Muddy Creek Brewing Co. Brewery Build- Start to Finish Thread

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St. Patty's Day in Butte.

Strap in!

I'll post pictures if I manage to get any worth posting.
 
At last count, Montana was #3, behind Vermont and Oregon.......... But we are gaining!!




Gitmoe said:
Big Sky country has the most breweries per capita in the country from what I remember. But that's because there's no people from what I can gather... lol. Good luck with the adventure. I've watched a lot of small breweries open and struggle here in the Philly area. Our market is what I would call over-saturated at the moment. I do some freelance design work for one of the local places so I get to see first hand what they deal with. I work in the industry in other manners locally as well so I know a lot of brewery owners and brewmasters. It's a wild ride to say the least. Good luck with signing a distribution agreement. I know that can be a make or break decision depending how your 3 tier distribution is actually written in MT. Best of luck man...
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My haul from Muddy Creek today. IMG_0087.JPG

Muddy Creek chocolate stout, No Paddle amber, Lemonade, and Root-beer. and a Good time Wheat ale.

Met Chris (nice guy), and I am impressed with the business its a nice place.
 
I hope you enjoy them Jinks. We'd appreciate it if you'd give us an impartial review on Facebook and untappd.com.

Did you try a Dirty Muddy Cow? (Our three level black and tan with Dirty Blonde, Muddy Creek and Skinny Cow?)
 
Congratulations on your success!! I'm glad your opening went so well. Screw what the haters think of your fermenters, after all you're accomplishing what so many here dream of. Keep on keeping on brother!
 
Whew. What a ride! This has been a captivating story from the very beginning. I love the post about the reality TV show idea. That is a money maker for someone!

You are living my dream. Even after reading about all the money, time, blood, sweat & tears you guys have endured & hearing about the constant paperwork, tracking & cleaning, I still want to one day pull the trigger & go big! (We must be a crazy bunch) Just like you, I don't want to be rich off of it, but more to watch the enjoyment I can bring to peoples tastebuds. (and to put one more skewer in macro brew) *sips pumpkin peach ale :cross:

Congrats on your opening & cheers to all your hard work on making your dream come true, also for taking us all along for the ride! If I ever get a chance to be in the area, I will, without a doubt, stop in.
Cheers! :mug:
 
MuddyCreek,

I may have missed it, but what do you guys do with the spent grains?
I know from working in a 7bbl op, there is a bunch of grain to get rid of. (spent a total of 3 days helping a buddy). They had a farmer come get theirs.

pb
 
MuddyCreek said:
I hope you enjoy them Jinks. We'd appreciate it if you'd give us an impartial review on Facebook and untappd.com.

Did you try a Dirty Muddy Cow? (Our three level black and tan with Dirty Blonde, Muddy Creek and Skinny Cow?)
Click to expand...

Did not try the Dirty Muddy Cow 10ish am is a little early to exbeeriment for me. We were there pretty much at opening. What I have drunk so far is goooood though.
 
Bob, we have a local rancher come and pick up the grain on weekends. (We brew on Saturday and occasionally on Sunday.) He mixes it with his regular feed and gives it to the cattle. So our brewing assistants take the spent grain out of the mash tun, haul it up to the containers out back of the brewery where it waits for him to pick it up. We usually leave somewhere between 500 and 800 lbs a week for him. When we double batch it'll be twice that.
 
I forgot to mention that my 2 friends that came with me also bought growlers of beer, so between the three of us we have every style you brew.
We're waiting for another friend (we are all home brewers) to get back from Arizona, and at that time we will crack open all the growlers, drink and be merry, and have some feedback for you.
 
Well Jinks, I see you have a couple of the growlers there. On the back you'll see three quotes. Each of the owners selected a quote to add to the back. One of our unique little twists with the brewery, I guess.

You get to guess which quote I picked to add to the growler. The regulars enjoy trying to match up what they know of the three of us and figuring out which of us picked which quote.
 
MuddyCreek said:
Well Jinks, I see you have a couple of the growlers there. On the back you'll see three quotes. Each of the owners selected a quote to add to the back. One of our unique little twists with the brewery, I guess.

You get to guess which quote I picked to add to the growler. The regulars enjoy trying to match up what they know of the three of us and figuring out which of us picked which quote.
Click to expand...

Well I don't have a lot of info to go with, but from what I have read here I guess your quote is about being able to tell a great beer from a taste but better to drink the whole thing.
 
That is correct.

People who know me generally attribute the Napoleon quote to me as I was a French major in college.
 
Alright, so the next phase of the whole brewery thing is commencing.

We've been open just about a month now and the taproom is beginning to settle into a regular pattern. That means we can pretty much predict how much beer we are going through in a week give or take so I can feel safe saying "Ya, we can commit to some accounts."

So, with that said, we're opening our first account tomorrow I guess.

We'll be sending a keg of our blonde ale over to a local restaurant. They wanted a light ale and members of their staff said they really liked Dirty Blonde so last night our partner who happens to be the business manager was out to dinner at the restaurant. He talked with the restaurant owner and BOOM, just like that we have an account set up for one tap.

Tonight we have MacKenzie River Pizza coming over to do a formal tasting of our beers and decide which ones they want to put on tap. I'm also trying to get the Montana Club restaurant and Sparky's over to do that as well. (It would be nice to do that tasting all at once. I'm also not against fomenting some competition against them as I'm only willing to put 2 kegs of any one beer out at this time and with three restaurants that leaves one of them as the odd man out on the stout or IPA.)

The reason I only want to put out two kegs of a given type is to manage my production schedule. With a 10 bbl system and with us putting 2 new beers on in the next month we have to be a little reasonable with how many kegs we send out to restaurants and pubs in the area. So I'm not just being a jerk.

Anyway, the accounts should boost weekly sales a bit. We're always happy to see that and they'll increase our profile in the community as well.
 
1st off, I'm glad you guys are not just throwing away the spent grain.

2nd, I am having a blast watching you guys progress. I like that you are trying to learn how to walk before you try and run.

You and your team are handling the learning curves very well and skillfully. That should be a big factor in your success.

Now for my big question.

When do you start the mail order side??? I would like to get a 12 pack each week of a different type until I've tried them all! :D

And then there's the beer of the month club,... when does that start for us mail order customers? Bound to be more of us rooting for you than the locals. ;-)

pb --- who do I make the check out to and how much?:)
 
We have two kegs going out of town tonight to Helena Montana at Miller's Crossing. They'll be featuring Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout and Dirty Blonde Ale. Basically they'll be covering both ends of our beer spectrum.

Meanwhile, back home we're featuring a couple of groups at the brewery tonight. 5,6,7,8 (A ballroom dance studio,) is having their end of session classes party at our brewery tonight and the local homebrew club is also meeting at the brewery this evening.

We should have a fine evening getting these two together.
 
Just read this thread start to finish, it has been a ride!

Could you discuss a bit more about the licensing process? Both federal, state, and local. What did the inspections entail? Any tips on licensure or inspections?

Thanks for taking the time to keep us updated with your detailed posts!
 
Will get back to that question. Just saw it this morning. Been busy. And I have to get to the brewery this morning to make a blackberry pale ale.

Licensing wasn't too bad. You simply need to communicate with the state and local agents. Know what they want and be prepared. I'll go into that in detail.
 
Ok, sorry. I haven't had much time for ANYTHING lately. I suppose that's a good sign. The brewery has been busy. I'll try to sum up our first couple months...

Consistency is hard! Our I.P.A. is ridiculously popular among people who are not huge fans of I.P.A.s. This is because it's more of an English style I.P.A. (For the sake of ease, I'm going to stop using the "dots" now.) I've mentioned this before, the partners really wanted me to make an "approachable" IPA, so I brewed an English style that focused much more on the malt end and less on the front end bitterness or even the lingering bitterness. Instead we feature the hops aroma and the malt. (Much like the original IPAs that were shipped over to India.)

This has proven wildly popular among people who don't like particularly bitter beers. It's still pretty strong, has a very nice hoppy aroma but not the extraordinary bitter flavor. However, among West Coast IPA fans, Skinny Cow has of course been a dismal disappointment. There's no reasoning with those folks. They don't care about style discussions. They only know that Americans have created a variation of the IPA that doesn't even remotely resemble the original style but they LIKE IT!

So, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the amazing difficulty with which I can acquire the hops necessary to make the original Skinny Cow formulation, we have updated the beer. Now it is much more in line with the West Coast fellow's perception of what it "ought to be". Now, on one hand, I myself prefer this style of IPA. On the other hand, I know we will disappoint a large part of our clientele who have really come to love the original Skinny Cow recipe.

In other news, we've released a 6th beer. Storm the Door vanilla porter is now on tap both on CO2 and on Nitro. It's doing very well as I expected. (I think it's my best beer.) In a couple weeks we'll also release a seasonal, Clementine. That's an orange-infused wheat ale. I also brewed up a blackberry pale ale that should be ready by mid May.

We have a couple of brew-fests coming up. One in nearby Bozeman and another in Livingston. Both ought to be good opportunities to get our name out there within a hundred miles or so and let people know who we are and where we're from.

So things are moving along in terms of the brewery.

Now, the question was about licensing. From the federal perspective, there wasn't much to do other than fill in the paperwork. That was pretty straight-forward. You do have to fill out all the forms, let the Feds and the State know what products (beers) you will be making and what their alcohol content will be. You will then be expected to stay within .5% of that ABV, I believe in perpetuity. I don't know if or how they check that, but I don't really want to find out.

The State was a bit more complicated. Each state, of course, has its own laws regarding the manufacture and sale of alcohol. What I can tell you is that Montana has an average period of 90+ days from the point of submission until you are given a provisional license to manufacture. We got ours in just over 40 days. Why, you ask? Because my partner Chris called our state TTB (Alcohol licensing board in the state) department representative and talked to her several times and became very familiar with precisely what the state needed in order to approve our license application.

So, in short, learn what your state needs, then contact the state rep and ask lots and lots of questions. Get on a friendly basis with the rep and stay in contact with him or her. Our application went through in just over 1/2 the normal amount of time because of this.

Now... Local rules are a bit different. (They're also tied in with the state regs so it gets a bit muddled here...)

In Montana you can get a provisional license to manufacture, but you can't sell or serve until you are fully licensed. To do THAT you must pass all your inspections. This includes your plumbing, electrical, and health inspection. It also includes your state inspection from the TTB (that state and federal alcohol board that regulates the sale of da hooch!)

We opted for a full kitchen so we could make soft drinks. That means we had to have a city/county health inspection so we could make food in the brewery. That means we needed washable walls, floors and ceilings. It also means our sinks had to be plumbed a certain way. All this has to be cleared with the city health guys AND your plumber before you start so you don't have tear a bunch of stuff out. We had to build walls around our brewhaus, then put up washable paneling on them. We had to paint the ceiling with washable latex, we had to cover the cement floor with washable paint and then seal it. Of course we had floor drains in for the brewery, but we had to put in particular sink drains as I mentioned earlier.

All our electrical had to be inspected and approved, the fire marshal had to come in and approve our fire-suppression system (see the epic posts about our 60k - 75k sprinkler system up above...) He also had to approve the fire-exit door we installed in the taproom and approve the capacity rating that the city gave us.

The state had to look at the plans we submitted for the physical walls, tables, chairs, bar, brewhaus layout, fermenting, lagering, aging, and milling room layouts. They sent a guy to confirm that everything was where we said it was going to be. (That's so they can confirm that in case of a fire or something we've demonstrated proof that there's a plan to get people out etc. At least I assume that's why they do it...)

If you're going to can or bottle, you also have to submit your labels to the Feds. This process can take some time as 1 guy. Yes ONE guy has to look at ALL the labels and decide if it's ok. Then he sends approval or disapproval back to you.

Now, the Feds are generally pretty easy. Basically, they just want your tax money. They want to know you have a way to determine how much wort you're producing from how much grain and hops and then how much beer your making from THAT. Then they want to know how much of that beer you're selling from your taproom and how much your distributing yourself, and how much you're sending to other distributors and finally how much your dumping down the drain or giving away for free and why...

The State wants to know that too as they also tax you, just not quite as much as the Feds.

From a local point of view, after you pass the health inspection, the electrical and plumbing inspections (which are passed along to the State of course,) you need your business license. You need to make sure you don't violate any zoning rules. (You aren't too close to a Church or a school are you?) You also need permits for any signage you want to put up.

Before you get too geared up, in Montana you really should send your entire staff through the alcohol server training course so they can get their certificate. You should keep records of THAT on file. That way, when the state comes through and asks you can say "Yes, sir, Emily DOES have her server certification!"

I think that's about it. Communication, communication, communication. Look over the local, state and federal laws and recognize that everything dominoes from the local down in terms of actual final licensing. You have to pass the local inspections, which are sent up the food chain for final, permanent licensing.

However, you CAN get provisional licensing to manufacture before you are fully licensed so you can start producing beer and hopefully be ready when you get your full license to serve the thirsty masses.

Whew... Sounds complicated, and it kinda is...
 
The case of the Skinny Cow (which sounds like the title of a cheap mystery novel) brings up a question. You mentioned that you have to submit your recipes to the state and stay within 0.5% ABV for them. I also seem to remember awhile back in this thread, you mentioned that you were better off submitting a bunch of recipes up front because they charged a fee every time you added one. So, does the state care if you take a beer like Skinny Cow and change the hops to make it more of an American IPA and less of an English IPA, or do they really not care so long as you still have an IPA on tap named Skinny Cow that's within 0.5% ABV of what it was a month ago (or year ago, or whatever)? I realize they're probably not reading the style guidelines and assessing each beer on a regular basis to make sure they match, just wondering how anal they are about that stuff. Had you planned on brewing a more West Coast style IPA at some point anyway? The reason I ask is that it seems like it's fairly normal for craft breweries to tinker with recipes from batch to batch or year to year as they try new things and am curious as to how serious the state is about sticking to a "recipe" rather than a "style".

I'll be traveling through Butte on my way to Missoula in July and hope to be able to stop by for a pint or two. Congrats on getting to where you've gotten so far!
 
So, since we are coming out with Skinny Cow V 2.0 and we still have quite a bit of Skinny Cow V 1.0 left on hand we are left with a conundrum about what to do... The answer - rebrand!

We'll continue with Skinny Cow V 1.0 since it's so popular among a ton of people as "Karma". What comes around, goes around. That way we won't alienate our loyal Skinny Cow lovers by just yanking their favorite beer from the taps.

Meanwhile we'll have a purer version of a west coast IPA for the nuttier folks and all the land can rejoice. (And hopefully pay me $4.00 a pint.)
 
MuddyCreek said:
So, since we are coming out with Skinny Cow V 2.0 and we still have quite a bit of Skinny Cow V 1.0 left on hand we are left with a conundrum about what to do... The answer - rebrand!

We'll continue with Skinny Cow V 1.0 since it's so popular among a ton of people as "Karma". What comes around, goes around. That way we won't alienate our loyal Skinny Cow lovers by just yanking their favorite beer from the taps.

Meanwhile we'll have a purer version of a west coast IPA for the nuttier folks and all the land can rejoice. (And hopefully pay me $4.00 a pint.)
Click to expand...

Wish I could drink there. All the breweries in Fort Collins are $5.00 to $6.00 a pint.
 
We finally got to the growlers that we picked up on St. Pats day. Still had good carbonation and I felt that the tastes of the amber and the stout had mellowed and matured a bit since I tasted them over a month earlier. Zero complaints on any of the beers, even from the non beer drinkers who tried some. I'm not a professional taster but if it means anything I will be making a trip back to Butte to buy more.
 
JINKS said:
We finally got to the growlers that we picked up on St. Pats day. Still had good carbonation and I felt that the tastes of the amber and the stout had mellowed and matured a bit since I tasted them over a month earlier. Zero complaints on any of the beers, even from the non beer drinkers who tried some. I'm not a professional taster but if it means anything I will be making a trip back to Butte to buy more.
Click to expand...

Off topic but I just wanted to say how I like the Rusty Gears logo. I call my "brewery" (also know as my garage) Rusty Iron Brewing. But I don't have a cool logo, just use pictures of old tractor on all my beer labels.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program of the most informative brewery start up ever.
 
I'm glad to hear it Jinks. We now have a vanilla porter on tap that I believe is an even better beer than the stout.

We also have an orange-infused wheat ale, and I've got a blackberry pale ale coming on tap in a bit. So there are quite a few new things to try in the pipeline.

I'm also considering brewing our first real hefe. (Well, more real anyway.) We'll use better than 50% wheat in the grain bill and a true hefe yeast, if not a true "german" yeast.

I still have to come up with a name for it. I'm also planning a much mellower hops profile. My current wheat beers actually use a fairly aggressive hops profile underneath. I give the beers time to mellow so they aren't as aggressive as when they're young but they still are built on Magnum, Centennial and Cascade. I'd like to go with some more noble hops pairings to ease out the rough edges and make a smoother beer.

Anyway, along with all that I also need to brew our house pale ale which we'll call Crazy Beautiful.

So, basically - no rest for the wicked. Not any time soon anyway.
 
Craft Beer Week is nearly upon us!

:mug:

Monday: Beer and Food Day - Our local Great Harvest Bread Company will be making "Cheddar Beer Soup" from our Stout, they'll also make some fresh bread to go along with it, also from some of our wort. This will be served to our patrons for a donation.

Tuesday: Learn To Brew Day - Our local homebrew club, the Mile High Mashers are coming to give a presentation on getting started with homebrewing. This is particularly timely as they are having a home-brew meeting just a couple days later and anybody who wants to attend will be invited. At the meeting people will learn what basic equipment is needed for an extract batch and how easy it is to get started and who they can call. Additionally, they'll be told where they can get Dry or Liquid Malt Extract and/or kits if they'd like to try a brew.

Wednesday: Hop To It Day - Following a suggestion from this very site, we'll be doing the "Dry Hop a Bud Light" exercise. We'll dry hop a few cases of Bud Light with 10 different varieties of hops, re-seal the bottles and let them sit for 3 days to "age". Then we'll let people taste the improved beer and see what each hops does to the Bud Light so they can begin to appreciate how each type of hops changes the profile of the relatively neutral Bud Light. Then we'll get into pairings of different hops blends so people can see how they can mix and match different hops and create more complex flavor profiles.

Thursday: Blind Taste Test Day - We'll purchase a bunch of commercial beers in varying styles that match our products and styles and set up stations in the taproom and our guests can come in and do blind taste tests, pitting our products against other brands. We're secure enough in our products that we can handle a few people preferring some commercial beers and we're confident that we'll win quite a few of those battles as well.

Friday: Bring a Stranger Day - Bring a strange growler, exchange it with us for one of ours and we'll give you a dollar off your fill.
 
Hey, great news. We attended our first festival today.

Our porter was a big hit. In fact, the servers said many people came up and said it was the best beer at the festival. Sadly they did NOT have a "Peoples' Choice" award. Nonetheless, we did end up kicking the entire keg.

Our Karma Belgian ale also did very well. We took a keg of Good Time Wheat Ale which also did pretty well considering it was a wheat beer. (Generally one assumes a wheat isn't going to do as well as other beers due to the fact that there is a good percentage of folks who just don't "do" wheat beers.)

So, all in all, it was a big success for us. We're really happy. We may end up with a couple accounts out of it. We certainly got some great word of mouth and a good deal of street cred with the other brewers around the state. Great day.
 
You guys have came along way from when you started, "Another one bites the dust".

I'm sure glad it has worked out so far for you guys. I know ya'll put alot of blood sweat and tears into it. You deserve to get alot of business. :rockin::rockin::rockin:

pb
 
We went to our second Brewfest last weekend. This time we went to a little town called Livingston where another brewery worked with the community to host a festival. There were about 15 or 16 other breweries there and around 46 different beers to taste.

All around it was a great day. We brought our chocolate stout, an IPA and a blackberry pale ale. The stout and the pale ale were very popular and the IPA did fairly well also. Several people said they thought the pale ale was among the best offerings at the festival so we were pleased.

A Billings (Largest town in Montana) brewery called Uberbrew had a barrel aged stout that was really amazing and I'm really determined to grab at least a couple barrels from our local distillery and set aside some porter and stout for 4 to 6 months to see how they turn out.

Anyway, several more folks asked us about accounts so that's positive.

Following is a Festival selfie and one of the other owners (Todd) manning our humble little booth. We sold a few shirts! Bonus!

1.jpg


2.jpg
 
I should also point out that if you ever get a chance to try "Clothing Optional Pale Ale" from DraughtWorks out of Missoula or their White Noise Hefeweizen you should definitely do so. The Pale Ale won a gold in 2014 in Denver and DraughtWorks won the Small Brewery of the year award that year. To say that beer is amazing is an understatement.

The hefe is also excellent. Should you find yourself in Missoula. Give them a try. Kettlehouse in Missoula is also great. They make a wonderful Scottish ale, Cold Smoke. Their IPA is pretty good too.
 
MuddyCreek said:
I should also point out that if you ever get a chance to try "Clothing Optional Pale Ale" from DraughtWorks out of Missoula or their White Noise Hefeweizen you should definitely do so. The Pale Ale won a gold in 2014 in Denver and DraughtWorks won the Small Brewery of the year award that year. To say that beer is amazing is an understatement.

The hefe is also excellent. Should you find yourself in Missoula. Give them a try. Kettlehouse in Missoula is also great. They make a wonderful Scottish ale, Cold Smoke. Their IPA is pretty good too.
Click to expand...


I went to college in Missoula. Draughtworks wasn't around then....heck, Big Sky wasn't even bottling or distributing outside of MT then nor had Kettlehouse started brewing Cold Smoke (and it wasn't THAT long ago). But, I get back there at least once a year. Clothing Optional is very good, as is Scepter Head. And I always come back with a stockpile of Cold Smoke and various other beers I can't get in SD (so, basically everything except Moose Drool and Trout Slayer). I really hope to make a pit stop in Butte next time I head that way.
 
MuddyCreek said:
I should also point out that if you ever get a chance to try "Clothing Optional Pale Ale" from DraughtWorks out of Missoula or their White Noise Hefeweizen you should definitely do so. The Pale Ale won a gold in 2014 in Denver and DraughtWorks won the Small Brewery of the year award that year. To say that beer is amazing is an understatement.

The hefe is also excellent. Should you find yourself in Missoula. Give them a try. Kettlehouse in Missoula is also great. They make a wonderful Scottish ale, Cold Smoke. Their IPA is pretty good too.
Click to expand...

Clothing Optional is great, I think the White Noise Hefe is Uber Brew's out of Billings though. Also a great beer! Can't wait to stop in Butte and try some of your offerings.
 
Yep, good correction Chum. White Noise IS UberBrew's beer. Excellent hefe! Wonderful wonderful beer. It's got a super clean, nice finish. I really enjoyed it.

And their C-Bomb. No words... Simply No words.
 

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