Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

I've been through both threads and I applaud your efforts! It really sheds a light on what it takes to set up a Brew Pub AND be successful. I have several friends pushing me to do the same but I always push back with Capitol? Location? Free Labor? I'm too old to work a day job and start a brewery. I'm good with friends enjoying my homebrew for now.

On another note I am planning a trip to GABF this year and plan to stay in Butte on Sep 29th on the way back to the Pacific Northwest. Hope to make it in to town from Jackson, Wy before you close, otherwise we're staying in town until you do open. I have a pro-am beer being entered by Reuben's Brews in Seattle (Marzen) this year so maybe I'll have some hardware to bring home along with a growler or two of your beer!

Prost!

Lou

I wish you the best of luck lstrowge!

Couple updates. As you see I've been "out" for a week or two. We've had a bunch of stuff going on. I had a new account open up and I had to get them set up and since we are self-distributing that means "Yours-truly" gets to clean the lines. We have a very nice line-cleaner setup so it's really just a time issue. Sadly time is one of the luxuries I'm kinda short on these days - but I got it done. Actually managed to wrap that up by 8:00 a.m. on Friday. Just had a ton of other stuff I had to do as well.

So now we're distributed to 4 different places around the area. We hope to continue growing to at least one extra venue a month. That will supplement our income nicely and manage our growth alright I think.

HOWEVER! my fan is covered in ****! My sump pump stopped working about 2 weeks ago that that flat out put a halt to every damn thing in the brewhaus. You can't brew, you can't transfer, you can't clean... I mean you find out real quick and in hurry how much your life depends on a damn sump pump. So we had to monkey with that for quite awhile. We got it fixed but we were dead in the water for a week or so...

Meanwhile, 5 bbls of IPA I had sitting in fermenters ended up staying on the cake too long and it's already starting to lose it's pop. I should have pulled the yeast cake on it as soon as I started having issues with the sump but I was occupied. Short story... I had to brew another batch of IPA, which sucks. Hops are expensive, yeast is expensive.

But wait ~ there's MORE! I've mentioned that we use ambient temperature control in our fermentation room. I keep the room at 60 degrees to ferment the IPA. Well, our cooling unit failed us on Saturday during our brewing cycle so the fermenting room heated up to around 70 or so. The IPA had only been fermenting for 3 days. It's probably near the end of it's cycle, but I'm pretty sure we're going to see some off-flavors from the temp increase. Which just pisses me off.

Course I have the cooling unit fixed now, but what's done is done. I'll have to finish out the second batch of IPA and see what we've got. It's just frustrating. Those folks were right. Getting open is the easy part. Then you've got to maintain product consistency and keep producing week after week.

But, we'll get past this and move forward. Just more info about the day to day management of the brewery. It's the full time job away from my full time job. I still love it though. We had a musician in on Saturday who was flat out amazing. Truly a joy to listen to him. We also have sold 5 quarter barrels to private parties and a couple half barrels, so things are going nicely as far as that goes.

I have a couple seasonals to brew and we need to restock on malt and hops.

Oh, and THIS is exciting. We purchased a keg cleaner. It will be shipped at the end of July. We'll be able to clean 20 kegs an hour which will be a vast improvement over our current situation. My assistants will be eternally grateful!

Hmmmm, what is the best idea to do with screwed up beer as a business? Dump it? Take it home since you don't want to sell something that isn't your best? Sell it at regular price and hope nobody notices the difference (had this happen to me, used to go to one brewpub that had a great Belgian strong ale, or at least it was great half the time, was just wildly inconsistent)? Sell it at a discount?

Oh first off Bosh, they notice! They notice right away. I have found it's best to be very forthcoming. We've been fortunate in that we've only had to outright dump out one batch so far.

We've actually talked to quite a few breweries around us according to what we're told the S.O.P. in this case is to determine A) is it a bad beer or just B) not the beer you were specifically brewing? Because that matters.

A "different" beer that still tastes good can be put on tap as something else, as long as it still meets the standards your brewery requires for serving. Obviously a "bad" beer just needs to be quietly shown the back exit.

There's more to it than that of course... how much did you make? etc. How far off were you? Do you have to register an entirely new beer with the state or is this just a very small seasonal run? One of the breweries near us however told us that one of their most popular regular beers now came about due to a beer that came out differently than they originally intended and therefore they put on as a "seasonal" and it was so well liked that they figured out exactly what happened in the process to produce it and put it into the regular rotation.

Honestly thats facinating! I had never really considered what a brewery does if they 'miss' a bit. Bad batches 'go away', but if it's just a 'bit' off....

So it sounds like you said seasonal beers don't have to be registered as New beers? Maybe I read that wrong, but that must really help foster creativity. Knowing that you can try something new and not get wacked with registration fees and red tape!

Sorry, been gone a bit. Had a vacation n'at.

Remember that IPA that sat on the cake a bit too long? Well, say hello to "Sunburn". Our newest addition to the Muddy Creek Family. You got lemons, make Lemonade. Not literally of course, we already have Lemonade... in this case, you add some Serrano peppers and you make Sunburn Serrano Pepper beer!

This week is Folk Festival in Butte. That means our city population will swell three or four-fold. It ought to be a very good week for us. We're featuring a new beer on tap (Sunburn,) and we have our randalizer going with strawberries flavoring our Good Time wheat ale. Soon we'll hook up our second randalizer on our IPA so we have fresh Cascade hops infusing rockin' grapefruit and citrus aroma into our fresh IPA.

It ought to be a good week. Sorry I've been gone so long. Been busy. Very busy.

Our brand spankin' new keg cleaner should be here in a few more weeks. That will be a blessing. 20 kegs in an hour. Imagine the POWER coursing through us. The unimaginable POWER!

Well, that went well...

We brewed up 5 gallons of Sunburn and put it on as a "tester". It ran out in about 3 hours. I guess we'll have to go and make some more. We did get feedback on the Serrano beer though. It's not quite hot enough. The answer... upgrade to habanero's ...

In other news we are going to make an Irish Red for the Irish festival coming up in August. It's called An Ri Ra and in honor of that the beer is named An Ri Red. An Ri Ra (with accents,) translates roughly to "a ruckus" so this will be something like (very loosely) "a red ruckus". And that's very very loosely.

Anyway, Tomorrow is the big day in terms of the folk festival firing up. People are already starting to arrive. We've packed the hotels with flyers and discount coupons. We'll send folks into the crowds with more flyers tomorrow. Hell, I'm even going to get a haircut. The whole damn world could be ending!

We have Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout in the fermenters, Skinny Cow IPA is going into the brites today and we'll hopefully throw it on tap tomorrow afternoon. (We should have gotten it into the brites yesterday. I'm a bit bitter about that. But time moves on.)

I'll be there. We aren't doing a booth this year. Not enough folks know about us. We'd just be a drop in the sea. However we are competing two products. Our Stout and our Porter.

I'll post our results. I would be happy to meet up with anybody who is at the festival. I'll be there with both my partners.

MuddyCreek said:

Well, that went well...

We brewed up 5 gallons of Sunburn and put it on as a "tester". It ran out in about 3 hours. I guess we'll have to go and make some more. We did get feedback on the Serrano beer though. It's not quite hot enough. The answer... upgrade to habanero's ...

In other news we are going to make an Irish Red for the Irish festival coming up in August. It's called An Ri Ra and in honor of that the beer is named An Ri Red. An Ri Ra (with accents,) translates roughly to "a ruckus" so this will be something like (very loosely) "a red ruckus". And that's very very loosely.

Anyway, Tomorrow is the big day in terms of the folk festival firing up. People are already starting to arrive. We've packed the hotels with flyers and discount coupons. We'll send folks into the crowds with more flyers tomorrow. Hell, I'm even going to get a haircut. The whole damn world could be ending!

We have Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout in the fermenters, Skinny Cow IPA is going into the brites today and we'll hopefully throw it on tap tomorrow afternoon. (We should have gotten it into the brites yesterday. I'm a bit bitter about that. But time moves on.)

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:lol
Good luck on the upcoming festivals.

I wasn't kidding about the world ending. Went in for a minor surgery today, (my second in my life.). I had a sinoplasty. Basically the surgeon improved my deviated septum (broken twice in college playing ball.). He also reduced my turbinates which are basically fatty masses in front of your sinus cavity openings so I will be able to breathe (and theoretically,) smell better.

So now I'm home resting until I need to go in tomorrow a.m. and oversee the Brewing of our new "best beer ever" according to the taproom staff. Crazy Beautiful is accounting for about 1/3 of all beer sales in the taproom so that's pretty cool. Unfortunately it's also an unplanned insertion in our Brew schedule.

(At this rate one wonders why we bother to plan the Brew schedule at all. ;- ).

Anyway, feeling the tiring effects of just the right amount of oxycodone. Not loopy or anything, just a bit sleepy. Have to breathe through my mouth 100% which sucks, literally as well as figuratively but the doctor says the steam tomorrow will be very good for my nose and sinus passages.

Well, that's about it for me. I'm going to bed now. Again. Take care and enjoy some of your own excellently crafted beer tomorrow. I won't be able to what with the meds but feel free to tell me what you had and how it tasted. I'll enjoy vicariously through you.

Sinoplasty sucks... That is all.

MuddyCreek said:

Sinoplasty sucks... That is all.

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Is the recovery rougher than you had expected?

I only ask because I may need to have a similar procedure done to correct a nose that i had broken for me during college soccer. I basically only breath through my left nostril. The right one is 80-90% closed off.

I also had that surgery only i also had a ton of polyps removed. Recovery was awful.

I had the surgery on Friday last week. That part was awesome. I missed all of it and woke up well and truly drugged. By say Sunday things began to suck. Never because of pain, but because of blockage. I'm not supposed to blow my nose. And I'm one of those passive aggressive "ok, I WON'T blow that ****er just prove that I can go an entire week without DOING it!" guys. Well, that's been the awful part, feeling like my right side of my nose and my sinuses are intermittently blocked all the way up into my brain and then suddenly gushing all over the place. Mostly clear or slightly pinkish stuff. Nothing too terrible but just kinda gross and overwhelming maddeningly "always there."

But every day gets a little bit better. Sinus flushes are now something I look forward to with a joy bordering on inappropriate. However, I can already tell that I'll be able to breath MUCH better and that my nose is noticeably less crooked. I've already had 7 women ask to have sex with me. (Part of the last paragraph is not entirely true, I'll leave it to you to determine which part.)

MuddyCreek said:

I had the surgery on Friday last week. That part was awesome. I missed all of it and woke up well and truly drugged. By say Sunday things began to suck. Never because of pain, but because of blockage. I'm not supposed to blow my nose. And I'm one of those passive aggressive "ok, I WON'T blow that ****er just prove that I can go an entire week without DOING it!" guys. Well, that's been the awful part, feeling like my right side of my nose and my sinuses are intermittently blocked all the way up into my brain and then suddenly gushing all over the place. Mostly clear or slightly pinkish stuff. Nothing too terrible but just kinda gross and overwhelming maddeningly "always there."

But every day gets a little bit better. Sinus flushes are now something I look forward to with a joy bordering on inappropriate. However, I can already tell that I'll be able to breath MUCH better and that my nose is noticeably less crooked. I've already had 7 women ask to have sex with me. (Part of the last paragraph is not entirely true, I'll leave it to you to determine which part.)

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I had the same operation about 10 years ago and completely sympathize. Of course I also had a Uvulectomy and my tonsils removed at the same time for sleep apnea. I don't know if they put stints up your sinuses, but that was extremely irritating for me. I will say that I've only had 1 sinus infection since then (used to be every 3-4 months) and colds don't seem to hit me as bad. Plus my sense of smell and breathing have definitely improved, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

MuddyCreek said:

I've already had 7 women ask to have sex with me. (Part of the last paragraph is not entirely true, I'll leave it to you to determine which part.)

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So you're saying the drugs are good?

Well, we moved about 10 bbls to secondary on Saturday and brewed up 10 more. It was a long, but productive day. I have to make an epic grain order this week.

We need to brew up the blonde ale again, it's getting low. Also need to brew some more Porter soon. (Who knew the porter would do so well in the summer?)

Meanwhile I'll be tasting the pepper beer tonight to see if it's ready to carb for the weekend. It won't last through a night. (We're only doing a 1/4.) We finished up the Irish Red and it's GREAT! We'll be putting it in the brites by Friday or so. There's an Irish festival in town in August and we'll roll out about 6 kegs of the Red for that. Hopefully it will go over really well for the festival.

Our Pale Ale is also ready to go into the Brites. We'll probably move that on Wednesday so it will be ready to keg by Friday. That's been very popular and obviously we're thrilled about that. We can't keep that stuff on tap.

Tonight we're going to do some experimenting with hop extracts. We'll see how well we like them from a tasting perspective. We're going to try a few drops on some Bud Light and see what's what. Both Todd and I have been reading about how more and more breweries are using some combination of hops extracts in their brewing processes and I figured I would be willing to at least check it out.

According to the numbers you can take a 10 bbl batch of beer up to 95+ IBUs for about $100 worth of this hops extract. That's a pretty good price and would save quite a bit on volume when you consider what you lose to hops absorption, trub loss etc. So, what the hell. We'll try it out and see if it has some weird flavors. I can always use flavor and aroma hops and simply add the bittering hops extracts later.

I'm not sold that it's something I want to do, but I'm willing to look at options.

Sounds like a ghetto ABinbev shortcut.
I know its a trend, but buck it.

Oh I think hop extract has a place indeed. When you look at the wort you are not leaving behind in the kettle, the bales of hops you are not keeping in the deep freeze and the consistency of bittering from batch to batch hop extract has an important place in commercial brewing. Whether you like the effects is a different conversation.

Way to keep an open mind and try out new things!

Ghetto like Heady Topper and Pliny?

Well, we tried it last night. We wanted to get some Bud Light so we could try the bittering extracts on a neutral base but all my Bud Light in the basement already has some dry hopping in it. ;-)

So we went with our mildest beer, Dirty Blonde. The results:

First off, the company we were checking out offers a number of products. Obviously, high on the list is the bittering extract which essentially just adds bittering hops. This is pre-isomerized pure hops extract that you add to the beer pretty much as you put it in the brites. You can calculate precisely what you want in terms of bittering IBUs per barrel and add it in. Stir and apply your CO2.

We added a big blast of the bittering extract to really get a feel of what it would do. We literally went for 97 ibus on top of the relatively mild 25 ibus we put in the blonde.

As a result, we did NOT get a face-twisting bitter beer, but you did certainly feel it in the back of your throat. Of course we were doing this at an ounce at a time. If you were drinking entire pints of it, you'd feel it build on you. We did another test where we added a shot of bittering extract along with some aroma extract and THAT really did a nice boost on the blonde.

In the end, the cost is very reasonable. You can add 100 ibus to 10 bbls for about $100. (That's just for the pure bittering additions.) But what you can do pretty nicely is use your standard hops for flavoring and aroma and then simply add your bittering additions later. I'm not sure how that's going to work out ultimately, but we were impressed enough that we're willing to try it out on a test batch. So we're going to buy a couple bottles of the bittering extract and we'll come up with a very small run of something to try it out on. If it doesn't really do what we want, lesson learned and no great investment. If it does work nicely we'll look at trying other things and seeing how it goes over time.

I'm not convinced that I'd move away entirely from traditional hops. You have too much variety and too many aroma/flavor profiles that make your beer unique. The extracts are a bit too generic to give you quite the custom profile you want. But certainly for straight up bittering, it may be a decent way to go.

I'll let you know.

Sorry I've been away so long. Been busy. Man, my cupboard is bare! We have a brand shiny new keg cleaner that is supposed to ship today as I'm told. That's going to make life SO much easier. Our malt supplier had a mix up on their end and they shipped us a much larger breweries order so we had to refuse it since the freight company was an "all or nothing" kind of deal. That means I need to get the malt shop to get us our correct order to us within 4 days. Good times!

On the positive side, my cupboard wouldn't be barren if mice weren't nibbling away at my crackers. We continue to do alright despite the fact that the 4th brewery has now opened. We did of course experience a dip in our business as we expected but we're still doing fine, still making money. We expect after their honeymoon period things will even out again and the fall will bring a nice return of business.

The new brewery has some fine beer and a very nice atmosphere. With 4 places in town now, we have a veritable tourist opportunity in town now. Butte has 4 breweries and a distillery. It's practically the wild west again. Admittedly, one of the breweries is a brew-pub that really only makes enough to serve the pizza joint it's located in, but they do make fine beer and they have great pizza so you have DOUBLE the reason to stop by CopperWild if you come to Butte.

So, plan your vacation, get a room and make the big tour. 4 breweries and a distillery. Plenty to do over a day or two. Start early. Hydrate, eat plenty of food. There's also a ton of history in Butte and the surrounding area AND several other world class breweries within just an hour or two of Butte. You literally can't go wrong.

This has been a public service announcement by Gregg... ; - )

Busy is good, sounds like everything is positive with you guys there so that's great.. Thanks for the update I'll have to make trip sometime for the tour ! (Even though you're 2,220 miles from me here in southeast PA)

Birchrun_brewery said:

Busy is good, sounds like everything is positive with you guys there so that's great.. Thanks for the update I'll have to make trip sometime for the tour ! (Even though you're 2,220 miles from me here in southeast PA)

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Go Stillers!

Well, let's see. With our Irish festival about to open (Butte is a BIG Irish town,) we're going to roll out our Irish Red Ale. The festival is called An Ri Ra. Which translates roughly to "A Ruckus". We've named the red, An Ri Red, which we affectionately translate to "A Red Ruckus." (Yes, we know it doesn't translate cleanly.)

We're also going to roll out a rotator that is basically a bitchier cousin to our "starter beer" Dirty Blonde. Uptown Blonde is a bit higher in Ibu's and ABV's.

This afternoon I'll be bottling up some Muddy Creek and some Storm the Door Porter for the GABF. We'll send that off for the judges and hope that they smile upon the little brewery from SouthWestern Montana. Hopefully we'll compete well in the Stout and Porter pack and get some good feedback from the judges so we can build upon their comments and improve our products.

In the coming year we plan on competing in more regional festivals and competitions and hopefully we can get some hardware over the upcoming year and increase our distribution. We're just about ready to take our next step as far as growth and expansion.

So, there you have it. All the news that's currently fit to print. I'll let you know how the GABF is and send you some photos. I suppose should I have a bit of time I could post a couple videos of our musicians at the brewery. We are pretty well known for our live music. It's kinda our niche here in Butte.

And... They're off.

We just sent our beer off to the competition. Very exciting stuff. Our Chocolate Stout and our Vanilla Porter are about to meet the world in a big way.

We'll see how they do. As I mentioned before, as far as I know tonight is the debut of An Ri Red. That ought to be exciting. I'll be up at the brewery to visit and see how that beer does. We also have our first Montana Brewers' Association Festival event this weekend in Helena (State Capital.) We'll be taking our pale ale and our amber. It ought to be fun.

MuddyCreek said:

We're just about ready to take our next step as far as growth and expansion.

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What is the next step?

What is the next step?

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Currently we are working on local self-distribution. Our next step would be to do some larger regional distribution and get outside the town and the county.

The biggest risk to any small business and particularly to a small brewery is to believe your local press and grow too quickly. It's easy to become excited at the prospect of launching into distribution contracts with distributors who will take a significant chunk of your revenue to cart your beer off to God knows where only to return half of it because somebody somewhere has never heard of you before.

Now, if the distributor didn't take care of your kegs in transit, or if the end-client didn't take care of your kegs you may have beer that got over-heated or over-cooled. Thus you have bad beer coming back to your brewery for one reason or another. Suddenly you have beer returning that you have to dump. You don't get paid for that. The distributor doesn't pay you JACK for beer they don't sell. See, they don't have any skin in the game. (They don't really tell you that up front...) So if anything goes wrong for any reason, you just eat it.

The other issue is on the OTHER end of the spectrum. Let's say your beer is VERY well received. Suddenly your little 10 barrel system that has already been taxed to the hilt just to keep YOUR little taproom full is now being asked to send kegs all over the 3rd biggest state in the union. Sleep much?

There is a GREAT deal to be said for taking it slow and controlling your growth. I have one partner who is balls to the wall to grow like mad. He's the taproom guy and he sees people enjoying the beer. He gets that people LIKE the product. He doesn't spend 12 to 16 hour days in the brewhaus making and transferring beer around tanks trying to keep up with the demand up there. He just gets to complain to me when one of our "favorite beers" (Have I mentioned they're ALL FAVORITES,) go off tap because we can't keep up with current demand. In a very good way this is positive because it creates a natural supply and demand scenario where our products are constantly sought after. People know that a given product is highly in demand and you'd better get it while it's hot so to speak. On the other hand, it can create some irritation. When you come in and ask for a "Crazy Beautiful" it only takes a few times of hearing "That's off tap this week" before you say, "I wonder what they have over at brewery X?"

So... We need to manage our growth. We need to grow, but in a way that We can control and maintain and that makes sense for us so we don't implode.

Breweries are hard man...

MuddyCreek said:

Currently we are working on local self-distribution. Our next step would be to do some larger regional distribution and get outside the town and the county.

The biggest risk to any small business and particularly to a small brewery is to believe your local press and grow too quickly. It's easy to become excited at the prospect of launching into distribution contracts with distributors who will take a significant chunk of your revenue to cart your beer off to God knows where only to return half of it because somebody somewhere has never heard of you before.

Now, if the distributor didn't take care of your kegs in transit, or if the end-client didn't take care of your kegs you may have beer that got over-heated or over-cooled. Thus you have bad beer coming back to your brewery for one reason or another. Suddenly you have beer returning that you have to dump. You don't get paid for that. The distributor doesn't pay you JACK for beer they don't sell. See, they don't have any skin in the game. (They don't really tell you that up front...) So if anything goes wrong for any reason, you just eat it.

The other issue is on the OTHER end of the spectrum. Let's say your beer is VERY well received. Suddenly your little 10 barrel system that has already been taxed to the hilt just to keep YOUR little taproom full is now being asked to send kegs all over the 3rd biggest state in the union. Sleep much?

There is a GREAT deal to be said for taking it slow and controlling your growth. I have one partner who is balls to the wall to grow like mad. He's the taproom guy and he sees people enjoying the beer. He gets that people LIKE the product. He doesn't spend 12 to 16 hour days in the brewhaus making and transferring beer around tanks trying to keep up with the demand up there. He just gets to complain to me when one of our "favorite beers" (Have I mentioned they're ALL FAVORITES,) go off tap because we can't keep up with current demand. In a very good way this is positive because it creates a natural supply and demand scenario where our products are constantly sought after. People know that a given product is highly in demand and you'd better get it while it's hot so to speak. On the other hand, it can create some irritation. When you come in and ask for a "Crazy Beautiful" it only takes a few times of hearing "That's off tap this week" before you say, "I wonder what they have over at brewery X?"

So... We need to manage our growth. We need to grow, but in a way that We can control and maintain and that makes sense for us so we don't implode.

Breweries are hard man...

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Wow. I've never inquired about distributors, holy hell that sounds like a myriad of problems. Seems like there is exponentially more issues/complications when distributing comes into play. It appears as if the distributors don't have any incentive to care about the product they have to distribute.

One the other hand sounds like your tap room is doing extremely well. How much are you "taxing" your system already?

Are you going to be at ales for trails in billings at the end of sept?

I should clarify. I was unfair when I said the distributors don't have skin in the game. They do have to market your beer, pick it up, transport it and deliver it. That ain't free. If the customer doesn't like it for some reason, the distributor has to round up your beer and bring it back to you. So they DO have some skin in the game. A little anyway.

Not currently planning on attending that one. We'll just be getting back from GABF in Denver.

Awesome writeup as usual. Thanks for the continued updates.

Hey, I saw Rusty Gears Brewing at the Montana Brewers Association Summer Festival in Helena this weekend. He stopped by and said hello. I was serving some Crazy Beautiful pale ale and No Paddle Amber.

The amber has a decidedly aggressive hops bite to it. In fact it's really just short of an IPA in terms of hops character right now, although that will mellow out a bit in a month or two. We brought the amber because the double IPA we wanted to bring just wasn't quite ready so we figured the hop-junkies would enjoy the No Paddle. And in fact, I came back with less of the amber than the pale ale.

You just never can tell. The Festival was pleasant. The weather was amazing and there were over 30 breweries there. Unfortunately, they had us set up at 11:00 and people didn't start coming in until 3:00 which means the ice provided was pretty well gone long before anybody really showed up. Keeping the beer good and cold was a real chore. By the end of the night most of the beer was not at it's best. However people had been tasting beer from 30 different breweries so...

Anyway, we've cut our teeth at our first Montana Brewer's Association Festival event. So THAT's out of the way. The place was absolutely packed! Lots of fun, tons of great beer and brewers. I was alone so I didn't get much of a chance to go and visit with folks. Next time I hope to get out and walk around a bit to chat more.

I met a great young couple from Seattle who are interested in starting a brewery. They asked if I would be willing to talk with them about the process of getting a startup brewery up and running. I just smiled and said "You probably couldn't have found a better person here to talk to at this point in time."

I told them "You're going to hear people tell you that it's going to cost you twice as much as you expect and take twice as much time. And you'll think to yourself, Ok, I get what you're saying, and I know what you mean, but I have a "system". I think I can save some money here and here and here. I really believe I can do this for this amount." I said... What it will come down to is - "It will cost you at least twice as much as you think and take twice as long. Cause I thought I had a system and I thought I could save time and money here, and here and here..."

However, it certainly can be done. It just takes hard work, patience and a clear goal. I suggested they come check out the threads here of all the other brewery startups. Lots of good information from folks from different states who have had to work through the process and figure things out as they go. It's kind of a never-ending process.

For example, what I learned this weekend... Muddy Creek is kinda like the orphan child in the state right now. All these massive awesome breweries showed up with the bling and canopies and awesome stuff and we were like Oliver saying (Imagine my amazing Cockney accent here...) "Please sir, try my beer."

We need to improve our curb appeal just a bit I think. That's my deep thought of the day.

MuddyCreek said:

Hey, I saw Rusty Gears Brewing at the Montana Brewers Association Summer Festival in Helena this weekend. He stopped by and said hello. I was serving some Crazy Beautiful pale ale and No Paddle Amber.

The amber has a decidedly aggressive hops bite to it.

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It was hoptastic if you like that kinda thing. I'm gonna wait for it to mellow a bit and next time I'm in Butte pick up another growler or 2.

You know what's funny Jinks? There was a guy at the festival who was raving over everybody's IPA's. He LOVED him some Tamarack IPA. (And I get that. Those guys make a fine IPA.) But he comes over, asks about our DIPA, which we didn't have, but tried our Amber instead.

He KILLS us with his rating. Gives us a 1/2 star. The Amber is virtually an IPA itself. In fact if there's a flaw in the beer, it's too darn hoppy right now. He's running around just gushing over everyone's IPAs and he just hates our Amber. I think he was just caught off guard by it. Nonetheless, I was irritated.

But it turns out, not EVERYONE is going to like your beer. Who knew?

MuddyCreek said:

You know what's funny Jinks? There was a guy at the festival who was raving over everybody's IPA's. He LOVED him some Tamarack IPA. (And I get that. Those guys make a fine IPA.) But he comes over, asks about our DIPA, which we didn't have, but tried our Amber instead.

He KILLS us with his rating. Gives us a 1/2 star. The Amber is virtually an IPA itself. In fact if there's a flaw in the beer, it's too darn hoppy right now. He's running around just gushing over everyone's IPAs and he just hates our Amber. I think he was just caught off guard by it. Nonetheless, I was irritated.

But it turns out, not EVERYONE is going to like your beer. Who knew?

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yep and then there is:

I really hate the IPA centric group of hipster psuedo beer nerds! when I am looking to see if a brewer is really good and I want to use only one beer to do it I go for the pale ales, easy enough to make but a really good pale is more subtle and balanced I personally feel.

And there's the truth of it.

You can hide flaws in a stout or a porter. You can hide flaws in an IPA. Your blondes, your pales, your hefe's and your wheat ales... They're harder to hide flaws with.

You want to find out if somebody's got good clean equipment and processes? Try their milder beers. Glass houses and all that...

Well in less than a month we'll be down in Denver.

Things are starting to pick up again with Summer tapering off. The college students have returned and the partners have come up with a new and bold scheme. I now only need to keep 4 beers on tap at all times, the rest I can rotate through at will as long as I keep specific "styles" on tap. IE, I'll need a wheat, an amber or red, a fruit beer and a spice beer etc.

That will free me up to have some fun. We'll see how THAT goes.