Rough Start

For those of you that keg on a consistent basis, I’ve had a recurring issue that I just can’t figure out. We tapped our most recent batch of IPA about a week and a half ago and found it pretty disappointing. The flavor was flat, the aftertaste was metallic – it tasted like all the materials were stale. I almost threw the entire batch out, but a few folks tried it last Monday and claimed I was exaggerating. I tried it that evening (after probably 4-5 pints had been poured from the keg) and tasted the same issues. Then I tried it once more last night, and it tastes terrific and very consistent with our previous batches. This is the second or third time I’ve had this happen – it’s not just beer in the line or trub from the bottom of the keg that’s creating these flavors. Any ideas?

Crunching the Numbers

One of the biggest objectives of Saturday’s Brewhaha was to collect some solid data on how our beers and brand are perceived by our future customers. Mission accomplished – we received nearly 400 comment cards, including about 100 for each of the three beers we served. We also asked about beer consumption and preferences.

Here were a few highlights:

• Overall, the average rating for all three beers was about an 8. Not too shabby.
• As expected, lighter and more infrequent beer drinkers generally preferred the Hefeweizen.
• The IPA was the favorite of people who drink more beer.

We still have yet to debrief on what it means for our recipes, but initially it seems like we won’t have to make any monumental changes to any of these recipes. Our focus will be making the tweaks to get from an “8″ to a “10.”

We embark on a journey of tastings

It’s amazing we haven’t done this sooner. I think we were waiting until we got some good base recipes down, but now that we feel we are there, it’s time to start being especially critical about our beers. Jeff has put together a pretty complicated spreadsheet to track our beers (believe it or not, it’s a step up from ProMash, which didn’t have all of the functionality Jeff wanted). One aspect of this spreadsheet is tasting notes.

Saturday we sat down and took some pretty detailed notes on our last batch of Swashchuckler IPA and Weissguy Hefeweizen. The outcome? Some very specific recommendations for tweaks and paths forward. I can’t believe how helpful this was. Seriously. Helpful. It’s also nice to see Joel try to make up things to cover up his turrible palate.