Categories: Startup Woes
I stopped by and talked with Adam from Linden St Brewery over the weekend and had an interesting discussion about starting up a brand new brewery from scratch. For those of you who aren’t aware, Adam just got licensed to produce beer in Oakland earlier this year after trying since 2005. He is now the first production brewery in Oakland since 1959.
Adam got the lease to the building back in 05 and finally had equipment put in around 2007. However it has taken him an additional 2 years to get the proper work done to be able to make and sell beer to the public. We began talking about the challenges 510 is going to face over the next few months/years and the idea of contract brewing was brought up. At first I thought, “No way, this is my brewery, I want to make the beer.” Adam had the same thought back in 2005 and it’s taken him 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to sell beer.
I know I am an optimist (my wife calls me unrealistic) and a bit naive, but I do know there is a lot of time and money that is going to have to go into starting a brewery up. Specifically money. I think it is safe to say that any bank I walk into right now will tell me to kick rocks if I want the kind of money needed to buy the things I need. But what if we took baby steps and started doing contract brewing through a local brewery to get our name out there. Let another guy worry about busted equipment. It seems like a logical move to get the ball rolling.
What is everyone’s opinion on a beer that is contract brewed vs the actual company making the beer?
Categories: Uncategorized
We’re all for new and exciting beers, especially when two rock stars come together and make something like Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada did. Life & Limb and Limb & Life are basically two beers made from a single batch using only ingredients from the Dogfish and Sierra farms.
The Life & Limb was simply breath taking. This is a great beer now and will continue to be a great beer years from now. Dean picked us up a few bottles to cellar for a few years, so we’ll know in 2012 if we were wrong, unless the world ends and California falls into the Pacific Ocean.
The Limb & Life was a little less spectacular. It started out great with an amazing head, but it just felt a little light bodied and too….tree sappy for our tastes. I would love to see how it tastes later down the road as it mellows, but it’s only available in kegs.
To make up for it, Peter let us try some of his Firestone XIII. This is another beer that will age well for years to come. If you see it at your local store, pick up a bottle or two and try it. I promise you won’t be let down. If you are let down, then you are probably a terrorist and we don’t want to be associated with you.
Categories: Brewing
Today, I learned a couple more things about the way we brew. First, it is much easier to crush 20+ lbs of grain when you hook up the crusher to a drill. Second, it is much easier to crush 20+ lbs of grain when you have your wife power the drill which crushes the grain. Isn’t she great? Not only did she crush all the grain on her own, but she did it with a smile!
Finally, I learned that nobody besides my wife like’s to smile for the camera.
*Xon is extremely camera shy. I had to use my epic MS Paint skills to edit out his face
Some more pictures were posted on our Twitter profile. Be sure to follow us for live pics as we brew.
Categories: Clothing
Screw the Dickies work shirts, I’m gonna sport these while getting my mash on. Nothing says I know my shit like having tons of awesome words across your chest. Go check out the other designs they have at www.craftbeerclothing.com. If you’re feeling generous, I’m a size large….just sayin.
I gotta give credit where it’s due though. I found these bad boys while skimming through Blog About Beer’s site.
Categories: Brewing
It was one of those days where anything that could have gone wrong, pretty much did. To begin the day, our crusher crapped out and decided it was a good time to blow an o-ring to hold the rollers together. Thankfully we were able to rig it up to finish the crush, but it looks now like we are going to have to have a talk with the folks over at Barley Crusher.
EDIT: Looks like this might be normal for our Barley Crusher. Thanks for the heads up Patrick.
After that we were cleaning out the equipment and Trav stumbled backwards and smashed the flip switch for the pump. There are a few bonuses to this, first is that it still kind of works. Second is that we get an exciting sparkling light show when it gets turned off.
Topping the night off included a battle between Travis and the kettle. The kettle scored first with some cuts to the knuckles and a pulled chest muscle. But Travis still thinks he won considering we got 10 gallons of pumpkin ale out of it.
For those heathens who aren’t following us on twitter yet, here are some pictures we posted up during the process.
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” – Henny Youngman
Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by tsmith
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