A sweet dowry…

This past Monday we were able to enjoy an amazing new tap handle as we poured the Swashchuckler and Lumberjack from the kegerator. This stellar new addition is complements of Ian – my younger sister’s boyfriend. Ian and I have a special relationship. I had never met him and for the previous 6 months I taunted him via 3rd party messengers, strange phone calls, and e-mails threatening castration…I am a really loving older brother. Well, 3 weeks ago he came to Atlanta with my sister and brought the tap handle featured here. He made it FROM SCRATCH with a solid block of oak and burned in the MNB logo. I really like Ian now. If anyone else wants to date my sister’s you’re going to have to make a tap handle cooler than his.

Trappist monks say “Don’t drink our beer”

The WSJ (that’s Wall Street Journal for you uneducated people out there) ran a great story today about the Trappist monks at St. Sixtus monastery in Westvleteren, Belgium.

Monks have been brewing Westvleteren beer at this remote spot near the French border since 1839. Their brew, offered in strengths up to 10.2% alcohol by volume, is among the most highly prized in the world. In bars from Brussels to Boston, and online, it sells for more than $15 for an 11-ounce bottle — 10 times what the monks ask — if you can get it.

I think the complete dichotomy of these monks with some of the bigger brewers is both interesting and amazingly awesome.

The monks are doing their best to resist getting bigger. They don’t advertise and don’t put labels on their bottles. They haven’t increased production since 1946. They sell only from their front gate. You have to make an appointment and there’s a limit: two, 24-bottle cases a month. Because scarcity has created a high-priced gray market online, the monks search the net for resellers and try to get them to stop.

Getting people to stop selling your beer? An interesting marketing tactic… But then again, it’s not a marketing tactic. They just brew to support themselves financially. They brew great beer (apparently, I’ve never had it) and practice, like everything, drinking in moderation. So how does this asking-resellers-to-stop-thing play out?

One day recently, the wiry, sandy-haired Brother Joris returned to his office in the monastery after evening prayers. He flipped on his computer and went online to hunt for resellers and ask them to desist. “Most of the time, they agree to withdraw their offer,” he says. Last year, St. Sixtus filed a complaint with the government against two companies that refused — BelgianFood.com, a Web site that sells beer, cheese, chocolate and other niche products, and Beermania, a Brussels beer shop that also sells online. Both offer Westvleteren at around $18 a bottle.

Thanks to Kurt for passing the article along. You can read the full story here for probably about a week. After that you’ll have to subscribe. Lame.

We experiment with an applewood pale ale

Last night we kegged 25 gallons of beer. 20% of this was an experimental beer ? our Roundhouse Pale Ale with added applewood chips. We’ll have to wait and see what she tastes like when she carbonates, but initial reactions were encouraging. The applewood lends a unique flavor, and could potentially be that “something” that takes our pale ale from good to great. What does applewood look like inside of a tepid, uncarbonated pale ale, you ask?

Unfortunately, while we are encouraged about the applewood, this may not be the batch that wins us over. Our attenuation was fairly low, (OG 1.062, FG 1.031) so there are a lot of residual sugars screwing with the flavors. (Attenuation is beer-speak for the ability of the yeast to convert the sugars in the grains to alcohol). Fortunately, this is a problem we will be addressing head on, in the form of the Oxynator, which will allow us to pump pure oxygen into the cooled wort. I think it should be called the Oxynator 3000. It’s that cool.

Precious cargo

I drove back to Atlanta from Nashville yesterday afternoon. The traffic was horrendous.

And since I was transporting 4 yeast vials, I obviously felt like some kind of helicopter pilot for LifeFlight or something. Except my helicopter was a Civic. And the heart I had to keep alive for transplant was yeast. Nonetheless, the metaphor holds. I had to keep that yeast cool. I was transporting a living organism.

I am important.

[Come on by tonight. We'll be brewing a stout and consuming our Swashchuckler IPA and Lumberjack Stout.]

Back at it

After skipping brewing last week, we’re frothing at the mouth to get back to it. “Frothing” is probably a hyperbole. Jeff and I are excited. Joel, however, is actually frothing. I’m currently in Nashville, so I took a trip to the local homebrew shop, All Seasons. And yes, they had what we needed:

We were completely out of 2-row base malt, which is the primary reason for not brewing last week. We actually ended up brewing our pale ale the week before that with pilsner malt instead of our normal Marris Otter 2-row. This is theoretically acceptable, but far from ideal, given that we are working on honing our recipes.

So we’re ready to go. See ya’ll on Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was hoping to get this post out sooner, but I ended up taking 3 hour post-Thanksgiving nap, for which I do not apologize. I’ve been in the Appalachian mountains at my parents’ cabin. This place is great… Here’s a pic of my 98-year-old great-grandpa shuffling by the fire next to our dog Roxy:

And my wonderful mother fixing dinner and about to trip over our other dog Lucy:

Clearly I have a lot to be thankful for. Another big thing I have to be thankful for is MNB. I often forget how blessed I am to be a part of this three-man-operation. It’s exciting to be starting my own company ? and even more exciting to be doing it with guys that I love (yes, even you, Joel). Not only are we starting a company, we’re starting a brewery. MAKING BEER. Seriously, how much better could it get? Oh ? that’s right… I’ve made a ton of incredible friends in only a year of planning.

Here’s to many more beer-filled years!

Addendum to “Part of something bigger”

Normally I don’t repost people’s comments, but our friend Brad (the self-proclaimed Unrepentant Individual) has done gone and made a great point ? which happens to back up my position:

One more way the internet is changing the world.

Beer used to be dominated by the guys who could make fancy commercials and put them on during the Super Bowl. Why? Well, because the way for beer lovers to communicate was largely limited to beer industry insiders and homebrew clubs. There was no real way for people to get a different perspective than what BMC [Budweiser, Miller, Coors] was offering, because the cost was prohibitive.

There were people who desired better beer, and people who knew about the little breweries, but there was no way for them to talk. Enter the internet, a way for people across vast distances to discuss brewing and the craft beer world. All of a sudden, people like me can look up reviews of bars that offer good beer selections when I?m traveling. I can find out before I go somewhere what bars or liquor stores offer the local craft beers I want to try. And as people like me are able to do such a thing, it increases the market demand for small craft breweries that wouldn?t ever have succeeded otherwise.

And when the major breweries produce the tasteless watered-down swill that we?ve grown accustomed to, people are willing to try new beers that they never knew existed. ?The long tail? has now started wagging the dog.

Yes Brad, the Internet has truly made it easier to get the word out about good beer. It’s also been integral to us. We are, as you know, in the process of launching a brewery. We view the internet as our primary mode of “getting the word out.” We’ve actually had people find us online somehow, email us, and then show up to brew with us. It’s been really cool. This new medium truly is a powerful one, and it allows the little guys (us in this case) a platform to communicate and connect with those who support what we are doing.