years ago.) They have an inventory manager who's sole job is to track the downstairs beer inventory and manage the brewer's schedule FOR THEM.

Can you imagine the joy of being told "Hey Gregg, we're going to need you to brew this for us." Now I know that sounds kind of restrictive, but believe me - it's better than "OH DEAR GOD! WE'RE OUT OF IPA --- AGAIN!" Better yet, Great Northern has an inventory manager just for their tasting room who coordinates with the downstairs guy. The Downstairs guy coordinates with their sales manager who manages the fleet of sales reps who deals with the distributors who sling kegs for them... It's ****ing science and art all worked into a well-oiled machine that I one day hope to not get my hands jammed into and mangled beyond reasonable repair, unless there's disability in it for me. ;-)

So we've put together an in-house keg inventory sheet. Other breweries who use serving tanks can simply monitor the tank levels to see when they reach a specific level and need to make more beer. However since we run on kegs, we really need to monitor our keg counts and brew more beer when we reach a specific count. Unfortunately our process is slightly more difficult in that we move our kegs from the aging room to the serving cooler upstairs. So there are 2 places to keep a count more or less.

So currently, our plan is to track the number of kegs filled when we "finish" a beer. Then, whenever our "aging room" count gets below 10 kegs we plan on making a replacement batch for that beer. That "should" theoretically give us enough time to brew, ferment, finish, keg and age the beer before the final 10 kegs kick. If we find that that's not enough buffer we'll up the base count before we start brewing a backup batch. But there you have it, solving real-world problems 101.

Is it the right answer? **** if I know. I'll tell you in a couple months.

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Data is the key to all things business. Not sure what kind of point of sale system you have, but you should be able to export quantities of items sold that night. I'd be querying that daily and weekly and looking at how much of each beer you're selling. Keep that up and you'll probably get some good trends for next year.

MuddyCreek said:

So currently, our plan is to track the number of kegs filled when we "finish" a beer. Then, whenever our "aging room" count gets below 10 kegs we plan on making a replacement batch for that beer. That "should" theoretically give us enough time to brew, ferment, finish, keg and age the beer before the final 10 kegs kick. If we find that that's not enough buffer we'll up the base count before we start brewing a backup batch. But there you have it, solving real-world problems 101.

Is it the right answer? **** if I know. I'll tell you in a couple months.

Click to expand...

I currently work in a manufacturing environment. What you've described is a classic kanban system and is exactly how we manage inventory. As you mention, the major challenge is forecasting demand and adjusting kanban levels. You are definitely on the right track, though. Good luck!

We do that iijakii, our point of sale system tracks each pint and growler sold nightly and tabulates that into gallons and ultimately barrels.

We also track our barrels coming down from the taproom to cross-reference so we have something to double-check our figures and get a feel for taproom loss to over-pour and samples. (That's actually pretty significant as you'd imagine.)

At any rate, we have VERY good numbers on how much of each product we go through on a weekly and even daily basis. What is harder to predict just 6 months in is how our core customer base is going to react when we DO go offline with a product. So, say we take our Dirty Blonde of tap, which beer are they going to gravitate toward and spike on? The basic wheat? or the Belgian? Perhaps the Pale Ale? We're still trying to figure out how to predict these trends and frankly it's been hard.

What we've determined is that we want to set aside a few beers that will simply NEVER go off tap. The others we will commit to keeping on tap as "styles". We'll keep a wheat or hefe on tap but we aren't committed to a specific beer. We need a fruit beer on tap, but we have some leeway on what that is. We need An Amber or Red but not specifically No Paddle or An Ri Red...

This frees us up a bit, allows us to brew big batches of the core beers and 1/2 batches of the styles and mix and match them as we like. Hopefully we can cheat here and there. (IE, We have a fruited Pale Ale... That sounds like 2 birds, one stone to me!) I'm just sayin'.

Down the line if we find we actually get ahead, we have been invited (ya... "invited") by one of our local distributors to jump in on a limited contract. There is no minimum barrelage required. They distribute outside our local area so we can still self-distribute locally, and basically they are certain that they can sell our beer in markets outside our counties. Basically if we have an overage, it's a good way to make a bit of extra money and get our name out there. We just need to develop some labels and let them take a few kegs each month and see how it goes.

The risk of course is that it goes well. What if a restaurant or bar in Missoula Montana LOVES one of our products and says "We REALLY want more of that!" Then the distributor comes back and says, I know you guys only want to give us 6 kegs a month, but really, these guys will take 12, what do you say?

Well ****... now I have to put together an entire half batch just for this new account... doesn't sound like much does it? But it is. That's an entire day of labor, plus racking, plus keg cleaning and carbing and kegging. And that's just the start. Next month we get word that some OTHER restaurant wants more kegs. Then what?

Then we have stress. That's what. I suppose these are good problems to have. The issue is, we have one partner who wants to grow entirely too quickly and doesn't stop and think about the negative ramifications. The other 2 partners are much more conservative and want to nurture things along and focus on quality control and moderate growth. Unfortunately that means tough sledding financially. We make minimal profit and struggle to update equipment etc. like we want to.

Choices choices. Personally, I like brunettes.

Personally, I like brunettes.

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Me too.

I love your posts about the business. It is so refreshing to hear the brutal honesty. Both good and bad. You have worked hard and are on your way. Keep it up. We love hearing your story..

Always fun to read. Thanks for the updates.

You like brutal honesty... here's some.

Remember how I told you that breweries love one another and play nicely in a warm pool of happiness and joy? That's not entirely true.

It seems that's only true until you become somewhat successful. Once you get to a point where you're perceived as a bit of a threat things start to change. Now I'm not naive. That's a perfectly logical progression. And I would like to point out that there are some very great breweries around that continue to be super with us and to us. I will always give very strong recommendations toward Phillipsburg Brewing Company as well as some of the guys at Kettlehouse and Great Northern Brewing.

We also have good relationships with several of our local breweries. When we first opened, we had a bit of a strained relationship with the standing brewery in town and clearly we were a threat to their business model. I can understand that. Over time, things have started to improve with them.

However another brewery has opened recently and we've heard that they're sending out some negative ju ju. Normally, I wouldn't give a ****, but I actually am pretty friendly with the owner of the other brewery and it's one of his people who's spreading some negativity. I get the motivation. This fellow is trying to improve his place's flow by spreading some negativity about the other game in town. And it's not like he's saying our beer is infected or anything like that.

My problem is,that all the breweries in town have sort of embraced this "partnership" thing where we were really going to try to build each other up. The idea was to honestly let folks know, "Hey, if this isn't your cup of tea, try the place down the road, they have a great IPA!"

What's happened is, this other brewery opened really at the worst time of the year for a beer/wine/liquor establishment based on historic figures. Unfortunately that's undoubtedly lead to some rough months. I'm sure they've not gotten the huge opening they would have liked. They certainly would have had a better opening in the fall, but you know - you gotta open as soon as you can open.

Anyway, I'm pretty disheartened about it as I kinda consider this brewery group and their owner very nearly a friend and I hate that I'm going to have to call him out on some things his people have been saying but I won't sit by and let it continue.

We're not going to reciprocate. We'll honor the gentleman's agreement to support one another, but I will be certain to let them know that I'm fully aware that they have some people talking **** about us. And that will make it harder for us to sincerely send people off to their brewery with a happy heart.

Anyway, apparently there's no love lost in the brewing business when you're close bedfellows. I've heard if from other brewers. I just hoped we could be a bit more revolutionary in Butte. It is a fighting town though.

MuddyCreek said:

The issue is, we have one partner who wants to grow entirely too quickly and doesn't stop and think about the negative ramifications. The other 2 partners are much more conservative and want to nurture things along and focus on quality control and moderate growth. Unfortunately that means tough sledding financially. We make minimal profit and struggle to update equipment etc. like we want to.

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I gotta imagine there is a war of attrition with your bodies and patience too. I can see working the two jobs for some amount of time, but after a while it's gotta take its toll. I would think the sooner you're large enough to quit your day job, the better; as long as you don't expose yourselves too much.

Something's gotta give at some point. Working at this pace or a faster one for five or ten years? I would think that would be a grain bill for failure.

beergolf said:

Me too.

I love your posts about the business. It is so refreshing to hear the brutal honesty. Both good and bad. You have worked hard and are on your way. Keep it up. We love hearing your story..

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+1

Really insightfull. I can appreciate the partners/stress/tugging in multi directions aspects. I've experienced that. Any chance you can tell the over zealous guy to: RDWAHAHB? Lol

Ya, we're going to GABF, although we don't have a booth this year. We're too small and nobody would know who we are. The plan is to do a booth next year and just check out the festival, meet some folks and try some beers in new styles this year.

As I've mentioned earlier we've entered a couple beers, the stout and the porter so we're looking for feedback on them so we can improve.

MuddyCreek said:

Anyway, I'm pretty disheartened about it as I kinda consider this brewery group and their owner very nearly a friend and I hate that I'm going to have to call him out on some things his people have been saying but I won't sit by and let it continue.

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I had to dust off the ol' HBT account to reply to this because reading it infuriated me.

We've quit going there because of the person you're talking about. And their significant other who's now the bar manager is just as bad as this person. They make a good pair. We (there's a group of us) have had nothing but good things to say about Muddy Creek and your staff. You always go out of your way for us and are forthcoming about helping out with our "projects."

I too consider the owner of the above brewery a friend and have his cell number. I was "this close" to calling him from his own establishment to complain. I haven't been back since and neither have my friends.

Muddy Creek beats the other breweries in town with both product and customer service. You have to have both if you're going to be successful.

Thank you!

Actually TroutSlayer, I expect you are talking about the established brewery in town. We've actually made our peace with them and as far as I know, things have been pretty good. It could be there is still some flack coming from their side of the pond, but I haven't heard about that.

No this is coming from the new kids on the block. It's not a big deal. Nothing to get anybody riled up about. I shouldn't have said anything. The fact is, every brewery has some good beer. Some folks prefer different styles and that's what's nice about having variety. One of the breweries in town focuses on Old-School European style brewing. If that's your thing, you're in great luck. We focus on American farm-house style brewing. Again, if you dig that, come check us out. CopperWild's has small batches of really creative and specialty craft beers. And they have great pizza. How can you go wrong with that? I don't even know? Butte Brewing Company has some great, clean, beers and a really cool atmosphere.

There's not a place in town you can't go and have yourself a good time. I'm sayin' enjoy yourself and tip your bartender. And try not to tear the liver out of the guy down the street with a rusty spoon. Ya know, if you can.

I was talking about the new kids on the block too.

I agree that each place in town has something to offer. Sorry to derail your excellent post. Please keep the updates coming!

We're doing a couple new things this week. St. Patty's day is obviously pretty huge in Butte and today marks the halfway point to that particular celebration, so in honor of that we're having a "Half Way" party at the brewery tonight.

We'll feature our last keg of An Ri Red Irish Red ale which we saved for this very occasion, we'll serve some Pasty's and gravy as well as cole-slaw and Blarney Stones for a dessert snack. We'll also have some Irish Dancers in, I believe. It ought to be a fun evening.

On top of it all we've released a 2nd rotator IPA called "Blasted IPA". It's our first ever complete extract IPA. All the hops were done with extracts. It's pretty darn good. People seem to like it and you can't beat the "quick and easy" of it. I'm not sure I'd go that route every time but as a rotator, it's nice. And I can definitely say that it sure doesn't hurt to have the extracts on hand if you feel as though you're not quite happy with your final bitterness or you'd like to have a bit more aroma or flavoring. These extracts seem to do a GREAT job of adding punch.

(Technically, they can do a hell of a lot more than that if you want them to.) Just another tool in the belt I guess. People do seem to like the new IPA. It rates out at 71 IBUs although honestly I'd say it tastes out a bit lower than that. Probably in the neighborhood of high 50s or low 60s. But it's got a nice lingering bitterness that let's you know it was there and it smells quite a bit like a Pina Colada.

So, if you like gettin' caught in the rain...

Well, just a couple days away from heading off to Denver. I'm sure it will be a good time. We have one bottle of the stout we sent in for judging left behind. We'll open it tomorrow night and taste it to get an idea of what the judges will be tasting for the competition. Hopefully it's as good as it's been in the kegs.

I didn't do the same with the porter, unfortunately. I ought to have, just didn't have an extra bottle on hand at the time. We had some fun events to round out last week. Thursday we had a 1/2 way to St. Patty's day party. That turned out pretty well, then we had one of our most popular local musicians in on Friday and Saturday we did a street bar-b-que. All in all a great weekend for the Muddy Creek family.

Our Oktoberfest beer is just about ready for the fall festival coming up in a few weeks. Then we'll put it on tap locally. We're getting our new and improved festival setup ready so we're happy about that. All in all, things are going very well. We're sliding into winter with some big plans and a few very exciting beers on the horizon.

HEEEYYY!!! I found your new thread haha. It was great to meet you guys down in Denver and the wife and i really enjoyed your company. Thanks for telling us to sit down with that judging panel it was really insightful. But you missed out on some great stinky cheese and old beer haha, they actually had what we were looking for out of the barrel aging symposium.

Its funny how we can be in two different areas but still have the same issues between breweries, only nice thing on your end is you have more people around you that you can work with. When there is only two of you in town and the other one doesnt like you makes it tough to work together haha.

Im hoping to go back next year with a booth as well but it was nice to be able to get a feel for the event itself and now i just have bust my tail to grab me on of those sweet medals next year.

I also have your reservations about distributors at this point but we both know where im at with that. I will say anything you can do without them is the best thing for you at this point our local distributing has really started to take hold and ive run out of a couple beers because of that....brewing those now behind the 8 ball but when they want it they want it. Also taking a week off for a "work" trip kind of put us behind as well.

Anyways as i said it was great to meet you guys and look forward to working with you if we ever get the chance or just coming to visit your place. Also let me know how the mystery beer is working out for you guys.

Cheers.

We really enjoyed meeting you too. Had a great time, tasted some wonderful beers, and some not so wonderful. Overall, we felt as though we learned a ton.

We've got a festival this weekend and we're pretty excited about it. Our next one is two weeks further down the road and I'm just a bit behind getting ready for that one. However I think we'll hit it ok.

I am looking forward to seeing you again.

Yea im with you on some not so great ones.....there was a traditional to style beer that boiled for three hours with molasses or something can only remember it scarred my pallet for a while.

How did the stout do in the competition?

Bout as well as I did...skunked on all accounts...but we shall persevere.

Sadly neither our stout or porter won any medals. Of course we didn't expect that. You HOPE but you can't really expect it. We will be getting our feedback sheets sometime in the next few weeks and we'll see what the judges say. Depending on the number of sheets we get back we should get an indication of how far we got in the judging process.

At any rate, the festival was a great experience. We were proud to have entered our beer. As they say, you can't win if you don't enter, so we threw our hats in. We'll try again next year and see how it goes.

More importantly, we came away with some really good ideas and we were greatly energized. I'm looking forward to the upcoming year. I'm sorry I haven't had time to post since the festival, we've already had another festival locally and I've got another coming up in a week or so.

I also have 3 products to get kegged up as well as more beer to brew and get into the pipeline. There always seems to be a demand for the beer.

So, it's all work and no play, it would seem.

Well, this hot break has been simmering for awhile. I suppose it's time to stir it a bit.

Let's see. I still haven't received our sheets from the GABF so I'm pretty much anxiously awaiting those to see what the judges had to say about our porter and out stout. We've got 3 "new" products about to hit the kegs this week. Specifically a pumpkin beer which should be kegged tomorrow. (Wanted that in the kegs awhile ago, but the pipeline is a demanding wench.) We've also got a single malt (Maris Otter) bitter that we're pretty excited about as well as a very nice all-cascade pale ale coming out. The single malt was done with some local fresh hops and it's extremely mild flavored. In fact it's just about the mildest thing we've ever produced. I think some folks will really like it.

The pale ale is a wonderful beer. The cascade hops assert themselves very well. The Pumpkin beer is also very good. We're putting just a touch of vanilla bean in it to emulate the whipped cream on top.

On top of that, we just brewed more of our house pale ale as well as a full batch of the porter. So, soon enough our cellars will once again be full and the people happy. [insert joyous people sound here]

With Halloween coming we're planning a party for that occasion and we're also coming up with some week-day activities to interest folks in coming down to the brewery during "regular" days. We've got a couple ideas and we hope and expect that things will go well.

What hops did you use for the Marris Otter Bitter? Sounds tasty!

WilliamSlayer said:

What hops did you use for the Marris Otter Bitter? Sounds tasty!

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It's a secret

Actually, it IS a secret. We used local grown backyard fresh hops for the entire batch. They were entirely donated and used throughout from bittering to aroma to dry-hopping. However we don't actually know what all the hops are since they are fresh and donated.

Thus, secret indeed and ultimately not truly repeatable.

Lol. Got it. Very much a Muddy Creek exclusive!

Boom nailed it.....but I cheated

Well, tonight is a special night.

This weekend is the Montana Brewers Association Fall Festival. This is the biggest festival of the year for the Montana brewers and of course as many of you know, the Montana micro brewery industry has been booming. We were the 50th micro in the state and at least 5 or 6 more have opened since us, perhaps more...

At any rate, at the 2015 fall festival, Muddy Creek is proud to be the winner of the Best of Festival Award for our Occupy Oktoberfest Ale. It's a pumpkin ale actually.

Congrats man that's awesome. Is this the pumpkin ale that finished to dry?

No, it finished right at 1.020 - right where you said your experience with that yeast fits. I've used the yeast a few times and pretty much it always finishes right in that range. (I think once I managed to squeeze it down to 1.018)

I kinda 'wanted' it to dry out a bit more, but I guess in hindsight I'm glad it didn't. (understatement.) Had it dried out more it would have really lost any residual sweetness.

Thumbs up! Hang that one on the wall!

And... make some more of that Occupy, cause I suspect folks will be asking for it. ;-)