Brew Day Mishaps

Categories: Brewing, Startup Woes

This past weekend the original plan was to brew up our original porter combined with what was supposed to be an imperial version of the porter as well. It seems as the brewing gods had it in for us from the beginning:

• The propane tank ran out of propane when kicking off the first boil.
• Hooray, it was only the reserve tank that was empty.
• Nope, the actual tank ran out of propane shortly after.
• Hooray, we had a spare tank to get us through the two batches.
• CO2 tank runs out, requires a quick trip to the sporting goods store.
• Imperial Porter was supposed to have a gravity reading of 1.110, comes out with a reading of 1.070.
• Screw it, we’ll just add something to it later to make it a unique porter. We’ll just add some yeast…BANG
• Lid to our yeast storage container blows and spews yeastie goodness all over the walls and not into the carboys.

I don’t think we have had more things go wrong on a single day of brewing. However it wasn’t a total loss. We still have 18 gallons of porter fermenting waiting for experimenting. We also got to hang out with a really cool cat, Marcel. A lot of use bay area beer guys know this guy, and he is super knowledgeable about everything beer.

As Thomas Edison vaguely said…”I did not fail at making an imperial porter, I simply found a way not to make it.”

Contract VS DIY

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?