Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

[kombat]

Well the purists, of course, are somewhat horrified at the idea of extract being added to finished beer at serving time.

Sounds like a good way to weed out poser hipster beer snobs, to me.

Customer: Can I try the Bourbon-Barrel aged Porter?

Brewer: Sure, would you like to add any flavourings?

Customer: Uhm, OK, maybe a shot of the Cherry extract?

Brewer: That was a trick question. Get out.

*Trap door opens*

The simple truth is, folks add stuff to their coffee all the time.

Right, and I add Frank's hot sauce to leftover pizza to make it palatable. It doesn't mean I'm also going to slather it onto a carefully-prepared chicken Cordon Bleu in a Michelin-star rated restaurant. The chef would (and should) be horrified!

 

[MuddyCreek]

It's true Kombat. I won't argue the merits or detractors of extracts in beer.

I would not recommend making an alteration to a barrel aged porter or stout. If a lifelong bud light or coors drinker wants to make an ammendment to a simple blond or a mild wheat beer - I'm not going to kick them out.

And if it brings in 3 more people who try one of those blondes or wheat beers and decide they like it and later in the evening move on to an amber - well I'm one step closer to winning somebody away from "Bucks" down the road.

It's a business and I need to compete with Karaoke and $1 beer night. It's all well and good to be elitist but reality demands that you also get your hands dirty and give people drinks they want, not just the exotic amazing ridiculously awesome beer you labored over for 3 months just to get it absolutely perfect that everyone thinks is a bit too "Gosh, I don't know...(as they flip their hair) Do you have any Bud Light?"

This town is working it's way toward a craft-beer town. Slowly the people are developing a palate for better beer, but it takes time. And while that development continues, It's a simple truth that we need to accommodate as many of our customers as we can.

 

[iijakii]

You know what always cracks me up about purists? They love quoting centuries-old Reinheitsgebot, but when you go over to Germany you'll see people adding syrups to Berliners, making radlers, mixing soda/sparking water into beer to make it more sessionable etc.

I've never tried beer syrups but if you have a greatfruit juice one I'd try it in your blonde for sure.

 

[MuddyCreek]

As I said, I understand where Kombat is coming from. I was pretty concerned about the whole thing and how it would be received from our more hardcore crowd.

But we're not "making" anybody do it. It's an occasional event at best. We tried it out to see how it would go and not surprisingly in our town it went very well. I suspected as much. Do I personally advocate altering all my products? Of course not. Am I so arrogant as to believe that each of my beers is completely perfect in and of itself and should be "experienced" as intended by the brewer?

Ya. Ok. It's a beer dude. Relax. We're a relaxed, go with the flow kind of place. You come here to have a good time with your friends. If you're taking **** too seriously here, well - you're taking **** too seriously. I DO want you to enjoy the beer. And I DO have some great beer. We've won an award and I fully plan to win one or two more this year. But I'm not nearly enough of an ass-hat to believe that you shouldn't be able to come in and put a little salt on your steak if you want to. You paid for it man. Do what you gotta do. Just come on back and bring a friend.

We'll have a band on the weekends, Open Mic on Thursdays, Ladies Night on Wednesdays and Fund Nights on Mondays where you can support your favorite local causes. And there's ALWAYS Clothing Optional Tuesdays... (That's not a real thing, but it ought to be.)

 

[grizzly2378]

As I said, I understand where Kombat is coming from. I was pretty concerned about the whole thing and how it would be received from our more hardcore crowd.

But we're not "making" anybody do it. It's an occasional event at best. We tried it out to see how it would go and not surprisingly in our town it went very well. I suspected as much. Do I personally advocate altering all my products? Of course not. Am I so arrogant as to believe that each of my beers is completely perfect in and of itself and should be "experienced" as intended by the brewer?

Ya. Ok. It's a beer dude. Relax. We're a relaxed, go with the flow kind of place. You come here to have a good time with your friends. If you're taking **** too seriously here, well - you're taking **** too seriously. I DO want you to enjoy the beer. And I DO have some great beer. We've won an award and I fully plan to win one or two more this year. But I'm not nearly enough of an ass-hat to believe that you shouldn't be able to come in and put a little salt on your steak if you want to. You paid for it man. Do what you gotta do. Just come on back and bring a friend.

We'll have a band on the weekends, Open Mic on Thursdays, Ladies Night on Wednesdays and Fund Nights on Mondays where you can support your favorite local causes. And there's ALWAYS Clothing Optional Tuesdays... (That's not a real thing, but it ought to be.)

I think the build a beer thing is brilliant, myself. In small town breweries especially (although Butte is a big city in MT, it's a small town to most), a large percentage of the clientele aren't going to be hardcore craft beer aficionados. Hell, the hardcore crowd might be the minority. At the local brewery I frequent (Crow Peak), their biggest seller is their cream ale, which is also their lightest, most BMC-like beer (but still worlds better than BMC). There are a lot of people who prefer the atmosphere of a brewery to that of a bar, even though they may not be hopheads or fans of big, dark beers (not yet, anyway). Stuff like this seems like a great way to get people in the door and maybe help them expand their horizons. And, if they decide they just want to drink a cherry flavored wheat ale once a week, that's great too...at least they're in the door.

 

[Heinesands]

I think the build a beer idea is a great one and it goes right along with the craft beer movement out there. He is offer everyone that comes in to try something they may have never had. Which means next time they see that cherry porter on tap or in a bottle somewhere they would be more willing to try it. Or even a double or triple ipa if they added more hops to there beer. Keep it up Muddy. If I ever make it to Montana I'll swing by. Love the tread.

 

[kombat]

Muddy, I apologize, I meant my post to be tongue-in-cheek, I wasn't making fun of you. I understand the realities and pressures of trying to compete in a ferociously competitive market like craft beer.

I guess what I was trying to ask was, are you trying to be Sam Adams (bland beer but wildly popular) or Dogfish Head (innovative, creative, delicious beer, and still pretty successful, but no Sam Adams)? I guess that's a decision you can make once you have the luxury of a few more shekels in your wallet and no longer have to worry about stretching to meet your expenses every month. But I hope you stay true to your craft beer roots.

 

[MuddyCreek]

No offense taken Kombat.

Actually when we began talking about the business plan (and this may be in the other thread, if it isn't it ought to be) we actually purposefully PLANNED on brewing really safe, made to style beers in the first year. We did not intend to be particularly bold.

Our reasoning was that Butte was not a highly innovative Craft Beer town. There was one established brewery which serves some good stuff, and has a very loyal following, but they have a very specific niche of beers and styles. We wanted to really focus on drawing the BMC crowd over and beginning to slowly work them in to the craft brewery experience. To that end, we literally have "The lineup". We have a blonde, a couple American Wheats, an Amber, a IPA in the 75 to 80 IBU range, a Porter and a Stout. Those are our cores. We rotate in lots of other things, but those are out "go-tos." We also have 3 nitro taps, some soft drinks etc.

But we basically try to get people in and transition them away from Bud, Bud Light and Coors and start working them in to the Wheats, the new Hefe, the Amber and down toward the Porter and the Stout.

Now, we've hit our anniversary and we have a very loyal following. We sold out our "Fishing Hole" of 250 members within just a few months and we had a waiting list for renewals that had over 65 people on it. We have a core of faithful followers who are ready to move with us to the next level.

So NOW we can start doing some things that we'd like to do. We can work on that double IPA. We can have some fun with a Scottish Ale. We can roll out my Extra Special Bitter with Orange Peel and Coriander. We can move away from the 5% and 5.5% stuff that has made up the bulk of our lineup and start making more of our rotators some really big beers.

That new brewing system that is a bit smaller - well it will allow us (among other things) to put some 4 bbl rotation stock in so we can send new things through the taproom that we don't have to be completely married to.

In the meantime, we'll be stepping up production on our distribution beers in a huge way. The porter, pale and IPA will be produced on a large scale so we can kick it out to meet our new account goals. We'll spend the rest of the year trying to bring our core customer base up to speed on more innovative beers (while we keep some of the stand-by's around... we DO have something like 16 taps on hand...)

Through ALL that, we'll try (try is the operative word) to submit for a couple awards and see if we can compete. We have great respect for the breweries in town as well as around us in the state. It's never easy to go head to head, but we are confident that we can go toe to toe with them and give it a shot.

 

[MuddyCreek]

We had ourselves a party! (Saturday was our 1 year anniversary!)

Heather Lingle and her band kicked ass! No two ways about it. The beer flowed, the merch flew off the shelves and the food was enjoyed by all. It was all around a great evening. We had a fine time and even toasted our patrons and shared some cake!

Here are some of the promised photos.

(Note, I included a photo of Morgan, one of our Beertenders who came downstairs for a day to help us out brewing.) She's moving to Portland and wants to get on with a brewery in the taproom and she wants to get all the experience she can at the brewery so she volunteers with us. The girl is flat out a TREASURE!) If there are any Portland brewers out there, Remember Morgan Evanson!

She's amazing!

 

[kombat]

Looks like it was an amazing party!

 

[MuddyCreek]

It was a fun evening. The distillery in town opened 4 years ago on the 29th. so they celebrated their anniversary as well. We did a cross-promotion with them. One of our drink tickets taken there got a discount and one of theirs got a discount with us.

They also used a keg of our ginger beer for their Mules and other ginger-beer flavored drinks. It was a good partnership.

We are very happy to be working with them so closely. They've been hugely successful and you can read about them in last month's popular mechanic's mag. (Headframe Spirits.)

 

[MuddyCreek]

St. Patty's day in Butte approaches!

Ought to be a good time!

 

[Punity]

St. Patty's day in Butte approaches!

Ought to be a good time!

Thats how i know you are busy haha no long form tell all, almost like you are just letting us know you are still alive.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Hey, been thinking about you, wanted to check in and see how you're coming along!

We had a pretty extraordinary day yesterday. Of course we expected as much. St. Paddy's day in Butte is something of an epic adventure, particularly as it gets closer to the weekend. (If you can get here next year when it falls on a Friday, you should definitely do that).

In a couple weeks we have a festival down the road in Livingston which I'm thrilled about. We always have a good time at Livingston - they're good folks over there. Tap into Montana!

We have a few more upcoming festivals planned as well. Other than that, the new system is being fabricated, our pilot came in, but as often happens, there are some bits and pieces missing so we need to get that sorted out so we can work on it.

We just put together a batch of one of our seasonals that's very popular. We'll be releasing that in about a month, give or take.

Other than that, our new brewer is really stepping in nicely. He's doing a great job as I expected. He's a great worker, his biology degree has proven a strong asset and his brewing background has also been a great help. He's eager to try a couple test batches on the pilot system once we get it up and running. While I have somewhere in the zone of 23 beers registered with the state now, he has quite a few he'd like to try out on the pilot system in order to see if they're something we'd like to develop down the line.

 

[MuddyCreek]

For your viewing pleasure:

A friday evening, followed by our Black and Tan featuring Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout underneath Dirty Blonde Ale. Next up you see our own Butte Original I.P.A.

Then you have a couple shots from last yesterday's St. Paddy's day festivities.

 

[VV_Wildcatfan]

I'm going to be in the Livingston/Ennis/West Yellowstone area for a week in July. Any recommendations for 1-2 brewery's that I should try. Seems like there's several choices in the area and I'm going to be limited in time.

 

[jcav]

Looks like good times, and congrats on the anniversary!

John

 

[MuddyCreek]

I'm going to be in the Livingston/Ennis/West Yellowstone area for a week in July. Any recommendations for 1-2 brewery's that I should try. Seems like there's several choices in the area and I'm going to be limited in time.

In Livingston, you have Katabatic Brewing. They're great! Not only are the owners really amazing folks, but of course the beer is top notch as well. We're heading off to their 2nd annual "Tap Into Montana" festival in a couple weeks and I expect it's going to be as wonderful as the first.

If you're in West Yellowstone / Ennis it's a wee bit of a drive, but you may want to go into the Bozeman / Belgrade area. You'll find Madison River Brewing co. there. If you're a fan of Scottish Ales you will NOT be disappointed. Most people are astonished to find that Montana has quietly been DOMINATING the Scottish ale competition market over the last few years. (Ya, I said it.) You may have heard of Cold Smoke, a Scottish Ale out of Kettlhouse in Missoula. It's won a Gold in the past at the GABF, well this year it was supplanted by Copper John from Madison River.

Not to worry, Montana had TWO medalists in the category last year.

So. If you have the time, it would be worth a trip. We're becoming quite the beer state. Quietly but surely. Turns out those Montanan's like them some beer!

 

[Punity]

We are doing good..........duh duh duh we are signing a lease tomorrow.......remember that first building i sent you pictures about and said was right on the main road out of town. Well as life often does an opportunity came up and a space is available on the next street over (coming INTO town) and its a corner spot right next to a wine shop ( which we are good friends with ) and a craft beer taproom. Also the main theater in town is down the block and there is more parking in the area then we know what to do with. Its pretty much the main hub in town. Only drawback is its small.....like SMALL...haha but i see it as half the fun of being able to squeeze a brewery in there and also be able to run it with me and the wife.....seats about 40 people so it should be fairly manageable. Another plus is that its a former resturant so its already setup for most things that i dont have to pay for unlike other spaces ive looked at.....WHooo!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Man I am REALLY happy for you!

40 people is a little small, does it have space outdoors so you can have an outdoor seating "cafe" type vibe going? Is there any kind of space for a 1 person acoustic setup? We find that people really seem to like acoustic sets on Friday or Saturday nights. (Also licensing music can be a bit of a pain in the ass.)

I'm so stoked for you!

With the restaurant setup will you be doing some food items as well? I don't know if the reqs in your area are different from ours. We've just started offering a little bit in the way of food. Simple stuff really but the menu may grow over time.

I can't WAIT to see you guys in Denver. Be sure to sneak some beer over this time. We'll do the same. I might just road trip it this year, although that will extend the trip by 4 or so days. On the other hand, you can't put a price tag on a good time. We ought to see if Cape's going. We can get together, mock the big guys and compare our medals. (one can dream, can't he? ;-)

 

[Punity]

We will have to punch out a wall to access the outside sidewalk but it does have a 10ft awning so we can fit another 20+ out there if needed. Its not an uncommon thing to have either downtown so its nice i wont have to fight the city to expand an outdoor area. 40 is small but itll just be me most of the time and its really all im comfortable with at the moment until we get into the swing of things. We are going to offer small stuff like some snack items from other local businesses, but there are plenty of restaurants in the immediate area that we will have a binder with all the menus and numbers for people to order food and bring it in if they want to. Ones literally a 5 step walk around the corner haha. There is a local group that offer themselves as musicians that play alot of venues and businesses, but we will have to have a talking to because they like to use amps for their instruments and their vocals......its WAAAAAAAAAAAAY to loud for some of the places they play so thatll be some negotiations because i love live music to round out a vibe. But we are also going to try and partner with a local record store and have a catalog of music on hand that people can choose and we will play on a record player in the shop.

I hope we can make Denver this year im not sure ill have the ability to submit anything with the timing of getting our TTB approval but if we can swing it then we will most definitely make it happen.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, if you can afford it a guy can just go. Know what I'm sayin'...

If your place has the right acoustics, definitely have them unplug except maybe for the vocalist. We've found people like to be able to hear themselves. If the music drowns everything out, people get annoyed. It takes a LOT of musicians a very long time to learn that.

 

[Punity]

Well, if you can afford it a guy can just go. Know what I'm sayin'...

If your place has the right acoustics, definitely have them unplug except maybe for the vocalist. We've found people like to be able to hear themselves. If the music drowns everything out, people get annoyed. It takes a LOT of musicians a very long time to learn that.

Haha that is true.....maybe some brewery from Montana should pour at the event and they can get some cheap help from some out of towners (wink wink)

Yea thats their problem the taproom right around the corner hosts them all the time and seats 35 they come in a takeup at least 10 seats and play like they are in a concert hall....its annoying and ive avoided it when they are playing so like i said itll be some "negotiations"

 

[beernbourbon]

It's nice to see you guys recognize that. This is actually what deters me from frequenting places that have bands. Don't misunderstand, I'm a hard core loud rock lover (my lack of hearing can attest to it) but when I go to a taproom, background music is best. I go to a concert for music, I go to a taproom/bar for beer and conversation. It's almost like wanting to be a home like atmosphere, hanging with friends, knockin back a few brews and solving the problems of the world.

 

[Punity]

Exactly the music isn't the main focus just helps out a musician for a night and create a welcoming atmosphere. No one wants it to be like everyone has headphones on trying to converse.

 

[MuddyCreek]

We have a rule. $100 for a musician for a night. That basically pays for 1 person to do an acoustic set. That keeps the price (and the volume) down. Now I should point out we have a unique situation that allows us to sometimes get really good acts because we can "break up" their nights with the bar next door so they "team up" and get a double booking. Thus we get what would normally be well beyond our price-range because the band gets 2 gigs in one evening.

Admittedly, we also have a pretty good music scene in Butte and there are quite a few great musicians. Therefore the music scene is fairly competitive. I always make sure they get some good tips on top of the fee. Our crowd is always very appreciative too. So it seems to work pretty well for us.

On very very rare occasions we'll break the rule and get larger bands for special events. (Our anniversary we brought in the entire Heather Lingle band where generally we just get Heather). Acoustic is your friend!

 

[beernbourbon]

Oh yeah, special occasions, definitely crank it up. Nice that you've got a good music pool there, that's awesome. It's been a blast reading the stuff you guys do and put up with. Wish more brewers would get out there like this. 'Course, they might be, just not on here. [emoji12]

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, we just attended the "Tap Into Montana" festival in lovely Livingston Montana. TThere were 25 breweries present and over 100 beers served. We were honored to win 2nd place for "Best Brewery". (First place came down to a tie between the home town breweries, Katabatic and Neptune's Brewery both of Livingston Montana).

Our vanilla porter, Storm the Door was also named 2nd best beer at the festival behind Bridger Brewing Company's Mad Mile Cream Ale. I think we could have won here, but we had a great Habanero I.P.A. that stole some votes as well and ultimately we were extremely proud to have come in 2nd to a great Bridger Brewing team.

We had a TON of people ask us where they could get our beer either canned, bottled or on tap. We've been obliged to give out our distributor's phone number so people can start calling them directly. (That will light a fire under them. ;-) )

All in all, it was a great festival and a super weekend. Particularly given the fact that we're barely a year old. Folks around the state are definitely taking notice of Muddy Creek.

 

[Punity]

Congrats man happy that you are starting to gain the notoriety you deserve.

 

[jcav]

That's awesome!