2009--Year of the Blog

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

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

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