Hey There,
George Wendt's publisher was kind enough to give us 10 copies of his new book to give away through our blog!
So you will have until November 30 to send in your entry to win a free book, just in time to avoid buying a Christmas gift for somebody.
Here are the rules:
1. Send in something cool.
-This can be a picture, drawing, joke, live performance, a bottle of homebrew, or a receipt for a donation to a charity, or something completely different. It has to be cool, original and awesome. Depending on what it is you can email it to steve@beaus.ca or mail it to
Free George Wendt attn. Steve Beauchesne
Beau's All Natural Brewing Co.
10 Terry Fox Dr., box 279
Vankleek Hill ON
K0B 1R0
2. I will completely arbitrarily and with no official point system award 10 books for the coolest stuff I receive. If I get anything that totally blows my mind, I'll throw in a Beau's hockey jersey (retail price $99) to the coolest, coolest thing I get.
3. You can't work at the brewery or be a relative of someone at the brewery, cause you guys are already pretty cool.
4. Make sure you leave me contact info to send your winnings to you.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
George-A-Palooza (a.k.a. Oktoberfest 2009)
So this blog entry is a bit late, but worthwhile nonetheless. We had our first ever Oktoberfest on October 3rd of this year. Technically, last year we had a little shin-dig at the brewery, very low key, but still fun. All year afterwards we had this ongoing debate…are we ready to do a bigger version, or should we wait a year. With 6 weeks to go, on a trip to Toronto with Rob, we had a moment of intense optimism and decided the time was right.
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t, but once you commit, you have to deliver. 6 weeks is not a lot of time to put together a large scale event; but on the other hand, we work a lot harder than average folk, so maybe it was just right. At any rate, we had to find a location, food, entertainment, costumes, work out transportation logistics, print tickets, signs, posters and figure out how to get the word out.
Food wasn’t too hard. We’ve got great relationships with amazing restaurants and chefs, so we started calling them up. Entertainment was kindof tough, but we got lucky that some of the better oompah music wasn’t booked that night, and through other personal relationships we worked out a really cool homebrewing demonstration, kids activities, a keg tapping ceremony and obviously brewery tours and haywagon rides.
Then came the stoke of great luck. My friend George Eaglesmith said he would be coming. George is about the most enthusiastic brewer in the planet and if he was coming then certainly the stars and the moons had aligned and things would be good. Next I heard from Alan McKay of the Members of Barleyment that the other George (Wendt, that is) was doing a promo tour of his upcoming book Drinking With George. Better yet, Alan had been in contact with George’s PR firm about an interview for his Bodensatz website and had actual contact info.
This is where I came in. After about 300 emails and a dozen phone calls, I convinced George and his manager and his PR firm that he should attend our Oktoberfest. His schedule was pretty tight – Cincinnati Oktoberfest with ½ million people, Great American Beer Festival (awesome event if you are lucky enough to get tix before it sells out), and then the Colbert Report. The next morning a flight into Ottawa and boom – this is really happening, George Wendt came to Vankleek Hill.
Oktoberfest itself is a non-stop blur of work and excitement. We were pretty overwhelmed by the numbers of people that came out – we had expected 1,000, hoped for 1,500 and publicly said as many as 2,000 might show up. When 5,000 people arrived we couldn’t believe it.
While the food lasted it was fantastic. The bands were great. George Wendt stayed for an extra 2 hours to make sure everyone got an autograph. And all the homebrewers were excited that a professional brewer named George was so enthusiastic about their set up.
Perfect.
Well, in truth, the beer line ups got out of control for a couple hours and we did run out of food (until the pizza shops in town could start delivering), but 99% of the people who came told me afterwards they had the time of their lives. 1% of the people were very clear that they did not (see comments of long lineups and running out of food).
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t, but once you commit, you have to deliver. 6 weeks is not a lot of time to put together a large scale event; but on the other hand, we work a lot harder than average folk, so maybe it was just right. At any rate, we had to find a location, food, entertainment, costumes, work out transportation logistics, print tickets, signs, posters and figure out how to get the word out.
Food wasn’t too hard. We’ve got great relationships with amazing restaurants and chefs, so we started calling them up. Entertainment was kindof tough, but we got lucky that some of the better oompah music wasn’t booked that night, and through other personal relationships we worked out a really cool homebrewing demonstration, kids activities, a keg tapping ceremony and obviously brewery tours and haywagon rides.
Then came the stoke of great luck. My friend George Eaglesmith said he would be coming. George is about the most enthusiastic brewer in the planet and if he was coming then certainly the stars and the moons had aligned and things would be good. Next I heard from Alan McKay of the Members of Barleyment that the other George (Wendt, that is) was doing a promo tour of his upcoming book Drinking With George. Better yet, Alan had been in contact with George’s PR firm about an interview for his Bodensatz website and had actual contact info.
This is where I came in. After about 300 emails and a dozen phone calls, I convinced George and his manager and his PR firm that he should attend our Oktoberfest. His schedule was pretty tight – Cincinnati Oktoberfest with ½ million people, Great American Beer Festival (awesome event if you are lucky enough to get tix before it sells out), and then the Colbert Report. The next morning a flight into Ottawa and boom – this is really happening, George Wendt came to Vankleek Hill.
Oktoberfest itself is a non-stop blur of work and excitement. We were pretty overwhelmed by the numbers of people that came out – we had expected 1,000, hoped for 1,500 and publicly said as many as 2,000 might show up. When 5,000 people arrived we couldn’t believe it.
While the food lasted it was fantastic. The bands were great. George Wendt stayed for an extra 2 hours to make sure everyone got an autograph. And all the homebrewers were excited that a professional brewer named George was so enthusiastic about their set up.
Perfect.
Well, in truth, the beer line ups got out of control for a couple hours and we did run out of food (until the pizza shops in town could start delivering), but 99% of the people who came told me afterwards they had the time of their lives. 1% of the people were very clear that they did not (see comments of long lineups and running out of food).
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Breaking Ground...Not!
So last weekend Kevin (brother-in-law and assistant brewer) and I headed up to the Golden Tap awards. It was a fantastic night, lots of hanging out with brewers, friends, and beer fanatics.
We did really well, too, which was awesome. A few more plaques to put up on the wall is awesome and humbling at the same time. After the ceremony a few of us went to C’est What for a last beer of the evening (thanks to Kevin for making sure we didn’t continue past C’est What).
While at C’est What I met a guy who seemed pretty unimpressed with the whole thing and came right out and said we might be ok for Ontario, but really hadn’t done anything groundbreaking.
Forgetting momentarily that the customer is always right, I got into a heated debate about how much ground a brewery could possibly break in a short three year time span. I held up our organic certification, our obscure beer styles (the only production-brewery making a Kolsch in this part of the world, the first to use bogmyrtle, a sticke, to name a few) and a bunch of other things; but it seemed to this guy that unless we were aging our beer inside live leprechauns and powering the brewery on the positive thoughts of benevolent magi, that we were pretty ho-hum.
During the conversation, many of the US ground breakers like DogFish Head and New Belgium Brewing came up over and over.
Which is part of the reason why it was so cool to get an email yesterday from Alex Jesse, purchasing agent for New Belgium. She was surfing the web and came across our brewery and I guess she liked what she saw. Alex offered some kind words and a VIP tour of New Belgium if we could make it up that way.
I guess if Beau’s can impress the companies that inspired us when we were getting started (and still do), we’re doing something right…groundbreaking or not.
We did really well, too, which was awesome. A few more plaques to put up on the wall is awesome and humbling at the same time. After the ceremony a few of us went to C’est What for a last beer of the evening (thanks to Kevin for making sure we didn’t continue past C’est What).
While at C’est What I met a guy who seemed pretty unimpressed with the whole thing and came right out and said we might be ok for Ontario, but really hadn’t done anything groundbreaking.
Forgetting momentarily that the customer is always right, I got into a heated debate about how much ground a brewery could possibly break in a short three year time span. I held up our organic certification, our obscure beer styles (the only production-brewery making a Kolsch in this part of the world, the first to use bogmyrtle, a sticke, to name a few) and a bunch of other things; but it seemed to this guy that unless we were aging our beer inside live leprechauns and powering the brewery on the positive thoughts of benevolent magi, that we were pretty ho-hum.
During the conversation, many of the US ground breakers like DogFish Head and New Belgium Brewing came up over and over.
Which is part of the reason why it was so cool to get an email yesterday from Alex Jesse, purchasing agent for New Belgium. She was surfing the web and came across our brewery and I guess she liked what she saw. Alex offered some kind words and a VIP tour of New Belgium if we could make it up that way.
I guess if Beau’s can impress the companies that inspired us when we were getting started (and still do), we’re doing something right…groundbreaking or not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
