We started brewing in September 2006. It was almost 2 years ago that we thought there might be more to this. We had the passion, the vision, the business skills. And so we developed and set forth a 3 year launch plan. During the past 2 years we’ve stuck surprisingly close to our schedule. These were our goals:

• Year 1: Learn to brew really good beer
• Year 2: Learn to brew really good beer consistently, and develop 2-3 launch beers
• Year 3: Develop business plan, raise money, launch

So developmentally, where are we now? Somewhere between Years 2 and 3. We know which beers we want to launch with. Eye Patch Ale will be our go-to brew, a maltier IPA that most people can’t get enough of. Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale will also get a lot of love. This is a more unique beer, especially for the Georgia market. Dark, smokey, sweet. We’ve found that many people who don’t usually like dark beers love the Drafty Kilt. However, we’re still doing minor tweaks to both of these recipes. Part of this is driven by our Year 3 plans, discussed below.

Technically we didn’t set out to start our business plan until perhaps a couple weeks ago, but truthfully we’ve been working on it since the spring. This has forced us to think through some very hard issues and make trade-offs. We’ve worked a lot on the brand and our marketing strategy. Let’s face it, no matter how good your beer is, good marketing makes it better. We know we want to start by contract brewing (renting another brewery’s excess capacity, which reduces financial risk and with it, margins). We’ve talked to numerous brewers and made some friends in the industry, which has helped us to rethink a few of our recipes to make them more commercially viable (see prior paragraph).

All in all, we’re in a great place. We’re right about where we thought we’d be. It helps that there are 3 of us, so we can divvy up the work. It also helps that we brew every week. Look for more specific updates on our beers later on. As soon as Jeff writes them.

Last night’s brewing went really well. But I didn’t have to tell you that. You could have surmised as much from the professionalism with which we carry ourselves in all things that we do. We brewed up another batch of our Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale, and hit our target gravity on the nose. You know what else? Joel actually pulled his own weight last night (many thanks to Abigail for sending in the pic).

See above for about half of our white bucket collection. The other half is on loan to the Bucket Museum of Indiana. Joel built a fire on Jeff’s back porch. We expected the worst, but the house didn’t burn down, and it was nice and toasty back there. I asked Colin and the gang to “pose,” and I think they thought that meant “look like morons”:

Mission accomplished. Notice how all the pictures look really crappy. Turns out iPhones don’t excel at image capturing. Also notice all of the dark beer in glasses. We ran out of Eye Patch Ale about halfway through the evening, so we were left with our experimental bourbon barrel stout. I think people enjoyed it. If nothing else it was a great night for a stout.

Thanks to everyone who made it out. Hopefully we’ll see you soon!

Taken, of course, from the classic George Costanza line about the jerk store. But in this case cleverly twisted to fit our purposes, brewing beer. We’ve been getting lots of whiny requests *cough Colin cough* for more Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale. And indeed it is time to brew another batch.

Join us tonight at Jeff’s to brew. And help us drink the Eye Patch Ale and possibly some yummy stout. Want to receive text message alerts about brewing every Monday?

West send along this article from the WSJ (that’s short for Wall Street Journal for those of you who aren’t as smart as West) this morning. Many large brewers have been investing in emerging markets in recent years as sales in North America and Western Europe have softened.

However, in tough economic times, beer is often one of the first things to go in emerging countries. It is still viewed as a luxury item, and can be replaced by cheaper (and more “effective”) local liquors. All of the big brewers have seen sales and volume declines, including InBev (beer volume in Russia dropped 11% in the 3rd quarter). This softening has also hit South Africa and Latin America.

Sales in Peru are still strong. SABMiller reported a 10% increase in Peru beer sales over the first half of the year. But this seems to be an exception in an otherwise tough beer market.

What does all of this mean for Monday Night Brewery? Probably not a lot, at least in the short-term. But if these economic slowdowns in beer continue, it could fuel even more consolidation in the beer industry, concentrating more of the distribution and marketing power in the hands of the bland. We need to be scrappy.

Image Source

…is annoying and time-consuming.

The news on Joel keeps rolling in. This news is actually from a couple weeks ago, since I couldn’t get the pics off of my iPhone till yesterday. These disturbing images clearly show Joel giving away company secrets to a cutthroat team of brewers-in-training. We think Joel may be planning on defecting, if he hasn’t already.

First off, if you haven’t already, GO VOTE! Let’s be responsible beer-loving citizens.

So we brewed without Joel last night. Things went incredibly smoothly. Without Joel to screw everything up it was like our entire brew process had been rubbed down in butter. It was THAT smooth. We brewed a slightly updated version of our Eye Patch Ale, experimenting with a different brand of base malt and a slightly different yeast strain. Also upped out efficiency projections from 75% to 80% because of how well we’ve been doing, but probably a bit premature. We were a tad under target last night.

We also tried using a pH stabilizer in our mash for the first time.

Oh, and in other news, I almost burned my foot off. I forgot to aim the “out” hose from the immersion chiller away from my body. So all of the boiling water sitting in the chiller was aimed directly at my foot:

Seriously, it really hurt. Jeff always gets really awkward for pictures. I asked him to “do some work.” Apparently scaring women and children is now considered “work.”