Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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... ; - )

 

[Birchrun_brewery]

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)

 

[MuddyCreek]

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)

Go Stillers!

 

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[joebob296]

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

What is the next step?

 

[MuddyCreek]

What is the next step?

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...

 

[joebob296]

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...

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?

 

[toolboxales]

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

 

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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

 

[Helly]

Awesome writeup as usual. Thanks for the continued updates.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[JINKS]

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.

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.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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?

 

[JINKS]

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?

yep and then there is:

 

[drunkEnough4U]

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.

 

[MuddyCreek]

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...

 

[MuddyCreek]

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.

 

[JINKS]

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

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

 

[MuddyCreek]

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

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

 

[MuddyCreek]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[MuddyCreek]

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

 

[plumber_bob]

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

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

pb

 

[sandyeggoxj]

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

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

 

[jiMithing83]

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

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

 

[Genghis]

... legit passion medication ...

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

 

[jiMithing83]

Haha meant pain medication, damn auto correct

 

[iijakii]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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