I've been taking a break from the blogging for far too long. One week led to two, two weeks led to 2 months and now I don't even remember why I thought I'd take a break. But I'm baaaaaa-aaack.
So, what's new with you?
Since last I wrote, we've released and finished our Winter seasonal BogWater, had a crazy-awesome Christmas, started investigating a larger brewhouse, put a downpayment on a better bottling line, Released and sold out of three Wild Oats releases, BogFather (a monster version of BogWater), Winterbrewed (an amber ale infused with fairtrade coffee brewed by Bridgehead) and Matt's Sleepy Time (A big stout fermented with belgian yeast and aged with oak staves), and 11 of us went to the craft brewers convention in SanFrancisco. Oh yeah, and we also started selling our seasonals into the LCBO, starting with our Spring Seasonal, Beaver River. Like LugTread, its flying off the shelves and we're now moving to 24hr/day x 6 day a week bottling (which may sound like we're moving a tonne of beer, but really its just that our bottling line is that slow)
We've also gone through a lot of people changes in the last little while, which has been rather challenging for us. We added close to 20 people in one year and some of them worked out super awesome and some didn't and we probably learned the hard way some valuable lessons on keeping people happy and challenged and productive at work. I'm so very happy we hired a human resources manager (speaking of super awesome people), who is helping us through all this.
So, yeah, I'll try again to keep up with weekly posts. Thanks to everyone who has harrassed and hounded me to get back in the blog-saddle. Its funny to say this, because I'm the one who hasn't been doing it, but I've missed the therapeutic value of this blog.
See you next week!
Steve, I'm glad you're back! It's been many cold months with no post, so welcome back.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed, but sad that I only heard about you guys two days ago. Within hours of hearing that there was a microbrewery so close to us (Avonmore), my wife and I were at your door for a tasting and tour and bought my first growler.
ReplyDeleteWas great reading through your entire blog to date and hope to see many more posts to come.
I found the posts about getting into the LCBO very informative. Hoping to see something about getting initially licensed as a brewery and selling out of your retail store?
Thanks!