Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

[beergolf]

Always love hearing your updates. I have been following your progress from the begining.

Good luck with the new system and continue to keep us posted.

 

[Punity]

I know the rig they are going to and what they are coming from and it's going to be night and day to brew slightly less. Not the end of the world and knowing how hard these guys work this is a much needed rellief

 

[gl_az]

I know the rig they are going to and what they are coming from and it's going to be night and day to brew slightly less. Not the end of the world and knowing how hard these guys work this is a much needed rellief

To be clear, I absolutely meant no snark nor sarcasm but pure admiration.

I have been following these guys and others like them for a while with the same pipe dream myself. I have nothing but respect. The thing is that visiting other forums like pro-brewer and other places, you are pounded that you must open on equipment as large as possible and anything less than 10bbl even in a small market is the first step to failure. So that makes it very curious to me to see someone that actually _did_ open on a 10bbl+ system and operate on it for many months, decide that even as they are expanding and improving their core product, reducing the system size to less than half their size is beneficial to their business, production schedule and throughput.

So it makes me hopeful and confirms the anti-big crowd that it is possible to produce both the volume and quality of product that you need to on a smaller system and demands perhaps slightly less capital on startup to do the build out.

 

[grizzly2378]

So that makes it very curious to me to see someone that actually _did_ open on a 10bbl+ system and operate on it for many months, decide that even as they are expanding and improving their core product, reducing the system size to less than half their size is beneficial to their business, production schedule and throughput.

Obviously Muddy can (and should) correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read it is that they aren't going to a system less than half their current size, but to a smaller, more efficient system (7 bbl?) that will allow them to more efficiently brew smaller batches of beer. He mentioned that it currently takes almost as much work to brew a 4 bbl batch as a full batch and that their new "slightly smaller" system would make those smaller batches a bit quicker. Presumably, this new system would also brew "full" batches more quickly, so even though a "full" batch is smaller than before, they could brew more often and make up for the difference. That's how I read it, anyway.

 

[Punity]

To be clear, I absolutely meant no snark nor sarcasm but pure admiration.

I have been following these guys and others like them for a while with the same pipe dream myself. I have nothing but respect. The thing is that visiting other forums like pro-brewer and other places, you are pounded that you must open on equipment as large as possible and anything less than 10bbl even in a small market is the first step to failure. So that makes it very curious to me to see someone that actually _did_ open on a 10bbl+ system and operate on it for many months, decide that even as they are expanding and improving their core product, reducing the system size to less than half their size is beneficial to their business, production schedule and throughput.

So it makes me hopeful and confirms the anti-big crowd that it is possible to produce both the volume and quality of product that you need to on a smaller system and demands perhaps slightly less capital on startup to do the build out.

Everyone has an opinion on what is best and what you SHOULD do to succeed.

Their system they are going to allows them to brew just as much beer in as much if not less time then on their old system.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Hey folks. How's it going.

I should clarify. We have some pretty unique things going on at Muddy Creek and the new system will benefit us in quite a few ways. It IS smaller. There's no getting around it. However with that system we will be able to brew quite a bit more beer and we'll be able to do it more consistently.

So, allow me to be very clear what we're doing and why. I did after all promise complete transparency. This is on the surface a pretty odd move.

I've never mislead anyone that our system is grossly under-powered. Due to several circumstances we never quite got the control panel and elements we wanted and now almost a year in we STILL require a full 12 to 16 hours to brew 10 bbls of beer. This is really untenable. You have to remember that the owners all have full time jobs so we can only brew a couple times a week. We have to do a batch on the weekend and we try to do a batch on Thursday. Well, that means our other brewer has to put in a ridiculously long day brewing a batch and I have to put in a stupid long Saturday.

Furthermore, we have to run our gas much longer and hotter than we'd like to get our tanks up to heat. AFTER we finally finish brewing we have to transfer through the chiller, pitch the yeast and get everything cleaned up. It's a very long day. Even 1/2 batches take anywhere from 8 to 10 hours.

So... the short version is, we could have paid around 10k for a control panel to get us up to a better heat situation. That was a fine option. We have learned the system. We're making good beer. We can certainly afford to do that. However for just a bit more than that, we could afford a separate system that allows us to do 4 or 8 bbl batches in 4 or 8 hours. Furthermore, the new system allows us to do a single beer or 2 separate beers at one time.

The footprint for the new system is tremendously small. We can purchase ANOTHER one of these in another year if we like, effectively moving us to a 16 bbl brewery with virtually no change in our processes. The system is a bit easier to use. Because of the reduced footprint we can do some "hard-plumbing" to our chiller and save time on the back end after we finish brewing.

With this system I can have my assistant brewer literally do smaller batches every day of the week depending on my fermentor pipeline. Of course, as many of you know - a brewery's production capacity is really limited by their ability to move beer through their fermentation process. With a 10 bbl system we were pretty much filling up our fermentors all the way and then sitting around and waiting for the fermenting room to clear and then the cold-crash room and then the brite-tanks. Then it was Wash-Rinse-Repeat. With the smaller capacity, we can run small batches through a single fermenter and have lots of product going through consecutively. Ultimately we can purchase more serving tanks and simply keep them stocked with product as we cycle through.

Lastly, the new system is a great deal more efficient than our current system. (Ignore that if you're looking for a 10 bbl system, btw.) We get around 70% efficiency currently and I have called several people using the new system and they regularly get 85% and better. That will significantly cut down on our costs. We expect to make back a significant portion of the investment within a couple years in malt costs alone.

So, yes we are in fact going to a smaller system. However I'm not suggesting it's a lifelong commitment. For now it's a good move for us. Some years from now, we may decide to go a different route altogether. We have about 4 years left on our lease. At that point I expect many things will be different.

As always, I will keep you faithfully updated to the best of my ability. Currently we've started serving food in the brewery. At least on weekends. We've been bringing in sandwiches and offerings from local restaurants and during the week we are offering taco's that we're doing ourselves. We've discussed a more ambitious kitchen project and we have a 3rd party who's interested in putting in an entire diner/cafeteria himself.

So, there you have it. All the news that's fit to print.

 

[MuddyCreek]

To summarize:

We brew somewhere in the zone of 13.5 bbls a week with our current system. In terms of labor, that requires about 4 hours prep time, 3 hours post-cleaning, and a minimum of 28 man hours for brewing. (Ya...)

So we're looking at somewhere in the zone of 35 man hours just for the brewing and cleanup of 13.5 bbls of product. That doesn't include transfers, brewhaus cleanup, inventory, yeast propagation, or the 17 thousand other jobs that have to be done before lunch time.

On the new system, that much beer could be done in 2 8 hour days. (True 8 hour days.) That would include the cleaning. Now we'd still have to do the prep work. There's not getting away from the milling etc. However the the 35 hours we spend on those 13.5 bbls of beer drop down to 16 hours.

I can immediately get up to 25 bbls of beer for almost the same labor output in terms of brewing labor. Yes my milling and setup goes up, but brew-days become SO much more manageable.

THIS is why we made our decision. We got smaller to go bigger. I know it's weird. And I'll be the first to admit if it makes more work for us. At 13.5 bbls a week though, I expect we'll be alright.

 

[iijakii]

Yeah the timeframe on your old setup was ridiculous, new one looks good. Hopefully with that maneuverability you can move it into more rotation too to keep people swinging through the pub!

 

[MuddyCreek]

That is another reason we wanted to go with this system. My nutjob partner (said with love *smile) has 10 beers on tap. That makes us one of the most diverse taprooms in the state going away, but it puts SO much pressure on us downstairs to keep them stocked in beer.

The new system should make that a bit easier to manage. We hope so at least. It has been a huge advantage having so many beers on tap. It's simply impossible to not find SOMETHING you like.

 

[cegan09]

I just wanted to say, thanks for putting your threads together. I've managed to read both of them over the past couple of days, and wow, if I'm ever out that way, I'm stopping in. In fact I have just one more reason to go visit my cousin while he's in school in Bozeman.

I'm completely new to homebrewing. A couple friends have a couple years on me. We recently found that nano licenses in NH are crazy cheap, which of course led to some wonderful day dreaming. Your threads have been a great reality check. Not in a negative way, more in a "this is what you're up against, be ready" way. I have no way of knowing if we'll ever follow through, and if we do how far down the line it will be, but you've set the bar high. I'm looking forward to reading about more of your success.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, I don't necessarily promise much in the way of glamour, but I have been faithful in my transparency.

I don't pull any punches. I figure if folks want to know what it's really like - they have a right. Soon we'll have our 1 year anniversary and we're really really hoping to launch our official website by then. (That should give you an idea about how busy we are and what kind of perfectionists we are. 2 of the 3 of us are software guys and we STILL haven't gotten our official website up yet.)

But it will be a thing of beauty. Truly something magical to behold. However, again in being completely honest - the uber developer in the group has done the greatest amount of legwork on the backend. An entire database has been developed that tracks each of our sales and other transactions from the day we opened. We can tell you how many pints of IPA we sold on May 15th of last year, precisely. We can tell you how many "free pints" we give away per day on average to our "Fishin' Hole" members and whether or not the deal is making good financial sense for us. (It still is.)

We will have sections for each branch of the ownership to manage. The brewing side will be able to upload videos and various content for folks on what we're doing in the brewhaus. We'll be able to update our brew schedules so folks will know what beers are coming out and when. We will be filming bios on our malt and hops profiles and why we choose the combinations we do.

The taproom side will eventually have discussions of how different types of glassware can help release aroma and flavor from different styles. It will show bios of our beertenders, and have live pours etc. of our products. The website will show where we are distributed and what musical groups are coming up as well as clips of those groups from previous performances.

Oh ya. It's going to be and epic ass-kicking website.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Regarding Peyton Manning and InBev...

InBev did NOT pay Peyton Manning to mention Budweiser! We paid his accountant.

 

[TechyDork]

Well, I don't necessarily promise much in the way of glamour, but I have been faithful in my transparency.

I don't pull any punches. I figure if folks want to know what it's really like - they have a right. Soon we'll have our 1 year anniversary and we're really really hoping to launch our official website by then. (That should give you an idea about how busy we are and what kind of perfectionists we are. 2 of the 3 of us are software guys and we STILL haven't gotten our official website up yet.)

But it will be a thing of beauty. Truly something magical to behold. However, again in being completely honest - the uber developer in the group has done the greatest amount of legwork on the backend. An entire database has been developed that tracks each of our sales and other transactions from the day we opened. We can tell you how many pints of IPA we sold on May 15th of last year, precisely. We can tell you how many "free pints" we give away per day on average to our "Fishin' Hole" members and whether or not the deal is making good financial sense for us. (It still is.)

We will have sections for each branch of the ownership to manage. The brewing side will be able to upload videos and various content for folks on what we're doing in the brewhaus. We'll be able to update our brew schedules so folks will know what beers are coming out and when. We will be filming bios on our malt and hops profiles and why we choose the combinations we do.

The taproom side will eventually have discussions of how different types of glassware can help release aroma and flavor from different styles. It will show bios of our beertenders, and have live pours etc. of our products. The website will show where we are distributed and what musical groups are coming up as well as clips of those groups from previous performances.

Oh ya. It's going to be and epic ass-kicking website.

From and end user POV that site sounds killer.....

From the POV of the webmaster that site sounds like a lot to keep up to date, but sounds like it will be epic when it is up and running!!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, Techy - it's taken a year to get the back end infrastructure in place for it. ;- )

The lead developer is a architect / emerging technologies lead for HP. He gets to play with all the fun up and coming stuff and pick the brains of people who have opportunities to dabble both professionally and from a hobby perspective in upcoming technologies and trends.

We've also made arrangements with a local film production company to do all our film and post production work for beer. They like beer, we make beer ~ it's a good arrangement. They have ties with the film industry as well as the music industry and they like to foster some acts in town, particularly for the summer festivals. We do them some extra perk bonuses like throwing a keg or two to the band(s).

They also featured our taproom and a couple of our beers in their indie film coming out next year. It was fun. I think it will be pretty cool.

Anyway, the website management will be a ton of work mostly on the content management side, but as you are av'd TechyDork, I suspect you are well aware of the various issues involved with maintaining a large scale customer-facing advertising space as well as an e-commerce portal site.

We're excited and we hope (operative word there,) that it goes relatively well. I suspect early on there will be some hiccups but ideally those won't be noticeable to anybody but us as we work through the management issues.

(Just as a "bonus" for you Techy, the database includes functionality for inventory tracking as well so there will be administrative areas for us to manage our taproom inventory as well as our local distribution processes. We can also look up our current tax number data for the state as well as the Feds at any time.)

 

[PearlJam]

Just finished the other thread and now this one over the last 2 days!!! Was like "watching a documentary"

Thank you for sharing your journey with us!

 

[TechyDork]

Well, Techy - it's taken a year to get the back end infrastructure in place for it. ;- )

The lead developer is a architect / emerging technologies lead for HP. He gets to play with all the fun up and coming stuff and pick the brains of people who have opportunities to dabble both professionally and from a hobby perspective in upcoming technologies and trends.

We've also made arrangements with a local film production company to do all our film and post production work for beer. They like beer, we make beer ~ it's a good arrangement. They have ties with the film industry as well as the music industry and they like to foster some acts in town, particularly for the summer festivals. We do them some extra perk bonuses like throwing a keg or two to the band(s).

They also featured our taproom and a couple of our beers in their indie film coming out next year. It was fun. I think it will be pretty cool.

Anyway, the website management will be a ton of work mostly on the content management side, but as you are av'd TechyDork, I suspect you are well aware of the various issues involved with maintaining a large scale customer-facing advertising space as well as an e-commerce portal site.

We're excited and we hope (operative word there,) that it goes relatively well. I suspect early on there will be some hiccups but ideally those won't be noticeable to anybody but us as we work through the management issues.

(Just as a "bonus" for you Techy, the database includes functionality for inventory tracking as well so there will be administrative areas for us to manage our taproom inventory as well as our local distribution processes. We can also look up our current tax number data for the state as well as the Feds at any time.)

Sounds like you have a pretty killer set up for maintaining fresh content on your website and that database sounds amazing. Can't wait to see the site up and running!!

 

[MuddyCreek]

You know what's fun?

Going back and re-reading these threads myself from the start. Holy Crap! The **** I didn't know.

Run! Run for God's Sake! ;-)

Just kidding. It's hard work and it costs money, and time and relationships. I noticed that I started this thread talking about how my relationship with one of my partners was a bit strained. The interesting thing is that we are both very good friends and we've always managed to divide business differences and friendship issues very well.

The Brewery has definitely challenged that dynamic. He's business / marketing and I'm product management / quality control. And we have a 3rd partner who's an engineer who's fully into systems management and quality control. All three of us quite often don't see eye to eye on things. Ownership of course is such that any 2 can make a controlling decision, but doing so can be a bit of a "pissing match" because sometimes whether you want to admit it or not personal relationship and politics come into it.

(Transparency, remember.)

It's all well and good to say, "We just do what's good for the business." But often it's really hard to know what's good for the business. Is it good to spend an extra $1000 a month on marketing? Particularly when you are having a hard time coming up with the money? On one hand, extra marketing can mean more people in the taproom. That can mean more income which in a few months means you make enough money to be flush again. On the other hand, that's a risk. But extra marketing can also help with distribution. But again, do you borrow against other accounts to push a marketing agenda in hopes that it will all work out?

What about expansion? One partner wants to expand rapidly, get into larger scale distribution. Can we handle that? Can we keep up with demand? What if we make a ton of beer and we can't distribute it all? What if we start distributing and suddenly a product takes off and a huge demand builds up and we can't meet it? How do we ramp up to meet this new demand? Do we disappoint people who want a product and we are unable to meet that need?

How much should we spend on live music? How much value does that bring to the taproom? Should tips be shared with the brewhaus staff? Or should they just get a larger hourly wage? If so, how much larger?

No, there are many many decisions to be made and they aren't always "clear." That makes it really difficult. Particularly when you have 3 distinct personalities. Fortunately we have a brewery mission statement. (That's important for you would-be brewery owners, btw.) When we got started we sat down as a group and defined exactly what we wanted our brewery atmosphere to be like, what our short, medium and long-term goals should be and even what kind of beer we wanted to focus on. (For the record we make exactly the kind of products we planned. I'm actually kind of proud of that. As we enter year 2, we're going to start pushing our boundaries a bit.)

Even with the mission statement it is easy to forget our roots and want to push in directions we didn't originally plan on. Because frankly some of our original suppositions were wrong. We thought the taproom sales would pretty much support the brewery operations. That probably would have been true had there remained only 2 breweries in town, but there are 4 now and the distillery. There's too much competition and we NEED to distribute more aggressively to hit a decent profit margin. Since some of our initial ideas were off, that means a few of our guiding principles have to be "flexible" I suppose as well.

So, despite some tension and difficulty what we did manage to do was maintain respect for each other and for each others boundaries. All three of us add unique talents and passions to the brewery and that helps move us forward. While we still disagree on a number of things - we try really hard to listen to each others points of view and discuss everything fully before we make any decisions. I think that helps quite a bit.

We're also learning all the time and with a year under our belt we have a better idea what to expect going forward. I'm hoping (emphasis on hope) that we can navigate year two even better than we did year one. Our goal is to dramatically increase our accounts and develop a strong presence in the southwestern part of the state. We'd like our Porter to become a well-known handle around the state and we are really focused on getting our name out there.

I'm very hopeful that after this year, you'll know who Muddy Creek is.

 

[MuddyCreek]

I don't know of you've seen these yet...

Our labels.

Crazy Beautiful Pale Ale and Storm the Door Vanilla Porter.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Couple of our handles at a local restaurant as well...

 

[rlmiller10]

Well, Techy - it's taken a year to get the back end infrastructure in place for it. ;- )

The lead developer is a architect / emerging technologies lead for HP. He gets to play with all the fun up and coming stuff and pick the brains of people who have opportunities to dabble both professionally and from a hobby perspective in upcoming technologies and trends.

We've also made arrangements with a local film production company to do all our film and post production work for beer. They like beer, we make beer ~ it's a good arrangement. They have ties with the film industry as well as the music industry and they like to foster some acts in town, particularly for the summer festivals. We do them some extra perk bonuses like throwing a keg or two to the band(s).

They also featured our taproom and a couple of our beers in their indie film coming out next year. It was fun. I think it will be pretty cool.

Anyway, the website management will be a ton of work mostly on the content management side, but as you are av'd TechyDork, I suspect you are well aware of the various issues involved with maintaining a large scale customer-facing advertising space as well as an e-commerce portal site.

We're excited and we hope (operative word there,) that it goes relatively well. I suspect early on there will be some hiccups but ideally those won't be noticeable to anybody but us as we work through the management issues.

(Just as a "bonus" for you Techy, the database includes functionality for inventory tracking as well so there will be administrative areas for us to manage our taproom inventory as well as our local distribution processes. We can also look up our current tax number data for the state as well as the Feds at any time.)

Sounds like a product you can sell other than beer. One that would not have the licensing requirements nor the production costs. Although higher post sales support.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

I don't know of you've seen these yet...

Our labels.

Crazy Beautiful Pale Ale and Storm the Door Vanilla Porter.

Both of these labels are very well done! Kudos to your graphics crew!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Sounds like a product you can sell other than beer.

It kinda does, doesn't it? *smile.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, we're approaching our 1 year anniversary party. On Saturday we will have been officially open for 1 year. I'll try to post some Photos from the celebration.

We should also have our new pilot system shipping out sometime at the end of this week. It's a small version of the new brewing system. We'll use it to test out a new IPA recipe that we hope to scale up and launch on an unsuspecting public sometime in the upcoming months.

The electrician comes on Thursday to make the power modifications for the new brewing system, which should be ready sometime by the end of March or mid April. (I love how those brewing system readiness date predictions work.)

We are meeting with our regional distributors tonight to discuss increasing our reach. Ideally we can double what we're doing over the next month or two. As Navin R. Johnson once said. "Things are going to start happening to me now!"

Have a great day everyone. See you on Saturday!

 

[xandersaml]

Typical random victim brewer :0)


Oh come on You brought up Navin R. Johnson... Remember the sniper: "Random son of a bitch, typical run-of-the-mill bastard."

 

[MuddyCreek]

This is Heather Lingle, She and her band will be playing at our anniversary party. She's a good friend and one of our top musicians.

Wonderful performer and one of those few folks who sounds absolutely extraordinary live.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7llMDcOfrc[/ame]

 

[MuddyCreek]

So we're doing something new and fun tonight. This is our "Ladies Night" and we're doing "Build a Beer".

We have 5 different fruit extracts and a couple bittering extracts that we are going to make available to our customers for our "Build a Beer" nights. Those folks who want to can request an extract addition for their beer. So, if your IPA just isn't quite hoppy enough, you can add a drop of uber bittering extract and melt your palate utterly if you so choose.

Or, you can add some huckleberry to your blonde, or some cherry to your Vanilla Porter. Perhaps you'd like bit of Pineapple in your American Wheat. Whatever you're experimental whim ~ we're happy to indulge you on Build a Beer night. Free of charge, of course. We're not out to fleece you. We just want you to have a good time. And if you find something you just absolutely love, well, perhaps we'll consider making a true representation of that down the line without extracts.

Stay Handsome friends! And remember, our anniversary is on Saturday. We'd love to see you there.

 

[iijakii]

I'll order a suicide.

 

[Punity]

Enjoy the one year! Wish Stef and I could make it out and celebrate with you guys but we will raise a glass and party with you in spirit!

 

[WilliamSlayer]

So we're doing something new and fun tonight. This is our "Ladies Night" and we're doing "Build a Beer".

We have 5 different fruit extracts and a couple bittering extracts that we are going to make available to our customers for our "Build a Beer" nights. Those folks who want to can request an extract addition for their beer. So, if your IPA just isn't quite hoppy enough, you can add a drop of uber bittering extract and melt your palate utterly if you so choose.

Or, you can add some huckleberry to your blonde, or some cherry to your Vanilla Porter. Perhaps you'd like bit of Pineapple in your American Wheat. Whatever you're experimental whim ~ we're happy to indulge you on Build a Beer night. Free of charge, of course. We're not out to fleece you. We just want you to have a good time. And if you find something you just absolutely love, well, perhaps we'll consider making a true representation of that down the line without extracts.

Stay Handsome friends! And remember, our anniversary is on Saturday. We'd love to see you there.

This is a great idea. Lots of market research accomplished and hopefully when word spreads about 'build a beer' it's a bit of advertising as well.

I never would have thought of something like this myself!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well the purists, of course, are somewhat horrified at the idea of extract being added to finished beer at serving time. I can understand that. Even appreciate it.

However we are merely trying to accommodate a group of people who want to try something a bit different. We don't do it regularly. We'll only do it once a week at best. Possibly only once a month. It was very well received. Adding a bit of cherry to the Vanilla Porter was very popular. (Not particularly surprising.)

The simple truth is, folks add stuff to their coffee all the time. That makes your coffee go from .75 cents a cup to $4.75 a cup. We'll do the same once or twice a month and don't charge you extra if that's something you're into.

I'm also planning on adding a Randall soon. We'll probably only do that on specific nights as well. That will limit us to one flavoring, but it will be something fun we can do now and then. We did that in the past with a Hop Rocket, but that was more of a pain than it was worth. A Randall is easier to work with and has more of an aesthetic quality to it.