How to Start a Brewery (in 1 million easy steps)

WE'RE BACK, BABY!!!!

2011-12-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

I'm humbled, amazed and awed to say that I've just been informed that our project with Operation Come Home has been allowed to start back up!!!!

Thank you Premier McGuinty, MPP's Grant Crack, and Lisa McLeod. Look!!! BiPartisan support! Thank you to everyone in the media, the worlds of FaceBook, Twitter, blogosphere and everywhere else for making our issue known.

I've maintained throughout this situation that I felt that we were being held back by a technical oversight in the language of a regulation and that I was confident that my government would be able to fix this. But, wow, I never thought it would happen so quickly.

The online website www.bybo.ca will start taking orders at 5:15pm. Deliveries up and running by Monday. We got the good news from our MPP just as we were finishing our staff meeting, which was great, because I was able to put him on speaker phone so that the whole company could scream their excitement. What an emotional end to a rollercoaster of a week.

Now, reader, how about you go buy some beer and put some folks back to work!

Today has been a good day.

The Grinch Who Stole Your Christmas Beer...

2011-11-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

Today we launched Buy Your Beau’s Online, our project with Operation Come Home to deliver beer to people’s homes in Ottawa, and promptly had the service effectively shut down by the AGCO.

That’s right, after less than a day of operation, BYBO has been closed, after another brewery (we weren’t told which one) complained. The complaint has nothing to do with the service or the fact that at-risk youth were involved, but over a technicality involving what I believe to be a typo in the regulations around home beer delivery services.

Our retail store operates as an authorized beer store by the LCBO, but the regulation around home delivery uses the wording ‘operated' instead of ‘authorized’, which is how it is worded to allow us to sell to special occasion permit holders, and retail customers. It is interesting to note that the Beer Store, which is not operated by the LCBO or government is somehow allowed to sell to home delivery services.

So...

No specialty beer delivered to our Ottawa customers.
No employment for homeless youth, to get them off the street.
No additional revenue for Operation Come Home.

What’s really got me irked about this situation is the complete arbitrariness of the regulation that is being used to kill a social enterprise designed to do good for the community and the malicious behaviour by another brewery in this province.

The Beer Store is a retail outlet owned by three breweries. Why would they be allowed to sell to a home delivery service and Beau’s (or any other brewery) not be? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s anti-competitive and it restricts choice to the residents of this province.

I know that there are a lot of cut-throat competitive tactics used by some of the less honourable members of the brewing community, but taking a job from a homeless youth to thwart us is beyond reprehensible.

I’m disappointed that the AGCO has decided to act this way, using the letter and not the spirit of the law to guide their decision-making, but ultimately I understand that they may not have had a choice once the complaint was lodged. I would have rathered more consultation from them or that they refused the delivery license application when they were informed how the service would work. If that had happened, at least Corey and Kyle, the two youths who had been hired to start this service, wouldn’t have had their hopes lifted and then let down in such a dramatic way.

I’m simply aghast, though that another brewery instigated this.
I’m really disappointed that this service is unfortunately going to be shut down.

I’m sorry to the youth who have been dealt yet another misfortune, to our customers who were looking forward to gaining better access to our beer and to other breweries who probably would have been able to use similar models to compete better in this Province.

Don't worry, though. We will find another way to get beer to our customers and we won't stop trying to help our community. Vive la Beau's!

My Date With Jordan

2011-08-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

We needed to do a poster run in Ottawa for Oktoberfest, and I hadn't gone postering since my punk rock days, so it seemed like a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. For anyone not in the know, postering is where you tape or staple signs to lamp posts in the city. Ottawa is great for this because they have actual poster collars on specific lampposts so you can poster without feeling bad about where you put the poster.

Talking to Jordan, our creative director, we decided to make a whole day of it, and I put it into my calendar as Steve and Jordan Go On A Date. In the notes I put 'Lots of hand holding' and HR manager, Karen added 'awkward'.

Our date started early, getting picked up by Jordan and his girlfriend Tina (I'm a progressive guy; I'm cool with that). We got into Ottawa and met up with fellow posterers Sean, Matt, Erin (and her dog Zona) and we divided into 3 teams, Jordan and I taking the market area.

Warm sun, slow strolls, and tape guns make for a great combination and we had a fun time. By 1pm we'd finished up and met the rest of the crew for lunch at Lieutenants Pump. We were joined by Jamie, his very pregnant wife Jenn, our Sales Manager and brewer Chris.

After lunch we piles into the car and visited the St. Albert Curd Festival. Threat of storm that never came had a lot of vendors closed down, but our booth stayed strong and we had a few samples and watched a couple rounds of the intertown challenge, which was pretty funny. We were joined by friends Chris and Meaghan and the gang got bigger.

Next, we picked up some steak and lettuce to go with the, corn, sausage and Caesar salad ingredients Jordan and Tina already had for a quiet dinner at home.

Then off to the Vankleek Hill fair...Beau's never really sells a lot say the Fair, it seems like the one event we do that never really does well for us, but we were sponsoring a car in the demolition derby (Lisa did great!) and lots of people are in town, so it made for a fun outing all the same.

Our evening together ended with a night cap at the Windsor tavern. We packed a whole lot of fun into yesterday. I hope Jordan asks me out again!

Nice Email

2011-07-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

I received a nice email the other day, I thought I'd share. This is a great example of building community and relationships with the folks that buy our beer.

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:24 AM, George wrote:

Steve

I have to pass along this email from my father. Keep in mind that at 79, it takes a lot to impress him with regards to beer. Being an Ottawa Valley boy himself, he was naturally both curious and enthusiastic.

Apparently he was quite pro-active in this little bistro that night, chatting up the other customers about Beau's, and discussing Lug Tread's qualities, tasting a few with the other men. He was even excited about the little tractor! He begged the owner to sell him the Beau's glass, and she was so tickled by him and the stories, that she gave him the glass. So, long story short, he's the newest oldest Beau's fan!

Now he is cruising in his motorboat (named after his dog, "Bedde's Barge") in the Rideau Canal, headed up to Ottawa for Canada Day, so he can see young William & Kate. He is quite keen on getting some more Beau's during his stay, moored at Dow's Lake Marina. Since he is both older, and not so mobile, I thought maybe I could ask you directly if you had directions to the nearest store where he can grab himself and his buddies some cold Beau's with which to toast both the country and the newlywed royals?

Cheers

George

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Prinyer's"
Date: June 24, 2011 10:43:36 PM EDT
To: "George "
Subject: brew

So, there I was in this nice little bistro in Wellington, where Mom wanted to go for some sushi. Asked if I would care for a drink, I glanced frantically around the room for ideas, and spotted a particularly different looking bottle, and said, "I'll have one of those."

When it arrived (all 600mLs of it) I found that it was called Beau's All Natural Lagered Ale. 5.2%. All Organic.

Punch line... Made in Vankleek Hill!

Ever heard of it?

A side benefit was that I was able to lecture the crowd on the geography wrt V'Hill.

XX

PS. What's Lagered Ale?

PPS. It was spectacular - very nice!

5 Years Old!!!

2011-06-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

I’m somewhat dumbfounded to say we’re about to hit a pretty significant milestone, 5 years in business as of July. In some ways it seems like its been five weeks and in others it seems I’ve been doing this my whole life. In past years I’ve done blog posts on where we’ve gone, so I’m reluctant to repeat the same stories, but wow, five years feels really special.

What makes this anniversary so very special is that from almost every angle, the next five years are shaping up to be even more amazing. The whole team has put in so many hours and made so many sacrifices that it seems most appropriate at this time to say thanks to all them, instead of another “We’ve Come A Long Way Baby” kind of post. So here goes...

Dad, I couldn’t have chosen a better partner, you’re my mentor, my idol and my rock

Mom, I know this has been hard on you, you’ve sacrificed so much and the stress on you has been immense. Thanks for standing by me and Dad and believing in us. I love the fact that its my mom on the phone every week calling up the LCBO stores.

Nicola, thanks for letting me follow my dreams and being there for our kids when I didn’t have the time. Packing up and moving away from Toronto was hard on you and I appreciate it.

Matt, what can I say, Matt? If everyone else at the brewery worked twice as hard as they already do, it would mean a thing if our beer wasn’t so gosh darn tasty. Over the years, I’ve come to think of you as a brother, a friend and both a willing co-conspirator and a voice of reason.

Johanne R, your positive attitude and hard work have been invaluable. You are a pleasure to be around and you are calm under pressure. It has been a lot of learning to grow into our office manager, but I think you are doing great.

Alex, one day you are going to make a great accountant! Thanks for all the hard work you’ve put in.

Jen James, if it were possible to be too passionate about what we do, I think you might be guilty. Your smarts, your willingness to learn new skills and your investment into our brewery is wicked cool, sis. It’ll be cool having you in the comptroller position soon.

Anick, I’m always happy to see you, both because I think you are a great person and it always means we’re really busy here.

Anne, thanks for all your help in getting us certified organic and for dealing with our bottling line for as long as you did.

Alex, Anne, Alice, Megan, Robert, Ryan M, Nik, I’m glad you have come on board to help us out for this busy summer on the bottling line, i look forward to getting to know all of you.

Korina, I dig your sense of humour, your grace under fire and your eye to detail. I was pretty reluctant to hire a retail manager, but you’ve proven both that we needed the position and that you are the best person for it.

Audrey, you are quickly making yourself a great part of the team whether its been on the bottling line or in the office.

Laura, when the brewery was young, you put in a lot of hours, doing all sorts of crazy things and I’m very glad we can still count on you to come out and wave the flag for events and still give it all you’ve got.

Jerry, ever since we went to see Gwar in ’93, I’ve counted you as one of my closest, bestest friends. Bringing you on board last year was such a happy moment for me, and through the year and a bit you’ve been with us, as much as I love how amazing you are doing selling in Toronto and to the West of the city, I love that I get to hang out with you even more.

Jamie, it has been so fulfilling to have you by my side these 5 years. You built up Ottawa, by caring about your customers and about the brewery and about me. I couldn’t ask for a better friend, I know you are there for me personally, and professionally and that means so much.

Nikki, we’ve shared so many laughs and tears, its hard to put into words how much I care for you. I’m so glad you’ve been with us these last few years, you are awesome. You’ve been a great brand ambassador, tour guide and the retail store will miss you.

Frank, from our first meeting at a Maximum RnR show, you’ve shown yourself to be incredibly passionate about all things beer. Our customers love you and your tours, and so do I.

Cuggy, you are destined for greatness. Your passion, your thirst for knowledge and your awesome personality are going to take you to amazing places. I’m looking forward to the day I’ll be able to brag to my friends about how I knew you before you were famous.

Karen C, you’ve kept the team together, you’ve given us the HR structure and policies we’ve needed and you’ve always pitched in, on everything. When you walk in the brewery, everyone’s mood lifts so MUch. I’m your biggest fan!

Amanda, I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, bit by bit as I walk behind you to pour myself a beer. You’ve got a great sense of humour, mixed with a no-nonsense work ethic; its pretty cool.

Jordan Bamforth, when we first started out, you took my ideas and made them better than I had imagined. Now you are coming to me with ideas I couldn’t have come up with. You are the look and feel of Beau’s, and there isn’t anyone else in the World that could do it better.

Jen Brock, I miss your great sense of humour, your motormouth, and your insane, non-stop work. I still hope we’ll get you back at the brewery one day.

Jordan aka Jo Po, the lady killer. Man, I wish I had your mojo when I was your age. For that matter, I wish I had it now! The fact you actually have some smarts and make a difference at the brewery is cool, too.

Keith, it’s only been a few weeks, but I’ve already come to think of you as our production Messiah! I believe very much in serendipity, and you are proof that some things were meant to happen; you are exactly the person we needed. I’m enjoying getting to know you, too.

Kevin, you have been such a good friend for such a long time. From the days before the brewery when we’d skip class to drink beer and play Sega Hockey ‘95 (or was it ‘94?) to the late nights when you’d come in and help me bottle through the night, to delivering beer to brewing, you’ve been such a supporter and amazing part of my life.

Rob, Wild Rose’s loss is our gain. I’m glad you decided to move out this way and hope you’ll stay a few more years before starting your own brewery. That said, I can’t wait to try your beer.

Brad, you are my favourite crasshole! I’m glad you made the decision to move out to Vankleek Hill, you are a great brewer and a loyal, stand-up guy.

Chris, nobody can MacGyver broken stuff better than you. Just stop breaking yourself, ok? We need you in piece! Your Happy Pils last year was amazing, you make good beer, and you add a lot of character to the brewing team.

Mark Smith, you came through for us in such a big way, when we needed you most. When Matt was out for several weeks due to a car accident, you stepped up, and totally came through. You were our Obi Won Kenobi. I wish you had been able to stay with us, but have so much respect for the decisions you made and the way you got us through a really scary time.

Michaela, you are so cool. Its great having you with us, and our Eastern Ontario restaurants have such a great vibe, because of how you look after them.

David B, I looked up to you so much when I was a kid. Whether it was teaching me how to play Risk or D&D or just hanging out, you were the older cousin I admired. Nothing has changed in that respect (and I’d totally go for a game of D&D sometime soon). Keep kickin’ ass selling beer in central Ontario, dude.

Rob P, I’m really glad things have worked out with you, you really seem to have hit your stride and I’m thrilled to have you with us, drivin’ and deliverin’ with the best of ‘em.

Rob Morra, you have proven yourself so thoroughly to be a great friend, a great salesman, a great eater, a questionable driver, and one of the hardest working men I know. You care so much about our customers and our brewery, it is truly inspiring. I work harder, because of how hard you work and how much you believe in me. Toronto restaurants are so lucky to have you as their salerep.

Phil, although I believe you are missing your true calling in life as a stand-up comedian, I’m very glad I get to work with you day in and day out and hear your material. You have come in early, you have stayed late, you have put a lot of yourself into making our brewery a success. Thanks, little brother! Getting the beer out the door hasn’t been an easy task and you’ve stuck with it.

Todd, you are such a great guy. You are great with our customers, you work hard, you are a great driver and you are one of the funniest guys to share a beer with.

Thaila, uhhhhhh, what can I say? You’re a great guy, a great delivery person and a very thoughtful human...wow, that was really hard not to repeat the word guy in that sentence!

Darren, I know things didn’t end well between us and I’m sorry it didn’t work out. We did have some good times together though, and I still hope that someday we’ll be able to have some Barbeque and a beer again.

Judd, You’ve been a solid addition to the delivery team, and I can’t wait to see your zombie death metal band.

Keith Carmen, you are seriously the nicest man on the planet! It’s been so cool bringing you on to deliver in Toronto after witness you deliver rock and roll so hard for so long.

Davey D, from the first time I met you in the Heatskores to today, you’ve impressed me with your larger-than-life personality, your fun attitude and your take on life. You are doing great and I think its so cool we get to work together.

Matt M, you’ve been there when we needed you on weekends, overnight, whenever. Thanks for sticking with us and I’m excited to have you start as assistant brewer very soon.

Bruce, best hire story ever...I walk by Bruce’s place on my home every day and I’d usually stop and say hi for a bit. Over a couple years, I got to know Bruce pretty well. One day, as I stop by, Bruce says “I just got laid off, are you guys hiring?” I say “Well, no, but stop by the brewery on Monday, we’ll find something for you”. Since then Bruce has been such a great employee, its been amazing. Always sporting a smile and a kind word, too.

Johanne C, from the old Spectrum days, I’ve always admired your work ethic and enjoyed your company. I’m so glad we’ve had you with us.

Karen A, I know how important a job well done is for you and I appreciate the amount of care you put into the work you do.

Shane, you’ve been a great addition to our team. Everyone can learn a few lessons about focus and steady hard work from you.

Colin, you’ve been a great co-op student and I’m glad you have been able to help us get through the summer, too.

Andrew, good luck in brewing school next year and thanks for choosing to work with us over the summer

Dave Wade, I hope you are able to find work in your field one day, and I’m happy that we’ve had you while you are looking.

Little Jeff, thanks for pitching in over Christmases and busy times for us. You are a good friend and a hard worker

Lyndell, you’ve very quickly made yourself such an important part of our brewery. You’ve grown so well into the role of special events coordinator and I can see you learning more every day.

Stephane, Jason, Nina, Sylvie, Veronic, Yalitsa, Stacy, Jen P, Amy S, Brett, Beasley, Shari, Alex N, Marc B, Mike S and Neil E, I’m sorry you couldn’t stick around, but I appreciate your time here and hope you remember us with fondness.

To everyone else who has helped out, pitched in, gone the extra mile and supported us throughout these last 5 years, thanks to you, too. I could spend a month listing off all the people that have done so much for us. Your belief in Beau’s gives all of us the energy to keep pushing the boundaries, striving to do better and feeling good about our accomplishments.

Here's to another 5 years of fun and beer and more fun!

Ontario Craft Beer Week Is Coming, Mondial is here!

2011-06-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well, we’ve just about a month before the 2nd annual OCB Week, or Ontario Craft Beer Week, if you’re into the whole brevity thing, kicks off on Father’s Day (June 19th, dontchaknow?). OCB Week is 7 days of celebrating the artisanal, the unique and the amazing beer brewed in our Province. It’s also quite a marathon of no-sleep, long days, longer nights and zig-zagging across the Province...I can’t wait!

Last year, at our brewery we focussed on doing lots of events and this year we’ll still be hosting, or contributing quite a few. But this year we’re stepping up the ante in terms of beer offerings, too. Check this out: We’ve collaborated with some of our favourite breweries to create a Pan-Ontario Beer, that should be super incredibly awesome. We’ve made a custom blend of our Screaming Beaver, Grand River’s Curmudgeon, Wellington’s Russian Imperial Stout, Flying Monkey’s Netherworld, and Great Lakes’ Devils Pale Ale. After blending we transferred into bourbon barrels, to get some yummy oak and bourbon character as well.
We’re also going to have a few events highlighting some Wild Oats that have already sold out (we saved a few for special occasions) and can’t wait to get to try some old favourites.

But in the meantime, I’m gearing up for Mondial de la Biere, which starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday. Mondial is one of the best festivals ever, this year in a new location. I love hanging out with all the Quebec brewers; not only is their beer fantastic, but they are such a friendly, gracious group of people. It seems every time I visit a Quebec-based brewery, I come back with a new respect for the way they treat people. I’m also hoping that I meet a few international brewers; last year I met Alex and Grady from New Belgium and have developed a wonderful beer trading relationship with Alex and also met Eric Warner from Left Hand, whom I’ve since had the pleasure of hanging out in places near and far.

And I’m sure I’ll run into Ralph Morana from Bar Volo in Toronto. I’ve never been anywhere without running into Ralph. It’s both reassuring and freaky at the same time.

Have I mentioned I’ve been keeping busy?

2011-05-17T02:46:00.000-07:00

At the brewery, we talk about the tidal wave. Its a term we coined in our second year by about mid-May and it referred to the dizzying amount of special projects, special events, dramatic increase in sales and extra things on the go we very suddenly started to experience. Every year since, we talk about where we are in relation to the tidal wave, i.e. “It feels like the tidal waves coming”; “Oh, I think the tidal wave’s hit”; or “I think we’ve made it through the worst of the tidal wave”; to eventually “We made it through the tidal wave!”.

This last remark is always one of both joy and melancholy. It is such an endurance test to get through for everyone at the brewery, but when its over it also means the end of our rapid growth and let me tell you growing rapidly has all the adrenaline rush of jumping out of an airplane. (Actually, I don’t know what jumping out of an airplane feels like, and have no real urge to experience it, but it seems like a good equivalent).

The funniest comment made every year about the tidal wave goes something like this: “This year we’re so much more prepared for the tidal wave”. Every year I say it in March, just before St. Patrick’s Day, which is to us the start of our busy season, and every year by mid-May I look back with a sense of wonder at the naiveté I must have had only 2 months earlier. To give you a sense of the extra stuff we’ve got on the go, here are a few general items:

• We’ve gone from running our bottling line 4 days/week, to 7 days/week (24 hours per day) and have had to start cancelling orders due to lack of bottling capability (Note to our sad customers – new bottling line should be installed by July)

• We’re brewing 24 hours a day 5 days a week and will begin 7 days very shortly.

• Lyndell, our special events and donations coordinator has gone from running about 15 events per month to about 50 events per month. Included in the list are some pretty cool festivals like the Dandelion festival in Kemptville, the Orleans festival, The Great Canadian Cheese festival in Prince Edward County, Mondial de la Biere in Montreal, Toronto Wine and Spirits, Beaches BBQ and Brew Fest, Ottawa Jazz Fest, Oyster fest in Ottawa, Perth Kilt Run, Vermont Brewer’s festival...and more, more, more!

• Sales at our wonderful, wonderful restaurants have jumped by 27% in 3 months and we expect another 30% growth by end of July.

This rapid growth impacts everybody. We’re all working faster, harder and longer to try to get it all done. I’m sure most everybody at the brewery could give you a list of the extra projects they have on the go right now, but here’s a small list of things I’ve personally got on the go over the next few weeks.

• Planning OCB week – I’m the co-chair again this year along with my good friend at Cameron’s, Jason Ellesmere.

• Hiring a new production manager, sales staff, delivery person, assistant brewer.

• Working through a major financing round to bring in a new brewhouse and more fermenters to try to keep up with this crazy growth.

• Talking to a few interested people about the possibility of expanding into Quebec (I’m sure wiser people than I would suggest I don’t divulge this detail, but I’ve never really seen the point in being too secretive on this sort of stuff).

• Being available for the media. The OCB’s PR person always asks me how we get so much media attention, and I always reply “by being newsworthy”, but Spring time seems to be a very good time to write about beer. CTV is here tomorrow, we’ve recently had great articles in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen and more, and all of this takes time to spend with the journalist. (not complaining!)

• Speaking engagements: Apparently some people think I’m worth listening to! I recently gave a seminar on sustainable brewing at Niagara College’s brewing school (actually Karen did a good chunk of the work and Jordan made it look good, I just pretended I knew what I was talking about), I’m speaking to Ryerson University’s Alumni this Thursday and will be talking at the Atlantic Beer Festival in Moncton on the 28th.

• Working on new projects is takes up a lot of time (and is incredibly fun). We’re working on lots of new Wild Oats releases, special collaborations for OCB Week, Toronto Beer Week and our Oktoberfest. We’re working on a brand new project that will be launched on our 5th birthday and will be ultra cool from both a sustainability and crazy beer perspective. We’re working with some really cool artists for a Halloween project that is going to be absolutely killer.

I’m looking at the list of other projects on the go and starting to feel overwhelmed, so instead of making this bullet point list go on for forever, I think I’ll just leave it at “Wow, was I ever foolish to think this year I’d be better prepared for this”. It seems that the more people we have working hard, the more things we can get into, so we just keep getting busier.

Sorry for my absence!

2011-03-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

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!

BogWater is Coming!!!

2010-11-16T02:21:00.000-08:00

The first batch of BogWater has been brewed and it is now fermenting away like a trooper. Its actually a little later than I would have hoped to go in, but it took a bit longer to get the bogmyrtle this year...although the wait was definitely worth it, it is simply wonderful this year. Super aromatic, the whole brewery smelled of myrtle when we opened the first package.

About 5 weeks from now, I'm going to be a very happy man. Not that I'm not happy now, but in 5 weeks I'll be a happy man enjoying a pint of BogWater!

Cheers,

Steve

Oktoberfest, Riotfest, Rob's Wedding, Organic Week and Mondial (oh my)

2010-10-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a month. This seriously has to go down as craziest month ever. I'm going to have to say 'wow' again. Wow. Ok, so here goes...

First, Oktoberfest. This was our 2nd time holding a full-on Oktoberfest in Vankleek Hill, and we nailed it this time. Last year we got overwhelmed by the turn-out, but this year we really pulled it off. Not without a hitch, mind you, but pretty close.

Saturday was a complete sell-out and Sunday was pretty full as well. We raised over $30,000 for charity and had a whole pile of fun. The bands were amazing, the kinderfest was awesome (Doo-Doo the clown is the best kids entertainer, ever), the speakers series was super cool, Cask Days was phenomenal, the activities went really well and the brewery tours were enjoyed by folks, too.

I didn't post a pic, because you should check out the soundslide that Justin at our local newspaper, The Review put up. http://www.thereview.ca/story/soundslide-oktoberfest-ist-wunderbar

The next weekend, Riotfest. Nothing to do with the brewery, but there's a really cool punkrock festival in Chicago every year called Riotfest and a bunch of us went down for Rob's bachelor party...hey, Rob works for the brewery, so I guess it sorta has a little bit to do with the brewery. Also I went to Piece brewpub and drank a whole pile of 3 Floyd's beer while I was there...

And then Rob and Robyn's Wedding...The next weekend was the wedding. The night before the wedding Rob and Robyn held a show at Sneaky Dee's and they convinced my old band to get back together for a set. That was really cool and their wedding was awesome fun, too. And I must say that after spending so much money at Sneaky Dee's during college, I'm glad to have gotten a tiny bit of it back (our beer was on tap for the night).

Then Organic Week and the reception on Parliament Hill. It was a cool day spent remembering why we spend the extra time and money to make organic beer and do a bit of organic food lobbying. An interesting side note, was that in speaking to Steve Abrahms from Mill St Brewery in Toronto that he also was in a band back in the day called Skinnerbox, and I use to listen to their stuff all the time.

Then came Mondial. Wow, was that a party. This is the 2nd annual Mondial de la Biere held in Strasbourg, at the far corner of France, just next to the German border. The show itself was a bit rough on me physically, but great fun as well. At night though, everybody was out partying like it was 1999. I can't go through the list of awesome people I was hanging out with without sounding like I'm name dropping, so instead I'll say this: During my nights there I was enthralled with conversations with Swedes, Italians, Americans, Belgians, Brits and fellow Canadians. I'd come solo and was worried that I'd spend my nights bored and alone, but instead I think I saw the wrong side of 5am everynight thanks to the efforts of my intrepid brewing colleagues.

So yeah...this weekend is Cask Days and Halloween in Toronto with Nicola and the kids (who, I'm happy to say still remembered that they had a husband/father when I returned from France yesterday). That will put the final, wonderful cap on a wonderful, busy month.

Great Canadian Beer Fest

2010-09-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to make it out to the Great Canadian Beerfest in Victoria last weekend. Caught up with some west coast friends like Paul from Howes Sound and Ali recently with R&B Brewing, Abe from Oregon and tried some super yummy beer.

Folks kept asking if we were planning to sell in BC soon and I kept answering that we were just there to enjoy the party - which was true.

I ended up cutting the trip short though...too many last minute details for Oktoberfest were keeping me up at night - well that and the texts from Abraham forcing me to go out late. But I'm glad I went.

Today is the first meeting of volunteers for Oktoberfest, so I'm pretty excited about seeing how it all goes. We're going to have somewhere around 300 people volunteering in different jobs over the course of the weekend!

Here's to a longer life...

2010-09-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Cheers to a libation with a dash of moderation

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2014332,00.html?artId=2014332?contType=article?chn=sciHealth

Last week of summer, next week our production increases (hopefully)

2010-08-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend that just passed proved to be a rather busy one, Dad was pouring at the Muskoka beer festival with Darren and Rob; Jason was keeping the taps flowing at the Capital Pride Festival (our 5th year of involvement) and Nikki and I were rammed at a brand new inter-provincial, local food festival in Lefaivre and Montebello.

With our new brewer Rob in place, we are hopefull that by next week we can start shipping a bit more beer out. My sister (and our sales manager) giggled and pointed out that we're just in time to miss summer completely. Oh well - just think of how ready we'll be for next year!

Speaking of expanding, in finance news, we're meeting with our new BDC rep to sign papers for a pre-approved loan. It is part of a government program designed to spur the economy except that its not a grant and the interest rate is the same as any other loan. That said, it is still very welcome and will go immediately into more equipment to help us keep growing.

10 Good Reasons to Go Organic

2010-08-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Beau's is a National Champion sponsor of Organic Week. They just sent us this list of 10 Good reasons to go organic, so I thought I'd share it with you.

1. YOU CAN TRUST IT Organic products meet strict standards of organic certification, So you can be certain your food is both grown and handled according to organic standards

2. IT’S MONEY WELL SPENT Though organics can cost a little more, prices are based on the true cost of production

3. YOU’LL CUT CHEMICAL USE Organic agriculture reduces the risk from agri-chemicals polluting the air,water and earth sustaining us

4. NATURE IS NOURISHED By not using chemicals and nitrogen that leach into the soil, organic food protects and conserves our water resources and builds richer soils. Organic agriculture enhances biodiversity

5. IT ENCOURAGES INNOVATION Organic farmers have developed farming practices to minimize agriculture’s impact on the environment, It is a green technology

6. IT DEFENDS DIVERSITY Biodiversity, that is. Biodiversity is the variety of species living on our planet, and studies show many organic fields contain more wild plants, species and birds than non-organic farms.

7. IT REACHES OUT RURALLY Organic agriculture supoprts small farms & offers new markets for local farmers

8. THERE’S NO LIMIT Today in every food category, you can find organic alternatives

9. IT’S GOOD FOR THE EARTH Like reforestation, research is showing that organic agriculture could positively impact the global warming crisis

10. YOU’LL FEEL BETTER Organic food is rich with nutrients an disease fighting anti-oxidants

Big Win (...and big bust!)

2010-08-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

I was happy to attend the 8th edition of the BarTowel's Golden Tap Awards this weekend. This year it was expanded to a 2-day event, with a beer dinner on Friday and the awards and tasting festival on the Saturday, all at the impressive Beer Bistro in downtown Toronto.

The beer dinner was phenomenal. The pairings were thoughtful, the beer was wonderful and the crowd was enthusiastic. The awards were great, too, and I'm very proud and humbled to say that we took home the awards for best year-round beer and best microbrewery in Ontario again as well as picking up the award for winning last year's best beer of the festival.

I had a particularly interesting conversation at the awards with a fellow named Trevor. It was his bachelor party and he successfully convinced his whole crew of fellows to spend an hour sampling Ontario craft beer before heading off for the rest of their festivities.

I have recently been talking about the possibility of creating a beer revolution in Ontario where Ontarians would drink independent, Ontario-made beer half of the time. Most of my critics insist that the so-called "regular" customer will only ever purchase the cheapest blandest beer available. Here was my counter-position in the flesh - one guy who had been turned on to the awesomeness of Ontario beer, doing missionary work with his buddies, introducing them to what we have to offer.

On my way back from the festivities in Toronto, I got a call from the home front to let me know of some very bizarre and rather bad news. We were very excited to be sponsoring the Ottawa Reggae Festival for the first time this year (I'm a huge ska and roots reggae fan), but apparently this will also be the last year. The headliners all backed out and the police stormed the gates and seized all the money on hand and effectively shut down the festival. We had to send guys down to protect the rest of our beer until we could get it out.

We're still scratching our heads and wondering what our lesson to learn from this is. We've pretty much been a hand-shake type of company and events like this make you question whether we need to be less trusting of new festivals, or just understand that risk is inherent in business and deal with it. Oh well, interesting conversations, at least.

Getting Ready for Oktoberfest

2010-08-19T00:47:00.000-07:00

We had a great, if not long, meeting today for our Oktoberfest. This year it is going to be held on October 2nd and 3rd, and its shaping up to be quite an event.

We started talking about holding an Oktoberfest in Vankleek Hill about a year before we actually started brewing beer. In terms of celebrations you could have, I'm hard pressed to think of one that is more fun and we've always liked the idea of bringing people to our little town.

Two years ago we held a mini-Oktoberfest on the front lawn of our brewery. About 200 people showed up for a taste of our (then) new seasonal, Night Marzen, toss a keg and hang out for the day.

Last year, we decided to step it up about 2,000 notches, booked out the fairgrounds, got live oompah bands, made custom dirndles, arranged for homebrewing demonstrations, brought 10 seriously delicious restaurants out and worked out haywagon rides to bring visitors back and forth to the brewery for tours. Things got crazy when our friend and Member of Barleyment (the homebrewers group) founder, Alan McKay got wind that George Wendt would be releasing a book about his relationship with beer and was able to suggest to George's PR firm that our little Oktoberfest would be a great stop on his book promotion tour.

It took a fair bit of convincing, but somehow George agreed to come up and join us. This seemed to be the final gem that made people decide to come up and visit, because on the day of we were completely overrun by happy guests...

We've taken a lot of steps to make sure we're better prepared this year including:

- Lots more tents incase the weather doesn't cooperate (and heaters, too)
- Lots more food (twice as many restaurants)
- Different stage set up and layout so that there is a better view, and more room to dance to the oompah
- lots more beer taps flowing to cut down lines
- no more food tickets - pay each restaurant direct
- lots more portapotties
- lots more tables
- on site camping (rough camping, nothing fancy, but VKH doesn't have a lot of accomodations)
- more haywagons bringing people to more destinations
-more activities
- more beer (extra batches of our seasonals, plus 3 special one-off batches, plus Volo Cask Days, a cask festival featuring beer from several Ontario breweries)
- More beer-centric attractions, including Beer expert Mirella Amato, an Art of Beau's at the Arbor Gallery
- Many more staff on hand to help out

...and a whole lot more. We fully plan on making our Oktoberfest an annual event to mark in your Calendar and think we've raised the bar significantly. George won't be able to make it this year, but we're working hard at bringing out a few familiar faces to add a splash of celebrity to the event, but we can't quite announce anything yet...

What if Ontario held a Beer Revolution

2010-08-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

I was asked if I wanted to speak at the Toronto Festival of Beer this year and I said yes, of course (I like to talk), but I didn’t want to just do the regular this-is-the-brewing-process or the my-dad-and-I-started-up-the brewery... kind of talk, I figured after saying it at the booth for a couple days, it might come out a little over-rehearsed. So I decided instead to give a pitch instead for drinking locally brewed beer in general.

As it turns out, the format was interview style and the placement of the speaking corner was in direct line of the main stage so it was impossible to hear and the tent (which was named craft beer corner) wasn’t given any signage that might let people know where to find it. Suffice to say, I didn’t get to give my pitch and there weren’t a lot of folks that would have heard it anyway.
So instead, I figure I might as well throw this on the blog, and see if it can get some traction here...

But a word of note first...I've footnoted my sources used, but I’m sure there are some better pieces of data out there that would refine some of the projections used. Please comment with better sources if you have them. I’ll edit the piece to include better figures as I get them and leave the comments in place to show the progress.

With that here is my pitch...

Thanks for coming, my name is Steve, and my Dad and I started up Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co 4 years ago. We’re a local, organic, family-run, award winning and totally independent brewery. But I’m not going to talk much about my brewery today; instead I’d take this time to throw out a pretty radical thought...What if Ontario had a beer revolution?

What do I mean by a beer revolution? Well revolutions usually involve overthrowing tyrants, and instituting a new form of governance, but my revolution is maybe a little less violent than that, although by no means is it less radical.

Right now in Ontario, 1 out of every 20 beers drunk came from an independent, Ontario brewery.(note 1) By beer revolution, I mean, what would happen if Ontarians chose to drink an Ontario-made independent beer 1 out of every 2 times they drank beer?

I’ll talk about how this revolution might begin and what it would look like a little later, but I think it is important to address why this would be so important first and the best way to do that is describe what Ontario would look like after the revolution, when 1 out of every 2 beers drunk in this province was independently made in the province.

So let’s look into the crystal ball...

Canadians drink about 85 litres of beer every year, which means in Ontario, about 800 million litres of beer are drunk each year.(note 2) That means that after the beer revolution, Ontario brewers will have grown from selling about 40 million litres of beer to 400 million litres.

What is the most important change that would occur after the beer revolution?
Just think of the beer we’d get to drink!

Our 35 independent brewers on average produce about 1 million litres of beer every year, with about an average of 4 brands each (note 3). To get to 400 million litres of beer, we’d need to add 315 new breweries (for a total of 350 breweries) and 1,260 new brands of beer (for a total of 1,400).

One thousand, four hundred brands of beer!!! It would also mean that almost every city and town in the province would have at least one local brewery to check out when you visited.

The Beer Store currently boasts 350 brands from 90 breweries (note 4), the LCBO claims 341 (note 5). Think of how much more choice there would be if Ontario alone had 1,400 brands from 350 brewers – and that was still only half of the beer drunk! Think of what the Toronto Festival of Beer would look like...It would be heaven on Earth.

If this sounds outrageous and unachievable to you, consider that the German state of Bavaria has a population about the same as Ontario’s6 and is home to 629 breweries. (note 7)

After the revolution, with independent breweries holding 50% of the Ontario market share, think of the employment that would create...

Independent Ontario breweries hold less than 5% of the Ontario market share, but they make up 20% (note 8) of the direct employment, or 600 hard working Ontarians – this works out to an average of 17 employees per brewery

The two main reasons – smaller batches mean more people required and imports only have selling functions locally, no production at all!

If independent breweries were producing 50% of the beer drunk in Ontario, they would create 5,400 new direct brewing jobs! The other breweries would lose around 1,136 (most of whom would end up working for a local brewery) for a net increase of almost 4,300 new jobs in Ontario. (Note 9)

But, that is only the tip of the economic iceberg; if independent breweries produced 50% of the Ontario market share, think of the economic spin-off that would create. The creation of 315 new breweries in Ontario would send ripples to so many facets of life in Ontario, it would be unfathomable...

First off Profits would be reinvested in the Province! Ontario is no longer home to any major brewery, so all the profits made by non-independent non-Ontario breweries leave the province for good. This is millions and millions and millions of dollars that leave us every year.

Investment in Ontario would be mindboggling. In a 5 year period from 2002 to 2007, the 30 or so breweries in the OCB invested $20 million. (note 10) 350 breweries would invest somewhere in the neighbourhood of $230million in the same time period.
The tradespeople required to install all this new equipment, the marketing, apparel and promotional companies, the printing houses, box makers, and raw material suppliers. Whole new industries would be created or revived. Did you know Eastern Ontario used to have a thriving hop industry? Equipment manufacturers, raw material suppliers and bottle manufacturing plants would choose to locate in Ontario and a whole manufacturing cluster would be created.

Ontario’s tourism sector would explode. With 350 breweries, Ontario would be a beer connoisseurs dream, a North American Belgium or Germany. The Agritourism sector would come to life as cheesemakers, restaurateurs and other food producers rose to the challenge of pairing these 3,400 brands of beer with just the right nibble to perfectly accentuate it.

Philanthropy would expand in unimaginable ways as local breweries fought to earn the loyalty of almost every conceivable niche market through sponsorships and donations. I don’t have industry statistics, and I believe that my brewery is among the most active sponsors and donors in the brewing industry, but using my breweries stats on giving, we intend on donating or sponsoring over $100,000 this year and expect to produce about 800,000 litres of beer, or $1 for every 8 litres of beer we sell.

If our giving was the norm for small breweries, there would be more the $50 million donated every year by small breweries!

And as one last spin-off effect, remember the 4,300 employees we hired? They pay income tax, property tax, and sales tax. They buy groceries, furniture, and clothes locally. When they travel in the province they buy gas, stay in hotels and visit attractions.

So that’s what the final outcome would look like. A province filled with beer choices, thousands of new (awesome) jobs, entire new industries, a huge influx of tourism, and a better standard of living thanks to the additional tax base and corporate giving.

I know what you are thinking, where do I sign up?

But how would the revolution start and what would it look like?

Maybe it will be an incendiary article written by Josh Rubin. Or maybe some out-of-province brewery will get caught in a corruption scheme, who knows? Or maybe, just maybe it starts today. Maybe it starts with us right here right now...

Truth is, 10 years from now, after the revolution has occurred, it’s more likely that historians would say its already started! Independent beer is growing by leaps and bounds, there already have been incendiary articles about the Ontario beer industry, political candidates in both the governing party and the opposition parties are talking about beer policy as part of their platform and the website Freeourbeer.org is already out there trying to change the Ontario beer landscape while at the same time the new brewing training program at Niagara College will be sending out dozens of aspiring brewers every year.

So what will the revolution look like? Will blood (or beer) flow down the streets? Will there be armed protests? Will families be torn apart?

I don’t think so. This is the most powerful part of this idea; it would actually be pretty easy to do. Laws and regulations wouldn’t be required (although government could help the revolution along if they did change some of the laws that favour foreign breweries). No major change is required, other than a consumer shift based on the understanding that local, independent beer is beneficial to the entire province.

It would look like this – an ordinary couple walk into a restaurant (or, two guys walk into a bar). When the waiter arrives to take the drink order, they ask what beer offered is independent and brewed locally. If the restaurant does not offer an Ontario option, they politely get up and leave for another restaurant.

It looks like this – A regular guy finishes hockey practice and the team decides to go out for a drink. The sportsbar recommended doesn’t have a local option, so this regular guy insists that they go to another spot instead because he knows they have independent Ontario beer on tap.

And it looks like this – when visiting a friend for a dinner party, it becomes customary to bring a different Ontario made beer and an Ontario made wine each time (why not start a wine revolution, too?). A tasting becomes the best way to start a backyard BBQ and people begin to feel embarrassed if they don’t have a local beer to offer their guests.

And it looks like this – you just finished reading this piece and you send the link to your friend. That’s right; Right now, maybe the revolution starts with you.

Thanks for your time.

Sources and math calculations
1) Got this from the Ontario Craft Brewers (OCB)
2) So, the first note is that I couldn’t find the total beer consumption in Ontario. This Wikipedia article says that Canada’s per capita consumption is 83.5L so I multiplied by 10 million people and then rounded down to 800 million litres
3) OCB stats say 35 independent brewers hold 5% of market share. 5% of 800 million is 40 million, divided by 35 is 1.14million and again, I rounded down. OCB stats also state 150 brands, which again, I rounded down to 4 brands per brewery
4) Beer Store website
5) LCBO beer flyer I found at my In-laws house on the weekend
6) Wikipedia
7) German beer stats ()
8) OCB stats
9) First, to figure out how many new jobs would be created, I took 600 employees divided by 35 breweries = 17.14 employees per brewery. 17.14 employees x 315 new breweries = 5,400 gross new jobs.
To find out how many jobs would be lost by foreign breweries I figured if 600 jobs is 20% of the total beer jobs in Ontario, then the 80% remaining would be 2,400. 2,400 people divided into 760 million litres (total sales of 800 million less 40 million brewed by the indies) of beer works out to 1 job for every 316,000 litres of beer sold. If foreign brewery sales dropped by 360 million litres, then 360 million divided by 316,000 = 1,136

Net new jobs equals the 5,400 jobs we created less the 1,136 jobs they lost for a total of 4,264. I rounded up this time to 4,300 but was careful to use the word almost.
10) OCB Stats

Shiny new tanks!

2010-08-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hooray! 3 of our 5 tanks showed up today (two fermenters and one bright tank). The other two should be arriving on Tuesday next week. The piping arrives on Monday and hopefully by mid-to-late August we'll have the extra brewing help to be brewing into them, thanks to Rob Long our new brewer who starts this Monday, too!

The Great LugTread Shortage (as Sean Cooley from Moonrappin' likes to call it) is nearly over! Thanks for your patience everyone.

On a technical note for startup breweries purchasing your first tanks, clarifying how the tanks will ship is of vital importance. Our preference is that the tanks ship on a dock-level height transport (closed in, not exposed to the elements) and properly cradled (cradle with wheels, please!). We forgot to specify that and our supplier this time forgot to ask, so it took an entire extra day and about $3,000 to get a boom to hoist these 2,500lb monsters off the truck instead of just wheeling them in.

2010: A Box Oddessy

2010-07-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

Our 4 pack box is a real piece of work. I mean this both literally and figuratively. I think it is a wonderful thing; enviro-cool, full of actually useful stuff, aesthetically awesome, and now very functional as well. But holy-schmolly, what a big piece of work to make this right. The whole process nearly destroyed Jordan, our designer, who had to keep pushing this project forward, despite a billion setbacks, production issues, registration complications and supplier issues.

Ok, lets start with the bottle. We prototyped the design for about 6 months - everything from the thickness of the glass to the amount of etching on the tractor became an issue. First the letters of Beau's were crooked and the typing at the bottom was the wrong font. Then it was too small. Then it was too low on the neck...took forever to get it right.

Then the labels. We had our minds set on a really out-there shape with a custom die-cut and a really slick graphic presentation. But then we discovered these enviro-cool, tree-free labels and had to completely redesign the entire graphics, because this paper was really absorbent and would look horrible in anything trying to look to slick. So, we went for a real old-timey two-colour look so that any defects in the printing would look intentional. I'm incredibly glad we did, because the labels look so much cooler now.

Then there was the problem of finding a supplier willing to print on the stuff. Basically there were no printers locally who had ever worked with this paper, or were willing to do the R&D work necessary to make sure it actually printed properly. We spent about 6 weeks in a holding pattern with 3 different companies - each of them refusing to do any testing for us. Then, Jordan found a 4th company, Claboro, who were like "sure, we'll test it right away". They got the job.

Then the box. Oh my, the box sucked. We went through so many re-designs, so many test runs, so many production issues it is truly unbelievable. Jordan was about ready to kill someone, I'm sure of it. Then after we finally put the job to bed and get our first shipment in we discover, to our horror, that the notches where the string go were place too high and the box was too thin, so the handles would break.

We tried to resolve this with our supplier, but their only solution was to charge us more to make a box that fit around the box to protect the handle slightly better. We felt we had to change suppliers and did so. The new supplier came up with modifications that made the box very, very durable, which was great - but then they had a whole host of printing issues that required dies to be remade, several more re-works to get a box that is now both durable and properly printed.

A million other things went wonky during the process and Jordan and I kept joking that this must be the reason that most breweries use a standard bottle in a standard 6-pack. But, after taking about a year and a half, watching the crazy demand for this package, and needing to hire not 1, not 2, but 3 more brewers to meet the demand that this package has created; well, it was worth it.

Hiring a new brewer

2010-07-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

So we started interviewing for a new brewer last week. Dont' worry, everything is great with Matt, Chris, Kevin and Anne. But we've hit another brick wall in production with all the bottling, brewing, filtering and QA work that needs to get done, so our brewing team needs a new member. First interview went quite well, although we're trying to get a better structured interview going - seems that how talkative we feel has a huge impact on how long interviews go. Karen sat in on the interview to help us put together a more standard set of Q's so that we can better judge all the A's that come in.

Certification Audit, Jazzfest fun, Oktoberfest planning, SAQ conversations, Canada Day, VCI Grad

2010-07-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

We had our annual organic certification audit today. There is an annual audit and then random unnanounced inspections throughout the year. Today went pretty smoothly, we'd had a delegation from the EU and CFIA do a mock inspection a month earlier, so we were pretty prepared. Still makes for a stressful morning, but its a great feeling once the inspection is complete.

Last night we took our staff out to see the final night of Jazzfest as a group. It was a lot of fun and a really nice way to say thanks to everybody for putting in the extra hours over the summer. This is our 3rd time doing Jazzfest, and it was the first time we could get out as a group and take it in. And Sharon Jones was phenomenal.

We had a townhall meeting on Monday night to offer up opportunities for our town to benefit from our Oktoberfest celebration. We're encouraging the whole town to get in on the fun and make it really special for our guests, while letting them receive some benefit from all these tourists coming in. It was a good meeting with lots of interest, and I'm hoping we can get a number of satellite events happening this year.

We had a really interesting conversation on Tuesday with a Quebec beer importer. They had tried our beer at Mondail and would like to represent us in La Belle Province (mmm...steamies). It is a difficult process, so don't expect anything happening overnight, but I would really love to be able to sell into the Quebec area.

Canada Day was great. I spent the day with my family, took the girls to the L'orignal park for fun stuff there and then over to the Vankleek Hill celebration where my daughters danced up a storm and then watched the fireworks. (they had Beau's on tap there, too, so life was good).

On Saturday, Vankleek Hill's highschool had its final reunion before the old school is torn down. It made for a memorable night of visiting old friends - although, truth be told, I've kept in touch with many of my highschool friends, so there were only a few of those "Holy crap, I didn't recognize you, its been wayyyy too long" moments.

All in all, another busy, awesome week.

Happy Birthday to Beau's continued...

2010-07-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to put this article up...again, not a Beau's article exactly, but its about the Wellington Gastro pub. They started up about a month after we did and thanks to a little nudge from Vicki Smallman, we were in their opening line up. We've stayed on tap at the Wellington since their day one and every year I get to celebrate their anniversary sort of like our own.

Happy Birthday to Beau's (oh yeah, and Canada, too!)

2010-07-01T14:48:00.001-07:00

Hooray!

Beau's turns 4 years old today. Four years ago, Pete from the Black Tomato drove his tractor in from the country and parked it in front of his restaurant to help us celebrate as we passed out samples from our first ever batch of beer. The Manx was closed on Canada Day, so we couldn't go there until the next day, but we did make it out to both Clocktowers for more sampling.

We learned that day that Canada Day is more of a celebrate being Canadian day than a "listen to me tell you about this new beer" day, so ever since we've been pretty low key about celebrating, but a year later Ron Eade made us the feature in his annual Ode to Ale feature and it seems ever since the Citizen has helped us celebrate...I can't find the link to our first Ode to Ale on the Citizen page, but
see year 2

and this year

and this, too (this year's ode is actually about a new brewery in the area, but its nice to see us get a couple mentions, too).

So hooray and thanks to the Ottawa Citizen for once again helping us celebrate our birthday! I'm going to drink a LugTread now.

A different way to get startup funding

2010-06-30T06:55:00.001-07:00

Mystery Brewing Co. is looking to get started as a contract brewing company in North Carolina and he's using an online pledging system to raise the funds.

Check it out here...

Think of how many home brewers out there want to start a brewery but can't possibly figure out how to raise the funds. Think of the way that this program can fundamentally change the process of raising seed money. Think of what effect this could have on everything from craft beer, to small scale farming, to artisanal cheese, to... I digress.

Good luck Mystery Brewing Co. I hope you succeed and prove the model.

more OCB week photos (part II)

2010-06-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

more OCB week photos

2010-06-28T06:53:00.001-07:00

OCB Week, Governor General

2010-06-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

I survived Ontario Craft Beer Week! (barely). I co-chaired the OCB week planning committee, so it was important to me to get to a large number of events, to lead by example, as it were. So this week I was out at the Black Tomato, Arrow and Loon, Cheshire Cat, Magpie, Highway 61, Victory, Bar Volo, Session beer festival and more (probably...its a bit of a blur). It was a great week of meeting beer fanatics, making new ones, trying other brewers beers and generally living malt, hops, water and yeast. Physically taxing and emotionally inspiring at the same time. I love my job.

I think OCB Week was a complete success. My partner in this mayhem, Jason (from Cameron's) and I put in a tonne of work along with our other committee members from Great Lakes, Mill Street and Muskoka, our OCB suppliers Colleen and Christine and all the breweries that really went out of their way to make this an awesome week (Special shout-out to Port Credit, who booked lots of events and really got involved). Next year promises to be bigger and better and will hopefully have fewer G20 summits happening, too.

On Wednesday, I took some time out from OCB Week (my apologies to Nick and Nat at Uptown 21 for cancelling) to spend time at the Governor General's. My Dad and I were invited to attend the first ever Governor General's award for the Nation's Table. This new award is presented to the visionaries and leaders in sustainable food production in Canada. I think this might be a game changing development for organic, local food in our country, and I'm completely honoured and humbled to have been in attendance at its inception. After the ceremony the entire residence was opened up and we were able to roam from room to room sampling delicious tidbits and listening to the different bands set up all over.

I can't wait now to get back to more regular week stuff - I am in serious need of spending time at the brewery, and I need to remind my children that they do indeed have a Father.

Operation Come Home Grad, Cool Invite, Looking forward to OCB Week

2010-06-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

Another busy week at the brewery. Anne was able to get the bottling line back in business with Morris from Metec. Its great to have skilled folks so close by. Anne is learning a lot about how the line really works, so silver linings are definitely there. Here's hoping we get some good bottling runs this week!

Two very cool things to report from last week. The first came in the form of an invitation...to Rideau Hall to dine with Michaelle Jean, Canada's Governor General. I think I've written before about how humbling and "Forest Gump-ish" it is to be allowed in a small way to be involved in things that are truly Canadian. Our visits to 24 Sussex, our collaborative beer to commemorate 65th annniversary of Dutch liberation, visits from Ontario's Premiere. Having a personal invitation to dine with the Queen's representative of Canada, is one of those moments. Dad and I will be there this Wednesday.

Dad and I took a few hours off work on Thursday to attend the graduation ceremony for Operation Come Home. Operation Come Home is a homeless youth centre, aimed at getting homeless kids critical support and hopefully off the streets. Beau's has been working with Operation Come Home, through the Bottleworks project for some time.

One of the many impressive things Operation Come Home does is run an achievement centre, where homeless youth can continue their education on their own terms. Regular highschool is virtually impossible for street youth to manage for lots of reasons, but lack of education is a major obstacle for youth trying to find employment in order to get off the street. The achievement centre lets the youth work away at credits as they can, provides nutritious food, allows them to bring their pets to class and offers lots of other services to make it possible to attend.

The net result was at the end of the year there were 9 youths graduating high school and a score of others celebrating progress toward that goal. Of the 9 youths, 5 had full time employment and 2 had participated in the Bottleworks program. There is nothing better than watching the underdog win against the odds, and attending this ceremony had all the drama as watching the end of a good Rocky movie; but better dialogue.

Sunday was the start of Ontario Craft Beer Week. This week looks like its going to be a great one for me...I'm heading to Toronto tonight to play Thirsty Hippos at Magpie, hopefully catch a belgian-style beer at Volo. Tomorrow I'll be at Burger Bar for a beer dinner, Wednesday the Governor General's (plus hopefully a stop at Arrow and Loon), Thursday a beer dinner at the Cheshire Cat in Carp and a cask event at the Black Tomato, Friday I'm going to try to get to the Stinking Rose in Campbellford and Saturday back in Toronto for Session! And that's just me! The whole brewery is getting involved in well over , including 14 in the Ottawa/Kingtson area, 5 in Toronto and 6 in the west or north of Toronto. There are well over 100 events listed for the week and hopefully lots of at-home tastings, too.

Bottling line, Westfest, HR stuff, A Channel

2010-06-14T06:49:00.000-07:00

Busy week, last week. Not a good week, not a bad week, but a busy one for sure, with lots of ups and downs and in-betweens.

We've been struggling with our new bottling line since we bought it. It has lots of nice features, but the company we bought it from is small and can't really give us the support we need to really get the thing running smoothly. Well, last week it really went down in a big way. In trying to solve the problem (we think we have) we also found a great technician (we think) who might actually be able to help us to get the line really running at peak performance. In the meantime, we reorganized bottling staff to run on our little manual two-head filler running two shifts/day to keep some amount of beer still flowing to our LCBO accounts, who have been really patient and supportive over this summer of not-enough-supply.

We also did our first official performance evaluation last week. We've recently hired an HR person (her name is Karen, and she's awesome) to help us manage all our people stuff better. Growing from 5 employees to 30 in two years has been awesome, but it has created a lot of people issues and we've come to realize we need someone focussed on them so that we don't goof stuff up. Making sure people get their evaluations on time and in a consistent fashion, our health plan is administered properly and keeping on top of potential health and safety issues is all really important. It all has a bittersweet feeling to it as well, and as we start implementing policy on things like overtime and sick leave, I'm filled with nostalgia for the good old days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm proud and excited about all of our growth and the opportunities it has given us to do cooler and cooler things. But I kinda miss the days when everybody just worked as much as possible and things got sorted out later. Well, that is, until I remember how difficult it actually was, and then I'm glad we hired Karen again.

I got to go on the A-Channel for their morning program on Friday. I love the A-Channel crew. They are all great, really like our beer and are incredibly welcoming. I remember the first time we did a segment at the Black Tomato and when it cut back to Kurt he kept saying "I'm a LugTread Man" for something like 30 seconds. Since then he's been to our Oktoberfest, visited the brewery and is genuinely excited about all things Beau's (well, except maybe our brewery band, the OhYeahs, I don't think he's a fan of that).

This weekend was also West Fest. An annual street festival that has just grown by leaps and bounds. This was our first year being part of WEstFest, and it was a real treat. The event runs like clockwork and it is such a uniquely entertaining and awesome event it really stands out. A free festival boasting big names like Sloan, that also promotes local talent and also features spoken word and aboriginal talent and also has a great kids section and also has a huge sidewalk sale and I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Well this year, the weather also really cooperated - it was supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, but instead after a shower in the morning on Saturday it was sunny and warm all weekend. This resulted in a panicked call from Darren (our kick-ass special events and sponsorship guru on Sunday morning "Steve, we're gonna run out of beer". At first, I was pretty worried by this news, as I opened our walk-in cooler and saw a grand total of one 50L keg ready to go. But once I learned that we had more beer in a bright tank (tank that holds filtered beer ready to be kegged), I relaxed a bit. A few calls later and i had some help, too. Matt M (who does most of our kegging and a lot more at the brewery) was able to come in and help get beer into kegs. While I washed the kegs, Matt got the kegging line cleaned and ready and filled up 14 kegs. I put them in our truck and drove them up to Ottawa and everything worked out great.

Mondial de la Biere

2010-06-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was Mondial...actually it started Wednesday and goes to Sunday. As always, an awesome collection of Quebec breweries and a showcase of some of the best beer available on this planet.

This year, we decided to get a booth and represent in Montreal. It was a difficult decision, because the interprovincial regulations make it really expensive (we had to buy our own beer from the SAQ at a 270% markup before selling it back) and difficult to do right (we had to send the beer months in advance and we couldn't send kegs). In the end the festival seemed to cool to miss and we're so close to Montreal, it just seemed wrong to skip it.

Overall, it was a very good event for us. We had lots of awesome feedback from customers and breweries and got to meet a lot of the brewers and owners of some of our favourite Quebec beers. The interprovincial redtape however was very frustrating...

Only half of our order was brought to the event from the SAQ to start with. By 7pm the first night, the Bogwater was gone and by halfway through Thursday all our beer was gone. Our brewery is only 45 minutes away, but we weren't allowed to bring more and were told that the second half of our shipment wouldn't arrive until Friday. So we spent most of Thursday apologizing to folks who came to try our beer. On Friday the next shipment came, but somehow LugTread got missed and didn't arrive. After a few hours it came, thankfully (I think this was due to some awesome work by Mondial organizers, who were all very cool, but I didn't get to see what happened behind the scenes).

So, yeah, by Friday night we had sold out of everything except our Stout, and that was gone early Saturday.

Enough about me complaining though...on a personal level, I had a blast. First of all, when I say "we" apologized all day, I don't really deserve any sympathy. It is such a good feeling for me to be at a show and have supercompetent people working their butts off. Darren worked the entire show and somehow kept up with it all. Nikki and Anne both took a couple days and my friend Codco took a few days vacation from his real job and worked our booth pretty much the whole time, too.

This let me, Dad and Matt meet, greet and taste a lot more freely than we're used to.

I had found out earlier that Alex from New Belgium would be up - we've been emailing about Bogmyrtle for a while now and so I was going to get to meet her. We spent a lot of time sampling and talking and she was really cool. She also introduced me to Erik, founder of Left Hand Brewing. I'm a big fan of their Milk Stout, so it was really neat to get to hang out with him, too. I also got to hang out with some folks from Benelux and Hopfenstark, some of the Ontario folks who were up for the experience, like Ralph and Julien from Volo, Bill White, Troy Burtch, and Mirella Amato.

An amazing experience. I guess there are worse things than selling every drop of beer we brought, too!

I can't wait to hear from Rob and Jerry in Toronto about how their beer festival went and from Jen and Kevin in Orangeville, to find out about the street festival we were doing there this weekend, too!

Canadian Family Enterprise of the Year!

2010-05-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Dad and I flew out to Regina last Wednesday. We had been nominated for the Canadian Family Enterprise of the Year, an annual award handed out by CAFE (Canadian Association of Family Enterprises).

We had first become aware of the organization last Fall, when they asked us if we'd like to come talk to the Ottawa chapter on our experiences as a family-run business. After our talk, they asked us if we'd like to submit our name for the award. We were humbled by winning the Ottawa-chapter award in February and at that time, we found out there was a national competition as well.

Turns out we were in the top 3, and as part of that honour, CAFE would fly us out to Regina, where the bi-annual symposium was taking place to hear if we were the winner.

I'd never been to Regina, and the symposium seemed pretty cool - guest speakers included Frank O'Dea (founder of Second Cup, former homeless person, order of Canada member), the guy who traded a red paper clip for a house, and a bunch of other cool folks. A bit drier, but no less important were tax issues for family businesses and succession planning for families.

On Wednesday we flew out and our flight was 2 hours late, so we missed the social stuff going on, which was probably a good thing, because Thursday morning we were to present our story to the symposium along with the two other finalists.

We did our presentation first and it went quite well. Then we got to learn about the other two finalists through their presentation.

First up, another Ontario-based company, Flanagan Food Service, from Kitchener. Flanagan was started up 33 years ago by Joe Flanagan and is now run by his four sons, Dan, Rick, Jeff and Murray. Their company has grown every single year for 33 years. They do eco-cool stuff like capturing rainwater to use for cleaning trucks, and installing a reflective roof to reduce energy requirements. They remain privately owned and, on a personal level, these guys were really nice and I'm glad I got to meet them - real class acts.

Next was Veriperm, and I'm still not exactly sure what they do, but it must be important, because they are doing really well in an industry that has had its challenges over the last few years. They were founded in 1969 by Bill Nurcombe. Bill is still around and actually presented on Thursday, but the company is now run mostly by his sons James and Kelly. It was nice to hear Bill talk with pride about his sons accomplishments since the passing of the torch.

So then more speakers, Dad and I snuck out for a quick trip to Bushwakkers Brewpub (great beer!) and dinner at the RCMP museum ended Thrusday. Friday involved more speakers, breakout sessions, sneaking out to Beer Bros. (enjoyed beer from Half Pint, Tree and Wild Rose) then out for dinner and the announcement of the winner.

I guess the title of the post gave this away, but we won! It was great to win and I'm so proud of my whole family and friends on the team for putting us in this winning position. It was a real honour and an unbelievable feeling. I'd like to point out that one of the first people to shake my hand afterwards was Murray Flanagan, proving once again how cool he was. On the way back my Dad and I had at least three conversations about Murray and Flanagan Foodservice as an example of true sportsmanship and class - they were quite inspirational.

I hope she said yes...UPDATE #1

2010-05-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

It looks like love is alive and well with the Beau's fans these days; here is the update I got from Bruce this morning:

"She said Yes!

Our story begins on November 25 2008, with a first date drink, at Patty’s Pub in Ottawa. Leanna, already familiar with the organic Lug•Tread lagered ale, introduced me to it then. The story begins to write itself. At Christmas that year, after many great dates, I chose my presents carefully and thoughtfully considering the story I could see unfolding. A ceramic bottle of Lug•tread was amongst the gifts and held special significance.

The relationship grew and strengthened. At around 6 months, I noticed an article on Beau’s brewery, and pictures of Steve and Tim Beauchesne in the Ottawa Express newspaper. I also circled the name of a restaurant, Fraser Café, written in that same newspaper issue. I took Leanna there for our 1 year mark, and we shared Beau’s beer to celebrate with a great meal of local and in-season foods.

For our 1 ½ year mark it had to be special and the timing was perfect. Our relationship was at that point and it was exciting thinking of the moments that we've already shared and the many more to come, together. I wanted to make this extra special and decided in early April to weave in a special moment with a familiar thread to our story. After pitching an idea to Steve and Tim to personalize this for the two of us, they agreed without hesitation. Brewed with Love, the day and its plan was coming together nicely. Coordinating with Steve, Beau’s prepared a special sticker over the cap of the bottle dated “November 25 2008”, the date when our relationship was brewed. On the bottom of the bottle, “Can I be your Beau for life?” spelled out my intentions clearly.

After a private tour with Nicole, and discrete placement of the bottle into my backpack, we headed out on a hike and picnic in Gatineau Park; one of Leanna’s favourite things to do. She might have had an idea that the question would be asked sometime….maybe not that day but sometime soon, but she definitely didn’t know answers to two other questions: how, and where. I was hoping she had the answer to at least 1 question though. I spread out a tablecloth on the grounds of the Mackenzie King estate, under a beautiful white pine shade tree, on a hot day.

I took out the bottle, and mentioned it was a special bottle with special labelling. Leanna picked it up and reading the sticker underneath, it gave me just enough time to pull the ring box out of my left pocket while down on my right knee. I asked those famous 4 words and she said "Yes" without hesitation. We poured a celebratory drink, but not of champagne.

It capped off a great day. Thank you very much to Beau’s Brewery for helping to make this a very special day for the both of us; one that will be in our memories forever. Many more successes to you as you continue to grow, flourish, and strengthen.

All our best,

Leanna and Bruce

I hope she said yes...

2010-05-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

Another busy summer week last week that included meeting with potential brewery start up in Nova Scotia, meeting with our financing folks, visiting the House of Orange one last time and more, but this is probably the best story to tell...

We had a special request a few weeks ago, from a longtime fan, Bruce.

Here's how it read:

Dear Beau's Brewery;

I have a special request that comes with a short story. I met the lady of my life Fall 2008 on a first date at Patty's Pub in Ottawa. She enjoyed a couple Lug Tread ale, while I stuck with something different. I hadn't heard of Beau's beer before but I sure had now. I quickly paid attention....to your great branding, to the beautiful farm tractor image (an exact tractor as what I grew up using - International?), to your ceramic bottle, your organic malts, your down home image. I put a lot of thought into her Christmas presents that year and among them was a bottle of Lug Tread ale.

Since then, we've enjoyed sharing Beau's together on several occasions and now I want to be her Beau. This is where my special request comes in. Are you able to do private tours of your brewery, and fulfill a special request? I am looking at a date sometime near May 25th, 2010 (or Monday May 24th of the long weekend), exactly 1.5 years since we met. My plan would be for us to take a tour of your facility together, get a bottle of Lug-Tread handed to us, with your date sticker across the top printed "November 25th 2008" (as if it was brewed then) on the front side, and "Will you be my Beau" on the back side (underside). I would take this on a picnic later that day, as both Leanna and I enjoy hiking, and propose using your bottle as the lead-in.

Can you make a dream come true?

Thank you for your consideration,
Best regards,

Of course we said yes, specialy bottled a LugTread into a ceramic bottle and Jordan made a custom sticker for the "Will you be my Beau for life?" and we stuck it on the bottom.

Bruce was in yesterday and I can't wait to hear the results.

Awesome shout out!

2010-05-17T03:09:00.000-07:00

I just found a blog written by Chris from Castro's Lounge. He's got some really nice things to say about Beau's and Rob, our Ottawa-special-events-turned-Toronto-sales-rep.

Needless to say its nice when people notice the extra effort we put into our beer.

So Thanks, Chris, I appreciate you taking the time to notice, and then even more time writing about so that hopefully others will notice, too.

http://www.torontobeerblog.com/breweries/why-i-love-beaus-part-one/

Waiting lists, Princess, Website, OCB Week, South African Microbrewery

2010-05-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Some weeks seem to take a month.

Monday was the start of the House of Orange so a pile of us went down to enjoy the very first taste of of Vrienden (our collaborative beer with de Koningshoeven to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Dutch liberation by Canadian troops) with Lodewijk and Gijs Swinkels from Koningshoeven, Remco Volmer from the Dutch embassy and a bunch of other folks. It was a great time.

Not so much fun on Monday was calling up 30 LCBO stores to let them know that we can't send them beer for the next 14 weeks or so. Let me explain...

Trying to predict what sales would do with our new 4-pack was kind of like trying to glue egg-yolks to a wall (not that I can guess why you would want to do that). We ran scenarios where people who bought one ceramic bottle before would buy one 4-pack now and scenarios where total volume stayed the same and lots of different versions of other scenarios too...but in the end, we kinda guessed total volume might double from 1,500 litres/week to around 3,000 litres/week.

Our orders for the last month have gone from 5,000 litres/week to 9,000 litres/week, with individual stores ordering as much as 600 litres (250 4-packs). While we are tickled pink that it is taking off - we totally can't keep up with that level of demand. We simply don't have enough brewers or tank space to bottle that much every week. So we've ordered new tanks and we've hired someone to run our bottling line, but it will take about 3 months for this to help us.

It is a horrible decision to have to make, deciding which stores to cut off, and even worse calling them to let them know they won't be getting our beer for a while. Jerry and Philip got the honour of letting them know.

On Tuesday Dad and I were invited to the Dutch Ambassadors residence for a private gathering with Princess Margriet and her husband, Professor van Vollenhoven. It was quite an honour to attend, although I have to admit I felt rather awkward in the company of royalty. Its not like I get to hang out with princesses all too often, and I really worried about doing or saying something inappropriate.

Also on Tuesday we met with an architect. We are going to outgrow our original brewhouse pretty soon if our sales keep growing at the rate they have been and so we've started looking at different options. Our options got a lot cooler last year, when an architect student asked if she could develop a new brewery for us as her final thesis. Obviuosly we said yes and when she came back 8 months later, she amazed us. She has since started working with an architecture firm in the area and they have put together a starting document to see if we can't get this into reality.

Wednesday was the ceremony at the Governor General's residence and this was a real treat. The ceremony was quite elegant and helped me remember the real reason this was such a cool project. We were also allowed to bring a much larger group that included my wife and daughters and my Grandfather Max, who fought in World War II. And getting a picture of my two girls with the princess was a real bonus thrill.

this week we also relaunched our website. Jordan has spent months getting this baby ready, and she is totally kick-ass. There is lots of real content, lots of interactive, live feed stuff and it is one heck of a pretty site. We constantly got compliments on our last site and this one makes the old one look like a pile of puke.

With summer almost here it was also time for an Oh Yeah's practice. The Oh Yeah's is our brewery band. We hadn't been practicing for a long time though, so Friday night after the hockey game, we dusted off the instruments and played through the old set list. Not a bad run through considering how much rust we had to shake off. We're playing a gig on the 29th for Veg Stock in Kemptville, so we gotta get it together, yo.

As if the week wasn't already action-packed enough, on Saturday we met with Ntsiki Biyela, the wine maker from Stellekaya a winery from Stellenbosch, South Africa. She was visiting Canada and wanted to stop by the brewery as she is conducting research to start a craft brewery in her country. How cool is that?

When that is the highlight reel from your week, it can be kind of hard to manage all of the rest of life, so I saw a lot of 4ams and a couple 2ams, too. But in amoungst all that I managed to mow the lawn, watch Ruby's kindergarten play, saw the end of the Habs game 7, played a couple games of UNO with the fam, made it out to the House of Orange, The Works in Orleans, Lavoie's in town and I only missed two nights of bedtime stories - one 'cause I wan't home and the other 'cause I couldn't stay awake until the kids bedtime.

EU Auditors, sales meeting, OCB week

2010-05-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

Another interesting week at Beau's...

I'm co-chairs of Ontario Craft Beer Week with Jason Ellsmere from Cameron's brewing and every Wednesday we meet (alternative weeks are face to face and teleconference) with our committee to review progress and set goals for achievement for the following week. Every 4th Wednesday is an Ontario Craft Brewers (OCB)executive committee meeting and this was both.

That means I spent a good 4 hours on the phone, updating the exec committee on OCB Week progress and then immediately getting onto the Craft Beer Week teleconference. My ears felt like they had been steamrolled by the end of the day.

Progress on Ontario Craft Beer Week has been phenomenal. All the OCB breweries are getting really involved and we're hoping to have an insane amount of programming, ranging from the very intimate events at tiny restaurants to much larger festival events.

From Vankleek Hill, to Barrie, to Huntsville to Ottawa and Toronto, there will be events going on all week. Its been a huge undertaking, but because we've got a great team, we're having fun and getting things done.

We had our first-ever quarterly sales meeting this week, too. In the last three months we've grown from a two-person sales team to a six-person team and our sales reps spend almost all their time on the road, so this was a great way to get all on the same page, go over all sorts of stuff there never seems time to go over and generally have some fun as a team.

On Thursday night we visited a few spots in Micheala's territory, including the Marlborough Pub, The Swan on the Rideau and The Red Dot. Then Friday was a full day session including hard core sales stuff, beer and cheese pairings, draught systems training and more.

Saturday was quite the day. We hosted a delegation from the European Union's organic certification body, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Pro-Cert, our certifier. It was explained to me that the two organizations are trying to develop an equivelency for the two certifications, and we were chosen as one of the certified processing companies to perform a mock-audit on. So the European delegates spent several hours going through our record-keeping and testing our knowledge of the certification processes and regulations.

It was pretty stressful, but also pretty great - we're coming up to our annual recertification audit and a trial run was a good opportunity to get a free test on how we're doing. Not to mention, in our small way being part of a rather historic undertaking.

New Award!

2010-05-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

I just received an email letting me know that Beau's won at the Ontario Legislature tasting event. This was our first year being part of the event, because the winners have to be able to supply the leg with beer for the year and we weren't in Toronto before.

Here is the release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ONTARIO MPPS CELEBRATE ONTARIO CRAFT BREWERS

Seven new Ontario craft beers to be highlighted at Ontario’s Legislative Assembly

TORONTO, ON – (May 6, 2010) – Ontario MPPs cast their votes for the most popular representatives of Ontario’s Craft Brewing industry during an annual tasting and selection event hosted by Hon. Steve Peters, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario at Queen’s Park last evening.

MPPs and Queen’s Park staffers tasted a selection of 48 craft beers from 15 of Ontario ’s popular craft breweries and cast their votes in favour of the craft beers to be highlighted at the Legislative Assembly for 2010-2011. The event included a delicious menu to accompany the beer featuring Ontario ingredients and a beer and cheese pairing table.

The new beers, to be highlighted in the Legislative Dining Room and at other Queen’s Park venues, are brewed in local communities throughout the province, including: Barrie, Burlington, Cambridge, Etobicoke, Guelph, Port Credit, Muskoka, Neustadt, Oakville, Prince Edward County, St. Thomas, Toronto and Van Kleek Hill.

“An initiative of mine as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly is to ensure that our Legislature is a showcase of everything Ontario – from the gifts in our gift shop, to the food, beer, wine, and fruit wine we serve at events and in our dining room” Speaker Peters said. “Events such as this one are a great way for the Members to learn more about the world-class beer made and produced right here in Ontario .”

This is the third year the Speaker has hosted the exclusive tasting event, part of his ongoing initiative to showcase Ontario products in the Legislature. The tasting event consisted of 48 beers from 15 Ontario Craft Breweries. Tasters cast ballots to choose their favourite varieties in six categories, a seventh category the “Speaker’s Selection” was t chosen by the Speaker himself. (See below for full results).

“Demand for Ontario Craft Beer has exploded in the past few years, even despite the economic slowdown,” says Gary McMullen, Chair of Ontario Craft Brewers and President of Muskoka Cottage Brewery. “Ontario Craft Brewers have been working hard to build this industry and create jobs in Ontario and we are very grateful to the Province of Ontario for its ongoing support.”

The winning Ontario Craft Beer brands were selected in the following categories:

Golden Lagers & Pilsners
Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company: Beau’s Lug Tread Lagered Ale

Refreshing Ales
Cameron’s Brewing Company: Cameron’s Cream Ale

Amber Lagers, Ales & Honey Beers
Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery: Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion Almost Pale Ale

Malty Dark Lager or Ale
Muskoka Cottage Brewery: Muskoka Dark Ale

Bold Flavoured Ale, Stout or Porter
Grand River Brewery:Plowman’s Ale

Wheat Beer & Specialty
Mill Street Brewery: Mill Street Lemon Tea Beer

Speaker’s Selection
Railway City Brewing: Railway City Dead Elephant Ale*
*To honour the 125th anniversary of the fate of Jumbo, Speaker Peters has chosen Dead Elephant Ale from Railway City Brewing – a perfect combination of the Speaker’s two great interests – Ontario Product and Jumbo the elephant.

About the Ontario Craft Brewers

The Ontario Craft Brewers is an association of more than 25 small brewers dedicated to making great tasting, high quality beer in Ontario. The 25 members of the Ontario Craft Brewers brew their beers locally using fresh, all natural ingredients in communities throughout Ontario – from the Ottawa Valley to Waterloo and Niagara to Muskoka. Handcrafting over 150 premium beers, Ontario Craft Brewers employ about 600 people in Ontario , accounting for over 20 per cent of the overall brewing employment in the province. Ontario ’s Craft brewers’ share has more than doubled since 2002, going from slightly less than two per cent to approximately five per cent of the beer volume sold in Ontario and continues to be the fastest growing segment within the LCBO’s beer category. For more information about the Ontario Craft Brewers visit www.ontariocraftbrewers.com.

Stronger Box Handles Coming Soon

2010-05-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

Our new boxes are selling quite well, and we're very happy for that. What we're much, much less happy about is the strength of the box handle. When we were prototyping the box, which took about 8 months, we raised concerns several times with our supplier that the handle seemed week. "Don't worry" kept coming the response, "our engineers are sure this will be strong enough; remember this is just the prototype, the final boxes will be much stronger".

I wish we had insisted on a stronger box design, because sure enough, within a few days of the boxes hitting the shelf, we started getting calls and emails from customers who had had a close call or worse after the handle snapped off the box.

We immediately got on the phone to our supplier, and we've come up with a short term way to make the boxes that we have a bit stronger while we redesign the top of the box to eliminate the problem. We have a reinforced handle design we like, and will be switching suppliers, too.

In the meantime, please try to hold the box from the bottom for the next couple of weeks. If you do have an unfortunate handle incident, please let us know about it and give us a chance to make it better for you.

Stupid Volcano, Energy audacity and EcoHumane

2010-04-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

So when I heard about the volcano going off in Iceland, I initially had a 'wow, the world is mad at us moment - glad it doesn't impact me though' moment and then showed Ruby, who a few days earlier had told me that volcanos only existed during the time of the dinosaurs, that I wasn't pulling her leg when I said they can still erupt these days.

It wasn't until a few days later that I realized that it would impact me. Beau's has been commissioned by the Dutch government to create a special collaboration beer with the De Koningshoeven Brewery to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Canadian troups liberating Holland. Brew master Lodewijk Swinkels was supposed to fly in to be on hand for the brewing...

Stupid volcano.

Matt spent a good amount of time on the phone with Lodewijk and the brew still went well and we're hoping Lodewijk will be on hand to taste the beer when it is presented in May, but we were really excited to have him here during the brew day. Oh well - the volcano has caused a lot of other people a lot more grief than it did for us, but its not like you can plan for that sort of thing.

On a more upbeat note, we had our consultant in for our Energy audit. We are apparently the first compnay in Eastern Ontario to engage the services of the Guelph Food and Technology Institute's Sustainability Division for their services.

This will be a significant step for us in reducing our carbon footprint. We've been doing small projects over the last couple years, but this represents a big investment and we're hoping it will dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. It will take about another month to get our results and we'll keep you posted.

And finally, as we work towards our goal of raising $100,000 for worthwhile charities, community building and indie arts, we did a pile of events including a fundraiser for the Brockville Hospital, the Elmwood school in Ottawa, the Ecofair and the Humane Society.

Gold, Canada, Gold!

2010-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

Phil and I are still having a great tie in Vncouver (except buying counterfeit tickets to last night's bronze medal hockey game - that sucked). At the athletes reception at Ontario House, Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested we adopt a chant of "Gold, Canada, Gold" - so I figure, why not.

Ontario House is seeing more than 10,000 visitors per day. It seems that once the word got out that they had great food and beer and weren't gouging people, that it has become probably The place to be.

I'll be one of the 10,000 there today again, hoping for a fairy tale hockey gold to give us the Olympic record for most Gold's ever.

Lots of good news...a tiny bit of bad news

2010-02-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

So Phil and I arrived at Ontario House yesterday and were warmly greeted by Karen with Ontario's Olympic Secretariate and got to meet a number of the staff with the catering company, too. Cordon Blue was doing chocolate demos, the line up to get in was already around the block and the pavillion looked amazing.

Turns out our beer was being really well received, too. In fact, it was basically all gone! I did get to try a bit (whew!) but by mid-afternoon I watched the last glass get poured, before the hockey game got started (4:30pm when you are in Vancouver).

I found out though that they saved us a little bit of LugTread for some of the receptions coming up in the next few days, so we're not completely out of luck. The really fantastic thing is that all the craft beer sold out last night. All the Great Lakes, all the Mill St., all the SteamWhistle (they're here too, I forgot to mention them in my earlier post) and all the Beau's. Mind you it made for a wine-and-hockey pairing I wan't really expecting, but I'm very proud to see that the people heading to Ontario House are definitely craft beer drinkers!

We took an hour off before the game and went to a nearby brewpub calle the SteamWorks. We got to chat with the Assistant Brewer, Ben and got a tour of the brewery. I really enjoyed their wheat beer (lots of banana; just the way I like it). After the game, Philip and I went to a pretty awesome restaurant called Alibi Room and I got to have Crannog's Back Hand of God Stout and a 12 year old sour lambic that was mind-blowingly good. We shared a delicious cheese plate and I tried to tackle a pork belly sandwich (very tasty, but very filling).

By 10:30 our jetlagged butts were in the hotel room - no big parties for us last night...hopefully tonight we'll last a little longer.

Olympics!

2010-02-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

We haven't really been announcing it very much, but the Ontario Gov't asked us if we'd like to have our beer featured at the Olympics. We shipped down about 3,000 litres for them to have at the Ontario House Paviliion. Ontario is going for a real wow-'em on the food and drink offerings of Ontario, so they've got Jamie Kennedy doing demo's, crazy good food (according to the Vancouver Sun) and Ontario made wind and beer.

I can't really comment on the wine, but alongside Beau's is Great Lakes, and Mill St., which is a pretty great lineup, if you ask me.

After hemming and hawing for a few weeks on how much it costs to go out to Vancouver, my brother Philip and I decided that we absolutely had to go. I hate shipping beer and crossing my fingers and the opportunity to show so many people from so many places who we are and what our beer is all about was just too much to bear.

So we booked flights and landed in Vancouver last night. We're just about to head down to Ontario House to go see what LugTread tastes like in Vancouver.

CABA CABA Hey!

2010-01-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

Last Fall we did a fun project with the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association (CABA). They did a better write up than I possibly could, so here's the link:

http://www.homebrewers.ca/Newsletters/CABA%20Times%20-%20December%202009%20-%20FINAL.pdf

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

Well, its New Year's Eve...so much for an awesome 2009. In the last year we won 3 Golden Tap awards, a Gold Medal at Mondiale in France (1 of 10) and two medals (out of three) at the National Organic Championship. We were named the #1 thing to try before you die by Ottawa Magazine, best local beer by Metro newspaper and one of 10 unique entries in the Ottawa food scene in the past decade by the Ottawa Citizen.

Mr. and Mrs. Harper poured a couple pints at 24 Sussex for us, and George Wendt visited our Oktoberfest, along with 5,000 of our closest friends!

We just started selling into Toronto LCBO stores, we've added a bunch of new fermenting tanks - 42,840 litres worth to be exact, our new bottling line has arrived (but still isnt actually working).

We rounded out our seasonal line-up with Beaver River in the Spring and we did a special one-off project with the Canadian Amateur Brewer's Association.

We've been lucky enough to try Piggy Market's and Elk Ranch's sausages made with our beer, Art-is-in Bakeries Beau's Bread, Pascal's Awesome beer ice-cream, as well as sauces, chutnies and steak-and-mushroom pies with our beer.

We've grown from 13 employees to 24 in the year. We received a very welcomed grant from the Ontario government to help us keep expanding.

We sponsored or donated well over $50,000 to worthwhile causes like Prostate Cancer research, Amnesty International, Ottawa Jazz Fest, Kelp Records, FrancoOntarien festival, Operation Come Home, Yes Women Can!, Brockville Memorial Hospital, Therapeutic Riding, Bon Apetit, Tulip festival, Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, Military Families Fund, Capital Pride, the Ontario Provincial Police Association, Rideau Valley Roller Girls, Canadian Diabetes Association, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Feast of Fields, the United Way, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Canadian Breast Cancer research, the Vankleek Hill Agricultural Society, The Ontario Federation of Agriculture and more.

I made a New Year's resolution that I would post weekly and by my count, including this one I hit 26 - or about half way to my goal. My resolution for next year is to keep this momentum going, to make sure our beer stays as tasty as ever, to grow only when growing helps make us cooler than we are, to dramatically increase our support for charities and indie music and arts and to get to 52 blog entries for next year.

Thanks again to everyone who bought one of our beers this year.

Thanks to everyone who signed up to our Facebook Group, the Beau's Army.

Thanks to everyone who voted for us for a Golden Tap, or a best local beer competition.

Thanks to everyone who visited the brewery for a tour and brought a friend or a relative or a bus load of people.

Thanks to everyone who asked a restaurant to start carrying our beer.

Thanks to everyone who gave us a tip about a new restuarant, or a good one to approach.

Thanks to all the wonderful restaurateurs who made the choice to buy fresh, local, organic beer instead of a beer that came with a big advertising budget.

Thanks to all the bartenders, waitresses and waiters and sommaliers and chefs who willingly took on the role of Beau's salesrep and talked passionately about our beer to your customers.

Thank you to the bloggers, editors, and journalists who felt that what we were doing was newsworthy.

All of our success in 2009 is really your success. Everything we are is possible because of everything you do for us. We have been truly blessed this year with kindness and support from so many people.

I'm looking forward to 2010 with unbridled enthusiasm. I hope you'll join me at midnight to ring in the New Year with a LugTread or a BogWater (actually I'm planning on mixing Bogwater with champagne for a twist on a Black Velvet, but you get my drift)

Oh Yeah!

New bottles are in!

2009-12-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Our brand new bottles arrived today! Now we just need to get the labels, caps, boxes, trays in and get our bottling line actually running...

So make this the first official announcement - new packaging will be coming soon-ish!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2009-12-22T11:07:00.000-08:00

2 days ‘till Christmas and things at Beau’s are awesome! Crazy, that is; but that is awesome! I came in on the weekend to pitch in on production-type stuff like washing bottles, stacking ceramics on buggies and washing kegs to make sure we’d have enough beer for our deliveries and retail shop (which was a total zoo on the weekend).

Jen Brock, who has been working in our retail store (and booking dispensing units, filing, packaging, etc.) since June, came into work on Saturday to see me arms deep in the growler washing tub and said something like “I never thought I’d see the day…” She was that surprised to see me doing honest work instead of just hanging out with a beer in my hand [note to reader: I’m actually working while hanging out with a beer in my hand, it just doesn’t look like it].

It got me thinking of how much has changed at the brewery in such a short time…
Christmas 2006: We’d been open for 6 months. There were still just 5 of us at the brewery at the time and we didn’t sell anything other than kegs. We were still brewing out of Churchkey, too. We had heard about the Christmas sales spike, but we only sold to about 20 restaurants, so December was actually pretty quiet in terms of sales. The trips back and forth to Campbelford through snowy weather were tough and I think my brother Phil actually ditched the cargo van around this time during a delivery run through a blizzard.

Christmas 2007: By now we were brewing full-on in Vankleek Hill, there were 6 of us full time and Phil’s then fiancée (wife, now) helped out on the weekends. My sister Jen and her husband Kevin also helped out a lot, but we didn’t pay them yet (mind you, they drink their weight in beer). This was the first year we sold beer out of the retail shop – and it was insanity! We only had a little beer gun at the time, so fill rates were ridiculous – 3 dedicated folks could fill about 40 an hour and we ran out of new bottles, so we also had to clean them all before filling. Our little wash tubs could handle 8 bottles at a time – for about 2 hours when we would run out of hot water and would have to stop washing.

I didn’t see much of my family that year. We’d start filling at 5am,
get a little bit ahead before the store opened at 10am, and then we’d see our stock dwindle all day as we kept frantically trying to keep up with the pace of sales. At 6pm, when the shop closed, I’d go home for dinner with Nicola and the kids and stay till the kids were in bed at 8pm. Then, back to the brewery to start cleaning bottles for the next day. This would finish up at about 3am, and I’d go home, take a shower and get a solid 1 to 1.5 hours sleep before starting the day at 5am again. All of us were completely beat by the time we closed up shop on Christmas Eve.

Christmas 2008: This year there were 13 of us and it was the first year selling through the LCBO. We got some really good advice on planning for Christmas from Ryan (an LCBO employee) and started working on things well in advance. We now had our two-head filling machine, so one person could crank out 90 ceramics or 50 jugs in one hour (assuming someone laid them on the buggy in advance and someone else was packaging them). But holy canoly, sales spiked and things were wild.

Keeping up with orders – both filling and delivering were a huge challenge and once again it seemed like every night was a 4am one…then out for deliveries at 8am. We still only had one cargo van at that point, so most deliveries went out in minivans. This year was a bit more manageable and none of us could believe it, because we sold so much more beer than the year before, but we got through it so much better.

Christmas 2009: Its almost starting to feel like we know what we’re doing now! We’ve been running two shifts a day for the last 6 weeks, starting at 5am and finishing at 11pm – this last weekend we moved to round the clock filling. We’ve got enough staff to keep bottles on the move on filling and packaging and 2 full time drivers and a bigger truck + a cargo van. We’ve got 23 employees now and this weekend is the first time I’ve had to come in to help out in production. It’s a good feeling to walk in to brewery in the morning and see the orders packed and ready to go, people moving with purpose and generally the feeling like you’ve just walked into a beehive.

I can’t say that I miss the cracked fingers from spending 20 hours soaking in sanitizer, and I can’t say I miss working on only 2 hours sleep a night, but in some ways I’m nostalgic for that feeling that we were moving a mountain every single day. What has replaced that is an odd, rather comforting feeling that I can no longer save the day by my own effort. For us to get our orders out, our whole team has to put out the extra effort, which means I can sleep more and still make sure that the beer gets to where it needs to be. Not tonight, mind you (I’m in at 2am tonight, just like last night), but in general.

Merry Christmas. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the retail store to pick up some jugs or picked up a bottle at the LCBO. Your purchase of our beer keeps the lights on here, and I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate you choosing to spend your Christmas with us.

Cheers!

the coolest stuff I got

2009-12-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, so here's the top ten cool things I got...not necessarily in order of coolness.

I've received an email from someone in England saying they were sending something in and could I please wait, but I gotta get this out before Christmas and I can't wait any longer. If its really cool though, I'll still send you something Darryl!

So here we go...

1. Totem pole! This gets the book plus the jersey
2. Grenade! Greg from Ottawa took my "blow my mind" phrasing a little too literally
3. Oktoberfest mask! Phil and Astli-Lisa made a cool lizard mask using one of our Oktoberfest hats
4. Tweet! Pat set me up with a twitter account - which was cool till I dropped my iphone in the toilet and now I can't text anymore. That's not Pat's fault though, so he still gets a book.
5. 70's beer! - Walter sent me a cool pic of him in the 70's at the cottage with a beeramid and an old radio on the picnic table. Way too nostalgic not to win a prize.
6. Giving is the new black! Dave helped raise over $62,000 for the Champions For Children World Trivia Night fundraising event
7. Apple booze! Christian sent a youtube video of him making apple cider. Its not beer, but it'll still earn him a book
8. Electrified! Darren sent in one of the 1,400 shots he took of a lightning storm in Ottawa. Out of the 1,400 pictures a total of 14 actually captured lightning creating instant chaos on film
9. Sumo! Steven's sumo suit shenanigans earn him a book, too.
10. Ironic photography! Jonathan's picture outside of the VKH LCBO was too good to turn down.

Thanks to everyone for sending in so much cool stuff. I'm sorry you couldn't all win, but I ran out of books.

BottleWorks Update

2009-11-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

I received this update on our collaborative effort with Operation Come Home today, and thought I would share it:

BottleWorks
Since launching in November 2008, the Bottleworks social enterprise has greatly increased its client list and now services more than 45+ restaurants, hotels and condominiums as well as operating 6 Beau’s All Natural Brewery depots around the City of Ottawa. The enterprise is making some significant money with bottle collections and will have the ability to sustain the enterprise for many more years to come. To date the program has hired 14 youth to participate on a full time basis. This opportunity has allowed participants to gain on the job training skills leading to future employment or returning to school. In addition, many of the youth that have worked for BottleWorks have found safe, affordable housing.

Thank you to all the restaurants, hotels, condominiums and individuals who have donated their bottles to us! Your on-going bottle donations and support are very much appreciated.

BottleWorks is continually seeking additional establishments who require bottle collection as well as potential Beau’s drop off depots. Please call 613-860-2323 if you have any suggestions or ideas for our social enterprise.

Free George Wendt! (books, that is)

2009-11-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

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.

George-A-Palooza (a.k.a. Oktoberfest 2009)

2009-11-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

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).

Breaking Ground...Not!

2009-09-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Happy Long Weekend, Everybody!!!!

2009-08-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hangin' with the Harpers

2009-07-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to be invited to 24 Sussex this summer to pour beer for the Prime Minister’s annual garden party.

I’m a very proud Canadian and being able to serve Beau’s at the Prime Minister’s house was quite a thrill. It also started bringing up all sorts of Hollywood movie memories. Its quite the Forest Gump feeling having your picture taken with the Prime Minister…where he’s good at ping pong, we’re good at beer.

And when photographers took a shot of us while Mrs Harper poured a pint of beer, the Big Lebowski quotes kept jumping through the old noggin…”yes, this picture was taken was Mrs. Reagan was first lady of the country; yes, yes, not of the state”. Although we were a bit luckier than the Big Lebowski in that Mr. Harper also found time for a picture with us.

I also found out that Mr. and Mrs. Harper have very similar senses of humour…
Me: Would you like to try pouring another pint, Mrs. Harper?
Mrs. Harper: No; I don’t really see that as a skill I need to master.
Me: Yeah, I guess you’ve got a pretty good gig already, eh?
Mrs. Harper: Yes, yes I do. I spent a couple hours on the motorcycle today.

And later…

Me: Would you like to try that again, Prime Minister
Mr. Harper: No. I don’t see that I need to master that skill
Me: That’s probably true…but if you don’t mind, I’m going to drink this beer that was poured for me by the Prime Minister of Canada
Mr. Harper: Cheers.

All in all we were there for three days, Rob and I did the first two nights and my Dad and Jamie did the third. Quite a cool experience.

Application Mailed!

2009-05-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

We’ve been working hard over the last 6 weeks or so going through the process to get certified organic and today, we mailed in the application!

The process of getting certified is quite a challenge. It involves much more than just using certified organic raw materials and requires a crazy amount of documentation. After going through the process though, there will be a couple cool things we can do. For example, we could trace back from any bottle or keg of our beer which batch of beer it was, what lot of grain and hops went into that batch, where it was malted and which farm grew it! Crazy.

We needed a tremendous amount of help to get our record keeping and process documentation ready for the certifier, and we were very fortunate to get that help from our intern, Anne Morin. Anne is graduating from University of Guelph’s Alfred College campus in quality assurance and nutrition and she was responsible for getting us up to speed. We’ve hired her for the rest of the summer to help us make sure we stay compliant and also research more enviro-cool things we can do.

The application itself is hundreds of pages long, documenting every cleaning procedure, every quality assurance program and tracking procedures for every ingredient for every brand. I weighed the thing and its 1.5lbs of paperwork!

Back From Boston

2009-04-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm still reeling from my trip to Boston. Every year the Brewer's Association holds a craft brewers convention in a different city, this year in the land of chowder. Because it was relatively close, we were able to bring a few people from the brewery...so Dad, Matt, Jamie and I piled ourselves into a minivan and headed south last Monday.

We arrived Monday night (after a dinner stop at 7 barrel brewing co.) in time to check in and go grab our first Boston pint. Tuesday morning was the brewery tour day, so by 7:30am we were loaded into a bus on the way to Trinity Brewpub, Buzzards Bay Brewing, Mayflower Brewing and Cape Cod brewing. By 9am I had an oak aged scotch ale in hand, while munching on bacon out of a chalice. Very nice way to start the day. After the tour we hit the welcome reception at Harpoon Brewing Co., where 2000 brewers were allowed to wander around the entire brewery.

On Wednesday the seminars and tradeshow began. Crazy good opening speach and keynote address by Greg Koch of Stone brewing. It started off with a video highlighting the best parts of being a craft brewer and a challenge to brewers to continue with what makes us great. You can watch it here: http://vimeo.com/4298464. After the seminars ended, there was a visit to Boston Beer Co., where Mr Sam Addams treated us all to Lobster and crazy beer brewed at their research brewery. Dad was very happy because they also had the hockey game on.

Thursday was more seminars and tradeshows, followed up by 60+ cask conditioned beers back at Harpoon. Friday was all day seminars and closing reception. On saturday we headed home, stopping only for beer to bring back to the brewery (Phil in particular was itching for some hoppy stouts) and lunch at American Flatbreads.

I've been back for a few days now and my head is still going in a million directions - between catching up on being gone for a week and starting to work on all the big projects that I want to undertake this year, now that I'm full up on inspiration again.

A-Channel, CABA, Black Oak, Chez Piggy, Oh my!

2009-04-21T07:42:00.001-07:00

Oh man, I love my job. I’m heading to Boston this week for the annual Craft Brewers Convention. Boston is one of my favourite cities, and it is shaping up to be an awesome time. I love this convention; it is inspiring, educational and an opportunity to taste about 7,000 of the best beers in the world. The convention moves to different cities every year, and this is the first time it has been on the east siiiiide since we started, so we get to drive instead of fly to it.

But to make things even better, what a weekend leading up to the conference. On Friday, the A-Channel came down to film a few segments for an upcoming show, and we had a blast! Had the whole fam-damily giving the tour, and doing the beer talk.

Then, off to Toronto where I was giving a talk to the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association (CABA) about brewing with Bog Myrtle for our Bog Water beer. The event was at the RHINO on Queen St., part of my old stomping grounds and an awesome place to go for a pint. The event was licensed as a special event so that they could serve homebrew as well, and what a great time I had trying everyone’s stuff. In my opinion, good homebrew is superior to craft beer for the same reasons craft beer is superior to the mega-brewed crud. The financial motive is completely removed, the pressure to brew for the masses does not apply and the pride and the passion for the beer is the sole motivation behind the creation. I got to try the same recipe brewed with Westmalle and Chimay yeasts, homebrewed Sake, a monster of an IPA and a leftover-malts-and-hops beer all brewed in batches that make our tiny system seem like a giant. Such a good group of folks and an amazing experience.

Because I’m going to be gone all week in Boston I brought Nicola and the kids with me, so that I got to spend some family time over the weekend, too and Nicola’s parents were kind enough to do some babysitting for us, so she met up with me after the event and we spent a few hours wandering through the streets of Toronto. Good times.

Saturday we got up, took the kids to the park and Riverdale Zoo during the day, and then ditched them with Grandma and Grandad again to take in the Black Oak’s grand reopening in Etobicoke. It was a great party, and well attended. John Graham, Bill White, Ron Keefe, Bob Latimer, Stephen Beaumont, Cass Enright, Mike Duggan, and many more familiar faces were out to show their support for Ken, Adrian and the rest of the Black Oak crew. Our brewer, Matt, was brewer at Black Oak before moving out our way, so we have owe these guys a debt of gratitude. Great beer, good food, and super conversation.

Speaking of super conversation...on the bus ride up to Black Oak, I was returning a few phone calls I’d received, and one was to Ralph Morana at Cafe Volo to let him know I was in the city and I’d see if I could swing by and say hi. Turns out he was on the exact same bus as me and at some point we figured this out...funny stuff.

Today, I went to Kingston to take part in a beer dinner at the Chez Piggy restaurant in Kingston. What a way to spend an evening! 5 great beer with 5 great food pairings, and lots of fun. Now I just have about 10 million things to do to get ready for Boston. Dicky Barrett, If you’re reading this, I hope not to annoy you on my vacation.

Looking at another "Oh Crap" Friday

2009-03-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

To keep our beer as fresh as possible, we’ve been running a system that works like this: We get our orders in, filter only as much as we have on order, keg it the same day as it is filtered, deliver it the next day, repeat next week.

As sales have grown, we’ve been adding new delivery routes and more vehicles, but we always try to leave Friday as our “Oh Crap” day. As in “Oh crap, our downtown orders completely fill the truck and the cargo van, we’ll need to do another trip on Friday.” Or “Oh crap, our LCBO sales are twice as big this week and there is no way we’ll have enough filled for our Wednesday deliveries..so we’ll have to send out another vehicle on Friday”. Or today's “Oh crap, the truck broke down for the third time in a row and all we have left in the parking lot is a minivan, I guess we’ll have to rent a truck and send it out on Friday.”

It’s a good fail safe, but this week will mark the 5th consecutive week we’ve been delivering on Friday, which means we need to do something about it. So we’re hiring a student to do a few shifts a week bottling for us and it looks like we’ll be buying a new truck (boo) in the next week or so as well. Because if we don't, then the "oh crap" might start to mean "Oh crap, we're going to miss a delivery" and that's just not cool.

Installation Details

2009-03-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

We’re making progress getting out fermenter(s) online. The first is getting hooked up now and the other three should be arriving next week (hooray). Here is a list of things that need to be done to bring a fermenter online:

1. Get the floors sloped: technically, this isn’t absolutely necessary, but ask a brewer that doesn’t have the fermenters on a sloped floor and they’ll tell you they spend their days chasing puddles.

2. Move things that will get in the way: This time around we’ve had to move a section of lighting and an overhead heater that would have been in the way.

3. Get the tank off the truck: We are buying from DME this time around, and they send the tanks in really nice, metal cradles, that make this part easy enough with a forklift, but in the past we’ve had to rent a crane to lift the tanks off the truck.

4. Get the tank vertical: Not as easy as it sounds. With our other tanks, we’ve done this ourselves, but with bigger tanks it was way too scary to do ourselves. We contracted local riggers to come in and it took a group of 4 people with two special forklifts about 4 hours to get the tanks on the sloped floor and vertical. There is very little extra ceiling space, so it was some finesse work to get it standing. One rigger had told us we would have to cut a hole in the ceiling to get these tanks in, and I’m glad we didn’t have to ‘cause its been cold outside.

5. Plumbing: The tanks we purchased have three cooling jackets each, so we need to run piping from our glycol reservoir to the inlet/outlets. Our plumber also needs to make sure that we have enough pressure in the line to keep the glycol moving through the extra distance or else we’ll need an additional pump. Luckily, our chiller is strong enough to keep up with the extra tankage, or else we would require more chilling capacity.

6. Electrical work: The tanks need to be able to turn the cooling on and off, so each one needs a thermostat and solenoids to turn the glycol on and off.

7. Acid Wash: To get the tank ready for action, it needs a heavy duty acid wash – kinda like when you acid wash your jeans, except not quite as 80’s chic.

8. Bits and pieces assembled: There are valves, racking arms, sample cocks (heh heh, shut up, Beavis) and the like to get onto the tank before its first brew.

And then change-o prest-o your tank is ready for its first batch of beer!

Bryce Day - 2009

2009-03-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

So another Bryce day has come and gone. A very good friend of mine passed away March 8, 2004 after a long battle with cancer of the everything. Last year I donated my hair to make wigs for cancer patients and I haven’t cut my hair since. I was hoping it would grow enough that I could donate it again this year, but alas, it wasn’t long enough to donate it yet. Earlier this year I grew a mustache to raise money for prostate cancer, so a few more folicles for the cause just seemed like the right thing to do.

We also tried to decide at what point Bryce would have tried to climb inside our new fermenter. He was that kind of guy, it wouldn’t have been an ‘if’ but a ‘when’.

Anyway, a bunch of us raised a glass to Bryce again this year and talked about old times. Next year I think I’ll have a full fledged party at the brewery. Mark your calendars!

Tankus Erectus (Oh really?)

2009-03-04T10:34:00.002-08:00

Our first tank is now upright and in position! It makes everything else look tiny. This time we decided to hire riggers to get the tank set up, 'cause it goes right up to the ceiling and weighs close to 3,000 lbs. Next we need to get the plumbing hooked up and the electrical work done. Hopefully we;ll brew into it by St. Patty's day. Here are a few pics of our new baby...

Organic Hops (finally!)

2009-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

So we just received our first shipment of organic hops [picture me jumping in the air and clicking my heels together]. It is enough to do two or three test batches before switching to full scale production. We’ve spent the last 3 + years trying to find a consistent source of certified organic hops of the variety and quality we require. If these test batches pan out our ingredients will go from 98% organic to 100% organic. I’m so excited about this…when we started off this was a really big decision for us.

There technically were organic hops on the market, but we didn’t particularly like them and we couldn’t receive assurances they would always be available. We decided that we would hold out until we could get what we wanted in terms of quality and variety, but I really didn’t expect it would take so flipping long.

The next step for us will be to go through the actual certification process, which I’m really looking forward to. At first I figured it wouldn’t be anything more than a pain-in-the-but, because I’m pretty sure they won’t find anything that we need to change (to be certified organic you only need 95% of the ingredients certified, and we don’t make any beer with less than that). But lately, I’ve been kind of hoping that they do find something we can change, to help us do better.

Either way, we’ll see what’s what when we start the process. In the meantime, I can’t wait until our tests on the hops are done.

Concrete - photos

2009-02-13T05:19:00.000-08:00

I took some pics of our gnu floor getting put in...

The Beau’s Rumour Mill

2009-02-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

My sister just called to let me in on the latest Beau’s rumour going through the circuit. We’ve heard some pretty crazy rumours over the past 2 and a half years; my personal favourite is that we are actually a part of [Insert Global Conglomerate Beer Company], but there have been a pile of others.

It seems about every 3 months or so, some beer rep thinks that the best way to grow their brand is to tell restaurant managers something scandalous about Beau’s in the hopes that the restauranteur will be so outraged that they take our tap off on the spot and reward this rep with a new account for letting them in on ‘the truth’.

This never, ever works. Instead, it kind of backfires. The rep spreading the rumour is politely asked to leave, then, the restauranteur calls us up and tells us what X brewery just said about us and we both have a good laugh. X Brewery suddenly starts wondering why their sales go down and they aren’t closing as many new accounts.

Jamie and Jen (our two reps) have a code they work by…

1) Don’t talk bad about other breweries
2) See rule #1
3) I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights out

Actually, that last rule we stole from Monty Python, but its still valid I think.

From time to time we do bump our friends off a tap, and the same happens to us – the restauranteur gets to decide whose beer they want; its their place after all. But we have never lost a tap from someone who came in to spread crazy gossip, and I doubt we ever will. And I’ve never complained about it to the offending brewery, because I’d hate to think I helped them figure out that their evil strategy isn’t working.

Lets hope they don’t read this blog entry!

New Concrete!

2009-02-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

As my friend Jerry would say “Its happening again!”. Today we set our schedule for putting in fresh new concrete where we will soon start putting in shiny new Unitanks (fermenter and aging tank in 1). We learned from last time that you need to start on the concrete well in advance because it needs to cure for about a week before you seal it, which then also needs time before you can start installing the tanks. We’ll also need to move an 80 foot long bank of lights and possibly move an overhead heater, before the tanks get here.

We started working on these plans back in August, so you can imagine how good it feels to start actually doing work on this. A good lesson learned here – 7 months to line up financing (and still counting, but we can’t wait any more to get working)…so basically, we need to know now if we want to do anything cool for summer 2010.

The new pad of concrete will extend out an additional 11 feet and will run 2/3 of the length of the original concrete and will continue the slope of the original section so that everything will run to the drain. We are using a local contractor, Ivan Conway, for the job. They will be in framing it on Tuesday and pouring concrete on Wednesday.

Best part is that the new concrete will cover up one of the yuckiest looking parts of the original concrete (there had been a machine in that spot from the former company in the building, so the concrete is all chipped and so far 4 coats of paint have not made it look respectable.)

So if you can make it to the brewery in the next few days, you’ll get to see the wonderful start of our expansion.

Cheers,
Steve

All I (All I) Wanna Do is Drink, ahem, Maple Syrup For Breakfast

2009-01-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

I have to thank Sarah Haase and family for reminding me of one of my favourite Replacement’s songs. She recently sent me this email:

“Hi,

Love, love your beer.... but once the bottle is done, best use for it after that is a maple syrup bottle!! We buy large quantities of maple syrup at a time, the tins of which are impossible to pour from. So instead we decant the maple syrup into empty Beau's bottle's which then can re-seal, put back in the fridge and you have the perfect pour! Also a great talking point when you have someone for breakfast and you put a beer bottle on the table with their pancakes. Thanks for a great product, both the beer and the bottles.

The Haase Family”

And she was kind enough to show me our bottle in action:

Tips for reusing our bottles (remember, you can’t see through it, so make sure its clean):
Most important is to make sure you very thoroughly rinse out the bottle as soon as you empty it (yum).
You are best to put in products that aren’t likely to spoil (vinegar, syrup, oil, etc).
Make sure you re-clean it between uses.

Thanks again Sarah and family, looks like a tasty breakfast.
…now I gotta go eat some Bar-b-que chips.

John Graham is a pretty cool guy

2009-01-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

Matt was pretty sick early on this week, and he couldn’t come in and filter on Monday or Tuesday. On Monday we didn’t really sweat it, but on Tuesday we started wondering if he’d be off all week. Our new brewer, Alex, had been training for about 3 months on our filter, but had not handled a filtration solo yet and we really didn’t want to give him a baptism by fire-beer on it.

So I called up John Graham. He’s the owner, brewer, salesrep and sometimes delivery guy for ChurchKey brewing out in Campbelford (he also owns and runs the Stinking Rose pub out that way). After 30 seconds of small talk, I got right to it: “John, Matt is sick and I’m not sure how long he might be out of commission…any chance you feel like coming up for a visit?”

Like the title of the post, John is a pretty cool guy. After explaining that he was about to leave for Toronto, had to brew the next day and had crazy amounts of stuff lined up for the rest of the week, he said “if you’re stuck and you need beer, I can make it to your place for about midnight tomorrow, but I’ll have to filter and be back in Campbellford by morning”.

Turns out we didn’t need to take John up on his generosity…Alex rocked on his first ever solo brew and Matt was good enough to make it in on Wednesday. But it’s good to know there are brewers like John out there, ready to help out if you’re in a pinch and need to borrow a few thousand cups of filtered beer. Thanks, John.

B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B Bird, Bird, Bird!

2009-01-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

One of the things I don't think we've ever blogged about as a brewery is delivering beer. So how about today? Every week we get orders for beer in kegs and bottles, and every week, people get those orders delivered and unloaded with a smile. But how the heck do we make the magic happen every week? It's been quite the evolution.

As far back I can can remember, we had the white cargo van and the white mini-van. The cargo van I think we actually bought new, and the mini we got used at a good price from a family friend. Jamie and Phil, the original sales team, did all deliveries every week themselves in these two vehicles for what must have been the first nine months or so, trading them back and forth depending on who had bigger orders, needed to go further, etc. That worked okay for a while, and when we had the most snow in like, 1 bazillion years in 2007, Jamie permanently inherited the minivan for the simple and yet insane reason that you could no longer get the cargo van down his narrow downtown Ottawa street.

So Phil clumbered all over Eastern Ontario in the cargo van for some time. Flash-forward to spring of 2008, and sales had grown to the point where we needed someone to be doing them in a dedicated fashion. So the cargo van became a dedicated delivery vehicle, out Wednesdays for Jen's deliveries and Thursdays for Jamie's.

Ahhhhhh, perfect solution. And then we grew again, got into the LCBO, expanded our territory to Kingston, and also faced some logistical challenges like getting kegs to the Jazz Festival (well kids, should we make 12 trips in one day???) So we added a panel truck into the mix, one we borrowed when needed from the water company that supplies our water. And that's still the combo we have right now to deliver beer, plus one $3,000 van we christened BEFY (Bee-fy) when we saw we won the jackpot on funny license plates at the licensing bureau that day.

So here's how it works:

Panel truck: available Tuesdays and Thursdays only, when water co. not using it. Can hold 6,000 lbs or so
Cargo van: available week round, but can only carry about 19 kegs
BEFY: Available when Jen has nothing to do, which used to be frequently and now, like, never

So we take all these and stick together a delivery route every week. It gets pretty crazy trying to decide what to use for what deliveries, and nothing ever goes quite the way you plan it. The panel truck's gas gauge is touchy, meaning the truck has been stranded on the side of the 417 more than once. In cold weather, she don't start. She lost a tire not too long ago. But generally it gets the job done!

And the cargo van.... well, that's what the blog was supposed to be about. About how it ran out of heat last week during one of the coldest days of the year, and then the next day it overheated in the market, and how Jamie and Kevin brought it to Jamie's mechanic, and Kev spent the rest of the day pacing the waiting room like an expectant father. And how when Steve called to find out what was wrong with the van, how he actually said "What's the word???" And Kevin was able to say that a bird was the word. And now you know about the bird, and everyone knows that the bird was the word---a bird with a beak so long it pierced the rad. But come on in to the brewery and we'll tell you that story ourselves. Cheers! Jen

Local ornithology experts suggest that the bird, lost on a migratory path from across the ocean, may have looked something like this. So if you see one, dodge it fast or you'll be up to your ears in repair bills, even with the Jamie special mechanic rate. Eeek!

Forecasting through Christmas

2009-01-08T11:22:00.001-08:00

This was our first year selling through the LCBO. (That stands for Liquor Control Board of Ontario for those not from our province – they are one of only two legal retailers for booze in the province and the only one that Beau’s sells through). Around October we started thinking, production-wise, how we would fare through the season. Let me explain…

In our first year we only sold to licensees (that’s brewery-talk for restaurants and pubs), and we were kind of disappointed that sales actually decreased over Christmas by about 8%. It made sense though, as most of our licensees were closed for a few days and people for the most part would be home with their families. In year two, we also sold to customers through our retail store. We were amazed as the retail store sales went up as much 400% for the month, but another dip in licencees meant total sales were only up 6% from December. This year we had bottles in about 40 LCBO stores and we guessed our pretty ceramic bottle would make a good Christmastime gift; but how do you forecast sales your first year in?

What we did was talk directly to a few LCBO stores to get a sense of how other products sales went over the time period. They were pretty forthcoming and we were able to piece together our best guess of how sales would go over the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas.

Then, it was inventory time…

Would we have enough bottles, tags, tamperproof stickers, boxes, swing top caps, and, oh yeah, BEER to get that many bottles out the door? We ordered what we thought we needed and started stepping up beer production.

Then it was scheduling time…

For that level of sales, we needed to run our two-head filler 11 hours a day, 6 days a week for the first three weeks and 15 hours a day for the last week. We needed to send out 3 full trucks and 3 full cargo vans each week, and the week of Christmas and New Year would require special consideration because the holidays fell in mid-week. We needed someone dedicated to retail throughout the week (normally, we all take turns serving the few people who show up on a weekday morning) and invoicing and scheduling would be more grueling than normal, too.

...and how did we do?

Pretty flipping good, if you ask me! Our forecast was almost exact to sales, in fact most weeks were almost carbon copies of the forecast. Our scheduling worked pretty good – a couple snowstorms caused problems and our filler got so overheated it broke…twice! But we fixed it each time and because we hadn’t fallen behind, we were able to make up the extra hours by working through the night a few nights. We did actually run out of a few things inventory-wise and had to improvise on a few of the less essential stuff – but the major things (beer and bottles and caps) were well stocked throughout.

It was grueling near the end, and I think I hit a 40 hour work day at least twice through the season, most of us at the brewery saw at least one 4 am, and I fell asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, but we got through it without a single missed delivery, stock out or dry tap.
For those of you trying to work out your projections for your own brewery, in a general sense our retail sales were up 300% and our licensees down 5-10%. December will be the absolute best month of the year for sales overall for us for 2008.

2009--Year of the Blog

2009-01-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

So, my last post was June 3. Then things got really, really busy. Now its 2009. Thank goodness Jen has been keeping up the blogging so the thing hasn’t gotten too stale. Well, it is new year’s resolution time, so mine is going to be to blog once a week for the year.

First, lets catch you up to speed…Matt was out of commission for close to two months after his accident. Our part time brewer, Mark really stepped up for us and pulled double shifts, worked weekends and more while keeping his part time job. When Matt came back, Mark quit. He had lots of very good personal reasons that didn’t involve him being completely burnt out, but I can’t help but think if we hadn’t worked him so hard he might still be around. In the meantime, we’ve hired a bunch of new people…we now have a second full time brewer named Alex, A delivery guy named Todd, A packager named Joanne.

Sales continue to grow, which makes us very happy. The LCBO remained our biggest challenge through the summer, as the demand was truly insatiable. It was weird having to call up stores and tell them that we could only deliver 5 cases instead of the 20 they asked for, but we simply could not keep up with how much they wanted (lucky for me, this was mostly done by my sister, Jen). We did eventually catch up though and have been able to expand the number of stores we sell to from 20 to 45. Over the same time we also gained about another 60 restaurants.

Getting through this Christmas was a big challenge, but I’m happy to say everybody got what they ordered and got it on time. It meant running our little two head manual filling machine 24 hours a day and many nights of no sleep, but the sense of accomplishment is pretty huge. I’m very proud of everybody here, it was a lot of work, but we got through it. On top of insanity sales we also managed to have a staff Christmas party, open our tasting room and hold a benefit concert, Put a float in our town’s Christmas parade (mostly thanks to Todd, see pics below of our "12 Days of Christmas theme), and attend many events to help spread the word.

Over the last few months, we’ve been trying to get the financing put together to get in more tanks and a bottling line so we can keep up with what looks like another busy summer coming up. Financing always takes 3 times longer than we expect, but hopefully we’ll get things in place quickly.

What's Shakin this December

2008-12-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

So, here it is December and we're all crazy and stuff at Beau's. If you haven't heard it, be sure to check out our Christmasy phone message. You may have no choice but to check it out, since Mom-Beau who is usually in the office is now usually in the store chatting with folks who've come by for a taste, talk, tour, or take-out.

The LCBOs we deal with will happily agree that it has been a while since our last shortage of bottles/tags/beer/boxes/insert here. Yes, we have managed to run out of all these things in the last nine months. So things are going a bit more smoothly in that department. (She said, three weeks before Christmas). Thanks to everyone who's enjoyed Beau's a la bottle since March, and to our now 40 LCBO stores in Eastern Ontario who are stocking these stuffers. (subliminal messaging)...

At the brewery, we are taking advantage of Christmas, this traditional slow season for sales, to build a tasting space in the brewery. We have an event coming up December 18th, which gave us the apprpopriate boot in the butt to get this space built. More about the event to follow, I have heard something about Amnesty International and celebrity attendance.

Other news:

Current temp in the brewery and outer sales office: 8 degrees
Temp in Steve's office: about 11 degrees
Where Jen made sales calls from today: Steve's office
Brewery dress code: Arctic casual
Bog Water: About a week and a half away from ready, we hope!

Oh, and Phil's hands hurt. He says they are on fire. Anyone with a cure for firey hands, fess em up. Cheers!

Boring Old Staff Meeting

2008-11-05T04:11:00.000-08:00

So now that we have more staff than we see at family dinners, it seemed like a good time to do a monthly "all staff" meeting. Oh, how we've grown! I missed the first one at the end of Semptember, but I did get caught up on the two most important items on the agenda:

1) No staff use of the store bathroom during store hours. We all really stink. Some more than others.

2) At every staff meeting on the last Friday of each month (cause that's when we are always not so busy, right? :) a selected Beau's employee gets to design and brew under Matt and Alex's watch a mini-batch of beer of his or her choice during the day and meeting. At every subsequent meeting, all attendees get to sample last month's month's batch, and cheer for the new one on the go.

Item #1 has inconvenienced me once or twice, but item #2--oh yeah! In September, Laura got to brew first, and decided to do a pumpkin ale, since it would be ready on Halloween. No synthetic pumpkin flavour at Beau's... Laura chucked the whole gourd in, and then fished out the chunks. Since that was the meeting I missed (clever, hmmm, that was the one with no homebrew) no one was more surprised than I was to walk into my house all filled with pumpkinny goodness. Driven either by environmental passion to re-use, or a mega-addition to pie, Laura capped her brew day by pieing the pumpkin that went into the brew. Yahoo!

And then the moment of truthiness, when we got to sample the Pumpkin Ale in between Steve rambling off 50 million events we are part of in the next month ("we have the bodies, so it shouldn't be a problem"... famous last words), giving an update on how we are preparing for a Christmas spike in sales ("if we run dry, run, RUN for your lives!!!"), etc. It was received to rave reviews, and Steve, who says he rarely "Pumps" twice, went for a second round of Pumping.

Up next month will be Phil's oyster stout, an oyster infused brew with a $200 price tag in oysters alone... pop by on the 28th of November and see if it blows you down, matey.

Cheers! Jen

Pics of First Annual Beau's Oktoberfest Party!

2008-10-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

Young fraulein Ruby dances to celebrate the season, even though Mommy Beau is freezing.

Denise Beau gives a 50L keg the old heave-ho while the Master of Nightmarzen watches.

Keg toss in action!!! (I think this was Laura Beau)

The afterparty at Steve's rages on with the wildest of guests...

Media papparazzi scramble to get photos of this exclusive shin-dig!

Steve pouring himself a little more Nightmarzen... the beer is awesome! We've got some left even after the party, come down to brewery for a sample while you can.

Oktoberfest Party this Saturday!

2008-10-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

So the other day we took the last partial keg of of summer seasonal Festivale-Plus, and put it into six staff growlers... and then drank em. Sorry kids, but she's all gone now. I'd be sad if it wasn't for the fact that our new seasonal should be** getting kegged today! (see note after).

We had a number of names thrown into the hat for what to call this new beer, an Oktoberfest Marzen style. We wanted something kind of fall-like... how bout harvesty? Turns out "Harvest Moon" is already brewed in the US by Coors... (insert involuntary shudder, and move on.) Kev liked "Die Marzen, Die!" and while Dad thought "Horn of Plenty" had a nice ring, Steve much preferred "Plenty of Horn." (Steve did point out that his first choice was still "Dirty Old Hoe.")

We finally settled on Phil's suggestion, so our spooky fall seasonal is called Night.Marzen. We'll be launching it this Saturday at the brewery at our Oktoberfest party, 1-6 (and don't miss the afterparty at Steve's place!) We will be having fun stuff like a keg toss contest, Oktoberfest-style food, and brewery band The Oh Yeahs is rumoured to be having a practice sometime before then... (when is that again, guys? call me.) So they'll be rocking out, Steve says around 5.

Oh yeah, we're on a path of destruction and mayhem too: THINGS THAT HAVE BROKEN DOWN/GOT BROKEN THIS WEEK

The delivery truck, on the 417 Thursday night
The filter... don't worry, we're on it
Dad's back, again
Two jugs, in the cargo van
The cargo van, in Kingston Wednesday night
One ceramic, in Jen's car

**Matt is losing his mind because our filter keeps taking the day off without telling him. He hired an assistant brewer, Alex, perhaps to intimidate the filter into working better. Yay, new peeps at the brewery! We also have a new delivery hero, whose name we're pretty sure is Todd. Bumpers beware, he is a menace to both the van and the contents, and we're happy to have him and Alex kicking around. Nicole and Joanne are the other new smiley faces around the brewery--staff partys are now officially more than a gathering!

In other news, with the colder weather here, the brewery atmosphere has switched from smolderingly hot to freezingly cold. If you have a Beau on your Christmas list, we all need long underwear. STAT.

Hope to see you all on Saturday! Cheers, Jen

A Perfect excuse to visit the brewery this Sunday...

2008-09-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

(As if you need an excuse!)

This Sunday will be the 10th annual Festival of Flavours in Vankleek Hill.The event runs from 10am to 4pm on Main Street in Vankleek Hill.There will be local food producers paired with local chefs, a Beer wine and Cheese Tent (featuring Beau's, of course), a 320 foot communal lunch table, traditional food and crafts, and much, much more.So why not come on down, enjoy the festival and then head over to Beau's for a tour?

Eastern Ontario is Beerstern Ontario!

2008-08-29T18:09:00.001-07:00

So we're a little blown away, and thanks--best microbrewery in Ontario!!! best beer in Ontario!!! Aw shucks, ya think???!! Here's a sneak preview of the press release that aint yet hit the presses.... I'd write more about how we couldn't go to the Golden Taps cause salesdude extrodinarre/Beau "family member" Jamie and his lovely fiancee Jenn were getting hitched that night (what a party!!!), and how we all had to get our post-wedding butts to Pridefest the next day, and how we ran out of beer at Pride, and how we ran around the city stealing beer from our favourite accounts, and how Greg ran up a pickup truck full of beer for us but only cause he was hoping for some topless action (thanks anyway!), and how we returned all the beer the next day along with the popcorn maker from the wedding, and ended up exhausted at the Black Dog Bistro in Manotick delivering a 50L emergency keg, and how awesome Dot there was for feeding us rib steak and calamari on the house...

but all you get is the press release, cause I got 6 episodes of Weeds to watch... cheers! Jen

Local Brewery, Beer and Pub Win Big at Golden Tap Awards
Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co. and The Manx pub voted best in Ontario for 2008
OTTAWA — (Aug. 28, 2008) Eastern Ontario’s Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co. and local pub The Manx were both winners at the 2008 Golden Tap Awards, an annual event celebrating the best in Ontario beer. The news was announced at an evening gala and beer-tasting held Saturday August 23rd in Toronto.
Vankleek Hill’s Beau’s All Natural Brewing was voted “Best Microbrewery in Ontario,” and their signature beer, Lug Tread Lagered Ale, was selected as “Best Beer Brewed in Ontario.” Elgin St. pub The Manx was chosen as “Best Bar in Ontario.” The competition was open to all microbreweries and pubs located in Ontario outside the Greater Toronto Area.
“It’s fantastic to see Eastern Ontario now getting a reputation for having great beer and great pubs,” says Beau’s All Natural co-founder Steve Beauchesne. “That was one of our goals when we started the brewery back in 2006. And The Manx was actually one of the first places to pour Beau’s on tap, so we’re thrilled to see them win too.”
This is the third consecutive year that Beau’s All Natural has won at the Golden Taps. Beau’s Lug Tread Lagered Ale was chosen as best-Ontario brewed beer in 2007, and in 2006 Beau’s All Natural earned the prestigious “Best of the Festival” prize, an onsite vote for best beer sampled that evening at the gala.
The awards will officially be given out at a celebration to be held Friday, October 24th at The Manx. Cass Enright, president of Ontario’s premier beer resource The Bar Towel, and host of the Golden Tap Awards, will be on hand to present the awards.

It's not too late to vote!

2008-08-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! This Saturday is the last day to vote in the 2008 Golden Tap Awards. If you think Beau's is the best beer around, make sure you let them know with your vote: click on this link to go directly to the ballot. Cheers!

http://www.goldentapawards.com/2005/index.php?sid=10

PS--You can also vote some of our best accounts as the best pub in Ontario, too! Black Tomato, The Manx, and Pub Italia are all in the nominees, or you can write in your favourite watering hole's name in the "other" category.

Kibbles and Bits

2008-07-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Just a quick post to give some updates about what's going on around Beau's, yo. First of all, the Jazz Festival was a smashing success. Thanks to everyone who did their part by raising a glass or two of Lug Tread along with Beau's new summer seasonal, Festivale. Anonymous quote from LCBO employee: "yeah, my buddy tried Festivale at Jazz a few nights ago, and then I find out he's going again tonight. Asked him who he's going to see, he has no idea. He just can't stop thinking about your Festivale..." Rumour around town is that Jazz sold more beer this year than in the history of the festival... but you didn't hear it here, ok???

We have a filling machine for our jugs and bottles now that replaces the old beer gun filling!!!!!Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, this incredible machine does the work of (steady yourself) two humans!!! That's right, it fills two bottles instead of one at a time. Does anyone else find it funny that the person running the filling machine around the clock is named Phil? Cause I sure do. We also have a nice packaging person now named Joanne. She calls Phil "Philly." Which I also find funny.

We have also thrown around some money at the brewery for some pricy upgrades. Come up for a tour and check out our:

a) Newly painted floor--not one, but two coats! You may need to wear shades.

b) New upright cooler in the retail space--not new, but covered in new paint and woodgrain mactac, and darn new to us! Using wizardry previously only available to LCBOs stores in the 1980s, this puppy creates a curtain of air that kind of keeps the beer cool!

c) Newly improved Matt's ribs! Our brewer Matt is back in gear again. They say your bones heal stronger than before you broke them, so I say Matt is new and improved.

d) New retail store and tour gal! Nikki (hey, that's how I would spell it) is taking over the smiling happy person role from Laura, who's spending the summer getting hitched, touring Newfoundland, and getting ready for teacher's college.

e) New flourescent bulbs in brewery! I helped dad change them myself.

f) New water heating system! Talk to Steve about this one. The gist of it is that now we can use hot water any day of the week, without screwing up cleanings, brews, or filters. Hoorah!

g) New policy for bottle returns!!! Olay, so there's less excitement about this one. Due to a bit of red tape we can no longer offer $2 in cold hard cash for your ceramic returns, but we will offer the standard 20 cents AS WELL AS $2 per bottle towards any purchase of promo items in the store. Save em up, cash em in, drink in style.

I'm sure there's other stuff, but it's time to do the real work. Happy summer, Lug Nuts! We're hoping to put out a new seasonal in the fall that's gonna knock your socks off... stay tuned!

Cheers, Jen

Get well soon, Matt

2008-06-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

Hey there! Matt, our head brewer, was in a pretty nasty car accident last week. He's going to be okay, but he's looking at a 3-6month recovery time and he's feeling pretty busted up right now. If you had a moment and wanted to send him some get-well thoughts, you can drop them by the brewery or mail them to po box 279 Vankleek Hill ON K0B 1R0.

Cheers, Steve

synergy now!

2008-05-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

So our spring water comes from a local spring water company, Canadian Mist. They sell those big jugs, mostly under contract to retailers. They had been considering moving out of their location for some time now, and we finally were able to convince them to move in with us.

This works out so well for both of us, which is really awesome. On their side, they get more space, a better lease agreement and better facilities (loading docks, washrooms, etc.) On our end, we get rental revenue for some of our unused space, no more transportation costs for our water, and a few other fringe benefits such as use of their 5-tonne truck for deliveries a couple times a week.

Now we can deliver 3 days worth of cargo-van loads of beer in one day of truck driving. My brother-in-law Kevin has been promoted from growler-filler-extrodinaire to van driving and mystery solving. (yes, that is a 2nd Scooby-Doo reference in as many blog entries).

We have also now been able to brew two batches of beer in one day: the dreaded double brew. Before this was impossible, because we couldn't be sure of water coordination and we can only store enough water for one batch at a time. Between bringing on Mark, our sparkling new ass brewer, and getting the water onsite, we were able to do our first double brew in the place.

The double brew went pretty well. Matt started at 7am and Mark finished up at around 10:30pm, but neither had to stay too long (which is good, 'cause it was a Saturday).

For aspiring brewers, take note that if you want to do double brews, make sure your hot liquor tank is sized higher than the rest of your brew house. For example, our brewery is sized for 15 barrels (about 1650 litres final yield for Canuck brewers). Our hot liquor tank can only hold 2000 litres of spring water, so we have to wait until cast off to start the second brew, otherwise their would be no place for the cooling water to go after running through the heat transfer.

If we had an oversized hot liquor tank (or a second tank to divert the water to), we could start brewing the 2nd batch as soon as the first one was transferred to the kettle and the mash tun was scraped out. It would save a couple hours at least. Good stuff to know!

Beer + Sauces = ohYEAH!

2008-04-20T04:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, Janet Campbell from Mrs. McGarrigle's in Merrickville contacted us about dropping off some Beau's to her. Not only was she a fan of the beer, but she was working on a batch of mustard that would have our beer in it (two great tastes that taste great together!). Kevin went and dropped her off a few growlers without complaint, since he had heard from Phil that you can sample mustards in the shop. He didn't eat much dinner that night.

Right around the same time, Thomas Riding stopped into the brewery. He's the chef at the awesome Sam Jakes Inn where they serve lots o' Beau's on tap, and he and his wife Deborah have a sauce business called Just Wing It . It's really cool to talk to other entrepreneurs and realize that we are all doing this the same way--literally, Just Winging It.

"How do you get the sauce in the bottle?"
"We pour it in by hand."
"Hahahaah! You're crazy. No really, how do you get it in there?"
(silence)
"How do you put the labels on?"
"We do it by hand. Sometimes it takes all night."
"Hahahahahaah!"

I was thinking about these cool parallels this morning since we have 20,000 ceramic bottles coming tomorrow (no, not Friday as promised, what else is new) and are looking at packaging around the clock for a few days to get all the LCBOs back where they should be-ie, not sold out.

You see, each ceramic bottle arrives naked and capless, crowded and stacked with 2000 of his closest friends onto a pallet. Each bottle is crowned with his or her own swingtop by hand, and then the bottles are rinsed to remove dust etc. Each bottle is then sanitized, and filled by hand with a beer gun. The seal is closed, the bottle is then rinsed, hand-tagged, and sealed by hand with a tamperproof sticker. We smack an OCB sticker on the baby, weigh it, and pop it into a cardboard box that--guess what!--we had to assemble ourselves. Seal er up, put on pallet, lather, rinse, repeat. There's a whole lotta labour of love that goes into every bottle of Beau's!

Anyway, here's a cheers to Janet and Thomas and all the other semi-crazy people who start their own businesses making food and drink by hand. We tried some of the Just Wing It sauces over the last week or so, and they rock. You can see a list of where to buy them on the JWI website, and hopefully we'll get some to sell in our retail store soon too.

Cheers! Jen

Suppliers and Demand

2008-04-17T08:09:00.001-07:00

We're on the cusp of total craziness at the brewery right now between patio season being official here (yay!) and keeping up with our launch into the LCBO. Steve and brewer Matt are in San Diego this weekend at the World Cup of Beer, where we have entered Lug Tread (category 69!) and Bog Water to be judged with their peers. Awards are given out Saturday night, and if they don't win Steve and Matt are going bar-hopping in Tiajuana to drown their sorrows --so let's really hope we at least place so they come back in one piece.

Thanks to everyone at the LCBO and the nice people drinking our beer for being patient with us while our newest cermaic bottle supply was en route. They are in Montreal, hopefully painted and dry, and supposed to arrive tomorrow. Anyone with 48 hours of nothing to do this weekend should come down and learn to wield a beer gun here at the brewery, we're going to have all guns blazing as we fill around the clock. (The Citizen has an online video of beer gun shenanigans here: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/video/index.html#

What else?? We've got a couple of new accounts pouring our beer these days: Schnitzel's in Cornwall, and Confederation Place Hotel in Kingston. For golf lovers you'll be able to drink some Beau's at the Marshes this year, and also at Loch March whenever all this snow melts.

Oh yeah, and we're the official beer of the TD Trust Ottawa International Jazz Festival this summer, where we'll be launching a new style of beer for the summer festivals of 2008: we're going call the new baby Festivale (festive ale... get it???), and Matt's brewing the first batch as soon as he gets back from Tiajuana... er... San Diego this weekend. It's an altbier, a nice summer German Ale we hope you're gonna love.

Raise a glass to the start of patio season this weekend! Cheers, Jen Beau-James

Two Beaus In the Snow

2008-03-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

Before it all melts, here is one more photo of the winter of never-ending snow. Eric Beauchesne decided to wash away his golf course dreams for now with a yummy glass of Beau's winter seasonal ale, Bog Water. Get yer Bog Water soon if you want to tuck some away for next winter, yo.

Whoa, what a week

2008-03-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

So, Mom and Dad are on vacation in sunny Florida this week. My brother et deliver-person Phil broke his ankle and is out of commission right now, but no problem, right? We'll just pitch in and get it all done, right?

Well, it's around St Patrick's day, and Murphy's Law sounds like an Irish kind of thing, so maybe it was ordained, but wow, its been busy.

We originally projected that we would sell 130 cases of Lugtread in the first quarter (3 months) of being introduced. That was based on the fact that it was a single serve purchase in a fancy-pants bottle (yes, that's the technical term).

Switch to reality...In our first two weeks we sold 151 cases. Zoinks, Scoob, that's like 1400% more than our forecast!

We have a bottle filler ordered, but it hasnt arrived yet, so we're still doing this all by hand, and it is really, really slow work. We've been working most nights until 2am and starting up again at 5am.

...and its totally a dream come true. Apparently adrenaline is just as good as sleep. Funny thing is though, I can't sit down without nodding off, so I just keep standing.

We thought we had enough bottles to last us until July, but as it turns out they'll be gone by the end of this week. Luckily, we'd gotten a little worried that demand might be higher than at first expected and we've got 2.5 more pallets coming in next week and a full 10 pallets coming the week of April 14th. It will be close, but we might just sqeak by. We've had to start telling new LCBOs that call us up that they'll have to wait until our next full shipment arrives in April, but hopefully they'll understand.

Bryce Day

2008-03-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine passed away on March 8, 2004. Every March 8th since then, I've marked the day by pouring Bryce a pint and a shot, then sitting around having a conversation with him. It's always been at a pub and usually with some other close friends of ours to help me reminice, but the blizzard this year made that sort of impossible.

So this year, I've poured Bryce a pint of Bog Water (it's been particularly cool to be able to pour Bryce a pint of Beau's for a second year in a row) and a couple fingers of Cointreau. Every year I've wanted to do something meaningful in his memory, and this year I actually came up with something: I decided to donate my hair for wigs for chemotherapy patients. (My friend Bryce survived several seperate bouts of cancer and finally succumed to an acute case of cancer of the everything, so the donation seemed to make sense.)

My wife Nicola decided to do the same (she's donated hair once before, so it's old hat to her) and we went down to a hair salon in town, Brian's Place before the blizzard got too out of control. Brian, who also goes by the name Barney and I'm not not sure why, gave me the cut for free when he found out what the cause was. Thanks Barney!

For anyone interested in donating hair for chemo wigs for people living with cancer, it's actually pretty easy. Usually you need a minimum of 6-8 inches of hair that is undyed and in a ponytail, and you mail it in. You mail it to different places depending on what state or province you live in.

Check out these links for more info:

Canadian Cancer Society
http://www.cancer.ca/ccs/internet/standard/0,3182,3172_14519_84874484_langId-en,00.html

Locks of Love
http://www.locksoflove.org

Pantene Beautiful Lengths
http://www.beautifullengths.com/en_US/index_home.jsp

And, here are a couple of pics of me and Nicola getting our hair chopped off.

LCBO, GO!

2008-03-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

So we did it. We delivered 47 cases of Lug Tread yesterday to LCBOs in Vankleek Hill, Hawkesbury, St. Isidore, Plantagenet and Ottawa. Still more to get to Kingston, but after what seemed like forever, we're now actually for sale and on the shelf at the LCBOs.

And what a reception! I only got to personally deliver to St. Isidore and Plantagenet, but after talking to Dad and Jen, the store managers and staff unanimously are really, really excited about having us there. Talking with one manager and hearing that he'd read the blog was particularly cool and humbling at the same time. [note - I don't want to mention anyone in case they don't want to be named, but if you work at an LCBO and want to give a shout-out, please leave a comment!] Literally, the managers had already cleared a space and people were buying the beer while we were still in the store!

On the business end of all this, it was a lot of work to get these orders ready. We didn't want to call too many stores, not knowing what the reception would be initially and it's a good thing, because right now we fill everything by hand, tag by hand, put on the tamper-proof label by hand, put on the OCB sticker by hand and put it into the box by hand (see the "box tangent" at the end of this blog for additional Murphy's Law). The response from the LCBOs was much better than we anticipated and correspondingly, our first order was much larger than we anticipated (I'm not complaining!)

So Monday night at about midnight we finally finish all the packaging and we're all ready to go, just got to pack up 47 cases into Dad's minivan and...hmmm...are these all going to fit? Turns out, not by a long shot. Each case weighs about 45lbs and the minivan can carry a total weight of 1200 lbs including people. So, being (nice to Jen and Dad who would be travelling in said minivan,) lets say we can put about 1,000lbs in without going too much over the limit. So 45 cases x 45lbs is; lets see...oh crud. 2115 lbs. That's a lot of beer, yo.

Jen's husband Kevin, who is our bottle-filler extrodinaire part-time as well as being a full-time architectural technologist had a couple architect meetings in Ottawa Tuesday morning. So we loaded his vehicle with 15 cases and sent him off to Ottawa. Jen and Dad started the morning out going to Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill, dropping off another 8 cases between the two (as well as two bottles on the floor, sorry again Sylvain!), leaving 24 more cases to go.

They took 19 with them, leaving 5 for me to drop off in St. Isidore and Plantagenet. Without going too much into detail, a lot more tetris went on making sure there was someone at the brewery, and make all the meetings that also were scheduled for the day, but we got it done, with the last drop off happening just after 5pm. (jen's note: YEAH! we did awesome, yo. I used my first loading dock, and even remembered to get everyone's signature for the deliveries!!! The peeps who work at LCBO are so great, and were all so excited to finally have some Beau's.)

Then back to the brewery to do it all again: i.e., get ready for a series of Ontario Craft Brewer meetings and the Kingston deliveries. As it turns out, the lousy Smarch weather meant I couldn;t leave for Toronto at 3am like I had planned, and while I'm ticked I can't do all the things I had lined up, the extra 2 hours sleep felt real, real, really-really good.

****INSTRUCTIONS: HOW YOU MAKE A BOX OUT OF NO BOX ******
by steve

We were promised boxes by Monday by our supplier, which is why we promised delivery on Tuesday to the LCBO stores. Our box supplier screwed up, and here it is Wednesday and we still don't have our boxes - apparently "ISO" stands for International Screw-up Organization. They couldn't even tell me why it was late when I asked. But there was no way in Hell that we were going to be late delivering our very first shipment.

So, we unpacked 2 pallets of our jugs, which come in boxes that can fit 12 bottles width and length, although they are a little too short for the height.

Then we pulled out the insert and modified it up to sit between the bottles, folded the box-tops inside, placed the bottles and presto-chango, we now had boxes for our 750mL bottles.

First delivery to Ottawa/Kingston + Local LCBOs

2008-02-28T04:25:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of the Eastern Ontario LCBOs who will be carrying Beau's Lug Tread starting next Tuesday, March 4. We'll update the list as it grows between now and Tuesday, when we load up the van and make those first deliveries. Oh Yeah!!!!

OTTAWA + BURBS
BANK & WALKLEY: 1980 BANK STREET, OTTAWA-SOUTH
RIDEAU & KING EDWARD: 275 RIDEAU STREET, CORNER OF KING EDWARD AND RIDEAU ST
RICHMOND & KIRKWOOD: 222 RICHMOND ROAD, OTTAWA-WEST, K1Z6W6
CARLING & WOODROFF: 2211 CARLING AVENUE, OTTAWA-WEST, K2B7E9
WOODROFFE & BASELINE (COLLEGE SQUARE): 1363 WOODROFFE AVENUE - UNIT A
HUNT CLUB & MERIVALE (NEPEAN CROSSROADS): 543 WEST HUNT CLUB RD., OTTAWA-NEPEAN
INNES & TENTH LINE: 4220 INNES RD, UNIT #1 BUILDING F, OTTAWA-ORLEANS
TERRY FOX & CAMPEAU (CENTRUM): 24 - 300 EARL GREY DRIVE, OTTAWA-KANATA

EASTERN ONTARIO
HAWKESBURY: HWY 34 & HWY 17 56 MAIN STREET EAST
ST. ISIDORE: 51 ST. ISIDORE STREET
VANKLEEK HILL: 23 MILL STREET
PLANTAGENET: 240 OLD HWY 17

KINGSTON
BARRACK & KING: 34 BARRACK STREET
PRINCESS & CONCESSION: 905 PRINCESS STREET
QUEEN MARY & BATH: 1280 BATH ROAD, BAYOU PLAZA

Mom-beau Tackles the Spent Grains

2008-02-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

In case anyone doesn't believe me when I say "we take turns helping with the brewing process..."

Bloggin the Bog

2008-02-07T06:38:00.000-08:00

So our very-soon-to-be-released seasonal, named Bog Water, is already getting folks talking (read: typing) over on the BarTowel forum. The BarTowel is a great online discussion forum for all things beer in Ontario. They also host the Golden Tap awards, which we've won two of so far.

So anyway, they're having a conversation back and forth about whether giving Bog Water such an absurd name is a good thing or a bad thing. It got me thinking about how we actually came up with the name and how we developed the recipe.

BELOW: A typical bog with a walk (BogWalker).

One year before our actual launch, when we were in the depths of business plans and investor pitches, my dad, mom, sister and Kevin (her husband) and my wife and I went on a camping retreat. Basically, we discussed strategy while failing miserably to catch a fish, and then roasted "[insert objectionable incest reference here]s," a concoction my friends Eddy and JimmyRye invented involving marshmallows and hotdogs.

We picked up a bunch of Muskoka's beer 'cause we were just outside Huntsville, and started talking about names. At that point we had tentatively named the company Beau's Brewing Company and we had already landed on LugTread, but at that time we wanted to start off with three full time brands (until we learned what a logistical nightmare that would have been).

We have a goal to promote Eastern Ontario with everything we do, so we wanted to find names that would celebrate the local history, landscape etc. But we also wanted the name to stand out, be different, and hopefully be kind of fun, too.

I had printed out a list of all the endangered plants and animals that live in the nearby Alfred Bog (the largest and highest-quality bog remaining in Southern Ontario) that I had found on the Internet. So for a while we tried to come up with names that would pay homage to the Bog Elfin Butterfly, Fletcher's Dragonfly, Spotted Turtle, Red-shouldered Hawk, Golden Eagle, White Fringed Orchid, Atlantic Sedge or Rhodora, but nothing was sticking (fancy that).

That is until my Dad said, instead of the animals, why don't we name it after the bog, and call it Bog Water? At first, I have to admit, I thought it was a good joke, but nothing we would ever seriously consider. Who would drink something called BogWater? But he wouldn't let it drop, and it got funnier and funnier every time he brought it up.

What really changed it for me was when we had another strategy session over another fish that got away, and decided that we would specialize in all natural beer: all malt, certified organic, spring water, yadda yadda.

When we came back to BogWater, this time I threw the words All Natural in front. "All Natural Bog Water..." Now I loved it! It was funny, offputting at first, but intruiging at the same time. I loved it so much, I started throwing the All Natural phrase in front of everything I saw: "All Natural picnic table!" "All Natural "[insert objectionable incest reference here]!" and then all of a sudden... "Beau's All Natural Brewing Co."

Sometime in future blogs I'll write about other neat stuff about Bog Water: how we decided on the actual make up of the beer, how we got the bogmyrtle harvested (let's just say it wasn't easy), and how our brewer Matt had to develop a balanced beer using a wild-growing herb that had no commercial references to draw from.... but that's... another story.

Cheers, Steve

Who's ready for Spring?

2008-02-03T13:29:00.001-08:00

Yup... pretty snowed in at the brewery these days, take a look.

January Update

2008-01-29T03:43:00.000-08:00

No, we haven't taken the month off. I just haven't had access to the computron as mine up and died on Boxing Day. I got it back today and everything was wiped off. Let this be your reminder to back up your work often!!!

It’s looking like into mid-Feb now for the LCBO (boo). We've received something called a “commitment letter” from the LCBO that says they'll take on LugTread for a trial period at some LCBO stores in Eastern Ontario. (Yay!) Now we need to send in (yet) another sample indicating that this is from our first run and will be exarctly what we send for our first batch. (boo, less for us and you to drink). The good news is that a number of LCBO locations have been calling to find out when it’s going to be ready. (yay, they like us!) The bad is that we had a three-week delay (totally our fault) trying to get the UPC code to read on the LCBO system. (boo-you, technology).

In other exciting news, we will be releasing our first-ever seasonal soon. It’s been brewed, after two test brews on a pilot system. It’s tasting fantastic and I really can't wait to get this out.

If I wanted to be topical, I could tell you all about the global hop shortage and the increase in malt prices, but I'm sure you already have heard all about it. Personally, the whole thing smacks of piracy and collusion to me. I'm sure John Grisham could write a compelling novel about a naive brewer who stumbles into an evil plot perpetrated by Temperests and Destro under supervision by the Rand corporation.

And, we're gearing up to start selling into Kingston. The Iron Duke has some of our jugs already and on Thursday we'll be making our first delivery to the Queen's Grad bar, the ANAF bar (that's Army, Navy and Air Force), Sizzle (at the 4 points Sheraton) and any others who come on line before Thursday. This is exciting for us, as we started off with a goal of being an Eastern Ontario brewery and this is kind-of like the Western border. It’s also a town I used to spend a lot of time in and have many fond (read: blurry) memories of.

Last week was a new record for “beer out the door” for us. I'm guessing this is not very typical for breweries in mid- to-late January, so we're quite happy about it. And I was elected President of the Vankleek Hill Business and Merchant Association...like I don't already have enough to get done! Speaking of that, there's a lot of other stuff that I would love to get into, but I should really get back to work now.

Cheers, Steve

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone happy holidays! We took a brief rest on Christmas day, after Beau's enthusiasts almost cleaning us out of beer at the retail shop. (Don't worry, we're kegging more today...) Thanks everyone for your support, and hope your Lug Tread was part of a fantastic holiday for you and yours. Here are some pics of some snowed-in growlers, photographed in their natural habitat "somewhere in the Ottawa Valley..."

Christmas Blessings at Beau’s All Natural Brewing

2007-12-19T04:40:00.000-08:00

"Mombeau" has some friends in high places. Here's an update she wanted to share with you...

We had noticed sales had been a bit on the slow side at the retail store compared to the tourist traffic of the summer months... up until Wednesday December 13th. That day my parish priest had been asked to stop by the brewery to pick up a couple of growlers and a T-shirt for a friend. While he was there, I asked him to bless the brewery.

Father did bless the brewery. His blessing was not just for the success of the brewery, but also for all those that worked there, and for all our patrons. The blessing was the most beautiful and heartfelt blessing I had ever heard. I loved the fact that he blessed the people who devote so many hours into making this a success, and the blessing for the people that come to our brewery. With tears in my eyes, I thanked our priest for his blessing.

Father left the brewery and all of a sudden the retail store was hopping, growlers were going out faster than we could fill the cooler, gift baskets, and T-Shirts…. this was a day I will never forget. Thank you Father for your blessing, and thank you to all of you who put so much work into our brewery, friends who have helped us, people who believed in a dream, and to all of you who continue to support us with you patronage and kind words.

Merry Christmas and may 2008 bring much joy to all!
Denise Beauchesne (aka "mombeau")

Sad News out of Windsor

2007-12-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

I read today that Walkerville Brewing out of Windsor has filed for bankruptcy. It was a very shocking reminder for me of how difficult it can be to thrive in this industry. I've met Karen many times and she is a very upbeat, dynamic person, so I'm hopeful she'll turn this around still. In the meantime, why don't we all go hunt down a 6-pack of Walkerville and toast Karen and her award-winning beer.

How You Get Beer Into the LCBO

2007-12-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

I promised earlier, so now I’ll deliver more on the process involved in getting beer on the shelves at the LCBO. There really are a lot of steps, particularly when you consider that Beau’s has already gone through the process of getting LugTread approved for sale in Ontario, both at our retail store, as well as to licensees. It would take far too long for one blog entry (both for me to write and you to read), so I’ll break it into sections.

Just before I start to outline the process, I want to quickly speak about the people who work at the LCBO — they are great. The people working the system understand the system and they have been helpful in getting my beer through it. I get calls returned the same day; when I ask a stupid question, I get a good answer; and, knock on wood, so far everyone has been cheerful too, which makes the phone calls and emails much nicer to deal with. But back to the process…

Step 1 The Meeting: A meeting with LCBO category management is a precondition to submitting a new product, and it takes a few weeks just to get the meeting scheduled. I had a very funny experience waiting for my appointment in a t-shirt and jeans sitting next to some spirit and wine execs discussing strategies for their presentations. One Schmirnoff guy in a suit to another: “So, if you’re comfortable leading her through the deck, I’ll just jump in from time to time with my comments.” (Obviously the other guy did all the work and is the only one of the two who actually knows what is in the deck.)

At the meeting I went over our plans to launch, a bit of a history of our brewery, what we hope to achieve, etc. I told them where we were in terms of being able to supply the LCBO, and I got to proceed to the next step (NISS—see below).

Something I disliked was that when I explained my plans to launch with a really fancy package in single-serve format, and then follow up with a “convenience package” (think 6-pack), I was told in no uncertain terms that I would not be allowed to have two package formats for the same brand. They may be right and no one store would want to carry both, but I believe that there are some stores that would cater more to the single-serve customers (looking for something nice to bring to dinner) and some that would do better with a convenience package (heading out to the cottage), and surely some would benefit from having both. At any rate, that is all in the future anyway and right now I’m still working on getting the first one in.

Step 2 NISS: NISS is a pain in the ass. I think it means New Item Submission System, but I’m too lazy to look it up right now, so don’t take my word for that. Anyway, it’s an online form that you have to fill out that has every imaginable question you could think up about the product. Grams of sugar per litre, number of pallets to a skid, number of skids to a container load, weight of the cap (seriously, the weight of the cap!) and it just goes on and on and on.

I totally understand the need for a lot of this info when the product is coming in by the boatload from Eastern Europe and distributed in bulk through the LCBO distribution system, but when we are self-delivering boxes of twelve to *maybe* 10 stores in the Ottawa area, it just seems so pointless (to me at least). Luckily, this is one of the areas where LCBO staff shined through for me. A call to my product flow administrator (cool title, hey?) helped me through this:

Me: Uh, how do I find out sugar per litre?
Product Flow Admin: Most breweries just type in “0”.
Me: I don’t know how many pallets I could fit into a container, and I don’t think this will really come up.
Product Flow Admin: Just type in “1” and I’ll make sure it goes through.

Step 3 The Taste Test: You read that right, the taste test. This is one of the parts I’m happy is part of the system, but I’d like to know more about how it works. I don’t want to pick on any one brand of beer in the system, but there are some low-cost 6-packs in cans that somehow passed this test and I shudder when I think about that. More from an interested party perspective, I’d like to get feedback on the results of this test and I’d like to know how this test changes how the product is treated in the system.

OK, so I’m at step three and I’m already way too long for a blog. (Congrats for making it this far.) I’ll continue the saga again later, right now I have to go keg some beer that will be going out to customers later today.

Cheers, Steve

DIY Kindred Spirits

2007-11-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

Jamie and I got to see the band Me, Mom & Morgentaler last night, and it got me thinking about how related indy music and indy beer are. Both survive on the diy (do-it-yourself) ethic, both are competing with global multinational corporations, and both are blessed with the most passionate fans--although I've learned to order more XXL shirts and fewer "Youth Small" in the beer business.

Me, Mom and Morgentaler were one of my favorite indy bands back in the day, a bilingual ska-rock-pop act out ofMontreal. They decided to rerelease an album and do a reunion show, and it was awesome - as good as it ever was when they were first around. I've been really lucky lately, getting to see some fantastic independent acts: C'MON and Bionic a month ago, GWAR the night before Halloween, and my old label mates the Heatskores and the Flatliners, too.

It amazes me how much this little band meant to me and my friends when I was a kid. 12 years after they broke up I still knew the words to almost every song they played. I was thinking about that; and how it seemed similar to a customer who drove an hour to get to my brewery store because its the only place they can buy Lug Tread in a bottle, and how they told me that they make all of their "going out decisions" based on where our beer is on tap.

Don't get me wrong, I'mnowhere near as cool as Gus-Van-Go or Kim Bingham, but I'm sure I felt a little like they must have last night, listening to fan after fan tell him how far they came to see their band play. Anyway, here's a pic of Jamie with Gus and Kim after the show - after playing they ran right to the front and said thanks for coming out to every single one of us. How cool is that? --Steve

Brewery on the run...

2007-11-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Its 4:38 am. Back in my rock n' roll days, it seemed that if you were doing an overnight drive to some distant city to play a gig paying less money than the cost of gas to get there, you could always find Band on the Run on some classic rock station at 3 am. Somehow, it made it seem ok. When I'm pulling an all nighter now, I still try to find the tune, it's very Zen, or something.

Tonight was the first night of the Ottawa Wine and Food Show, the only alcohol-related showcase I know of in the area (although I hear the organizers of the Guy Show are looking to start a beer-related Ottawa show soon.) From noon till 9 I was slinging 4 oz samples of beer to people begging me to serve them 8 oz … and I wish I could, but I don’t make the rules.

Serving size complaints aside, I love doing sampling shows. It's so much fun to get instant feedback directly from the customer; a real pat on the back. This is our second time doing the show and it's incredibly fun, super hard on the back and feet and I still have to get a regular days work in overnight to keep the wheels turning at Beau’s. Tomorrow night I’ll be heading out with Jason and Mike from Cameron’s Brewing Co. to support them at their event at the Highlander. Jason and Mike also came to visit us at Beau’s the other night and have promised to post up some rather embarrassing photos of their visit.

So, I guess I’ll get back to working on the stuff I’m supposed to be doing so that I can get an hour or two sleep in before my daughters wake up and start jumping on my head. Cheers, Steve

Working on the LCBO

2007-10-29T07:33:00.001-07:00

So, in Ontario there are only a few ways a brewery is (legally) allowed to sell beer. Here they are:

1) The Beer Store. This is a private, for-profit company, owned by Molson (which is owned by the U.S.’s Miller-Coors) and Labatts (which is owned by Inbev, from Belgium). Okay so Sleemans (owned by Sapporo in Japan) owns something like 1%, but let’s not split hairs. Something ridiculous like 85% of all beer sold in Ontario moves through this juggernaut.

2) The LCBO. This is a government-owned company that focuses on wines and spirits, but does sell beer as well. The LCBO does not sell larger packages than the 6-pack, so customers looking to purchase a case of beer go to the Beer Store.

3) Brewery retail store. Breweries are allowed to sell beer out of their brewery. They are not allowed to open up stores off-site, which is too bad, ‘cause that would be cool.

4) Restaurants and bars. Technically only restaurants can get new liquor licenses in Ontario, which is why you see fewer taverns every year.

So as you can see, options are really limited for a little brewery that wants to sell in the Ottawa-area exclusively. The Beer Store is very expensive to get into. In fact, it would cost us about $20,000 to get listed in 20 stores selling the usual 6-pack, 12-pack and 24-pack. Furthermore, if we don’t meet sales targets, the Beer Store takes back the listing and bans us from selling in that store.

On top of that, the Beer Store is converting more and more stores to a format where you can pick up a case of Molson Canadian or Blue Light real quick and get out the door; OR try to find what you want on a tiny list of beer, then wait in line forever while someone in the back hunts for your beer. I suppose it makes sense — if I was the one who owned the Beer Store, I’d probably try to make it tough for them (Miller-Coors) to sell their beer.

The LCBO is a much better option, but still quite challenging to work with on a small scale. Because they sell all the wine and spirits for the whole province, they have very long lead times and most of their programs expect the supplier to be able to reach the whole province. As an example, the deadline to submit a seasonal beer is 12 months in advance.

On the flip side though, the LCBO is interested in higher-end beer and I’ve had very good experiences working with the beer team and the inside folks there. For my first listing, and because I asked really nicely, they were able to fast-track Beau’s through the process, shaving 4 months off the submission timeline. (The process involved in getting a listing is rather interesting and I’ll write a separate blog about that some time). So finally, the good news is that it is looking likely that Beau’s will be able to sell through the LCBO starting in January. Although we’ll miss you all coming down the brewery to get your fix, it’ll be nice to know people in Ottawa can say, “Let’s go buy some Beau’s,” and not have to gas up and pack a lunch for the ride to VKH.

"Hey, guys, what's going on?"

2007-10-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do up a little update on things that have been going down at Beau's central lately. Here's da scoop.

New Beer Style Coming Your Way

First of all, for those of you who have been eagerly awaiting a new style of beer from our brewery, this week we've been working on a test batch of a lil' seasonal treat we plan to launch with this winter. We have the basic recipe in mind, and are right now testing out a few variations. Like Lug Tread, we'll be the only brewery in Ontario making anything like it and its going to be real ly interesting and (I hope) tasty. Look forward to it in the middle o' winter, when a new beer will brighten up those short, cold days.

LCBO and New Bottles

So you love the Jug o' Lug -- and who doesn't? But we're all about options. We've ordered some smaller-sized bottles we like quite a bit. They're wicked cool , and you'll be able to buy them at the brewery retail store for Christmas and at select LCBO stores early in the new year. We're also upgrading our bottling equipment (read: getting some) to keep up with the demand for these nice new vessels. And don't worry, the jugs will still be available from the retail store for your purchasing convenience.

More Places to Get Beau's On Tap

Here are a few of our new best friends. You should check them out!

Agave Grill
Casselman Restaurant
Navan Curling Club

Museum of War/Museum of Civilization History Ball

We're the official sponsors of the coolest party of the year - the history ball. This year's theme is the age of style 20's, 30's and 40's. The museum is going to be decking out The Tank Room (it's called that because its full of tanks) and dressing up all the guests in zoot suits and flapper dresses and we're gonna party like its 1929. Tix are $500, and money it goes to raise money for the two museums.

Kurt Waldele Fundraiser

Kurt Waldele, the Executive Chef of the National Arts Center in Ottawa, has been one of the leading chefs of the National Capital region for almost three decades, and a well respected community leader as well. He has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing treatment. Robert Bourrassa and the Epicurean Society are organizing a standing dinner cocktail at the NAC on October 24 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. They have gathered 29 of the city’s top chefs, a veritable who’s who of the culinary scene in Ottawa, to contribute some of their signature dishes as well as 4 of Niagara’s top wineries, Beau's All Natural (of course) and one other brewery (I'm not being cheeky, I really don't know who the other brewery is). If you have $150 burning a hole in your pocket, come check it out, yo. The funds will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Ottawa Wine and Food Show

We'll be there again this year! Come see us November 2, 3 and 4 at the Ottawa Congress Centre. Admission is $15. Tas-tee stuff.

Interview by Monday Night Brewery

2007-09-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hey look at me writing a blog entry!!! Sorry I've been asleep at the switch again, thankfully Jen has been keeping the blog up to date-ish. (Hmmmm... I resent your "ish"... touché, sir! :) Jen ) Anyway, Idid an interview for Monday Night Brewery. Its actually a really cool idea,these guys are blogging about starting up their brewery in advance ofstarting up their brewery. Its really cool because they are sharing all their planning and ideas and one day you might actually go to the shelf of a Georgia based liquor depot and pick up some of their stuff.

You can read my interview right here: http://mondaynightbrewery.com/
Cheers, Steve

You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers

2007-09-14T05:07:00.001-07:00

So, we sell our beer in 1/2 gallon jugs from our retail store. And the great thing about the store is that you get to talk to Beau's drinkers all day long. And beer drinkers have questions, lot's of em. I thought it would be fun to start answering some of the FAQs we hear in the retail store here in the blog. Here's question #1:

Q: Do I have to drink the whole Growler right away? That's a lot of beer!

A: One growler is a good amount of beer--the equivalent of 5.2 standard bottles. Put another way, it's the same as a bit more than a pitcher of beer you would order in a bar. We recommend that once you pop the cap, you do consume your growler within 24-48 hours, along with a few friends if necessary. That way, your beer won't lose its carbonation or suffer the evil effects of oxidization. In the unfortunate circumstance that you are not able to consume your growler in that timeframe, there are still fun and yummy things to do with your non-fizzy Lug Tread Lagered Ale:

#1) Shandify it. That means, make it into a shandy, which is beer and something fizzy, mixed to taste. This brings back your bubbles, and adds a nice taste. We like ginger ale. We have another list of bevvies it didn't mix as well with one night a few weeks ago, which we dedicated to working on a new LT shandy recipe. Stay tuned!

#2) Cook with it. Flat Lug Tread makes a great liquid to prepare onions and sausages in. I have also added it to crock pot dinners, and anything else that simmers for a while. It also makes a good marinade for pork tenderloin. Steve puts it in stew and stuff. The time I used it to cook the mashed potatoes...well, I think I got carried away. But that's the fun of cooking!

So there you go. You can email questions you want answered on the blog to ohyeah@beaus.ca, or you can come into the retail store in VKH and ask us yourself. Next week we reveal the answer to yesterday's retail store question: did the brewery used to be a real barn????