Friday, January 30, 2009

OOOH Baby - Spring is close cuz its BOCK season!

Just a quick note. Nate (our fine Assistant Brewer) filtered down this years version of our Oderbolz Bock Beer. This morning - Woody (our fine Assistant Master of Disaster) brought me a glass of said recently filtered but now carbonated Oderbolz Bock.


Good lord is it an exceptional beer! Big, Malty Sweetness with a big ol' kick!

SO - it will be bottled soon - try it and you will see why our Oderbolz Bock won a Gold Medal in The World Beer Cup in 2002. A major tip of the hat to my partner in crime Todd the Master Brewer for once again putting out a killer beer.

Words escape me - THE bock is here! WOO HOO!

On that note - Nate will be in Clintonville pouring beer on Saturday (check out our website for details) and we will be open for our usual fun and games on Friday. Come pay homage to Cora our brewery dog.

Come see us next Friday for our 2/6/09 - Sand Creek Economy Recovery Plan night - Atlantic Wave (NO COVER) - Doors open at 3pm - Food and Goodies at 5pm and Music at 8pm!

I may have another bock....

Sláinte!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

VEGAS BABY !!

Hey everyone.
Todd here, back from Vegas.
Yes it was warmer, about 60 in the day and 40's at night.
Had a great time with my mom spending upwards of 12 hrs. a day in the casinos.
Yes you can say that when I gamble I like to get my dollars worth.
I have seen most of the sights and since I stay at her home I am not trapped on the Strip like most visitors.
We put most of our time in the outskirts at "local" casinos. These have a more personal touch and the limits are usually lower.
I did have a few beers while I was there but was not impressed so I was forced to drink large amounts of Knob Creek and Makers Mark. I took one for the team!
I drank the always fine Sierra Nevada Pale Ale but was disappointed with the other beers.
The first was Widmer Hefeweise, this beer was cloudy but it tasted like it was brewed with a simple ale yeast and then cloud or a hazy yeast was added later. Really bland without any of the weiss flavors I expected, Woody's blows it out of the glass!
The next beer witch was not as a good as I wanted was a local micro. www.tenayacreekbrewery.com
Tenaya Creek was the company, It was a cool thing that they were in a major casino but the beer was just laking a bit.
I had the Nut Brown witch was not very well carbonated and had a bit of extra sweetness.
I'm thinking that they are pushing the beers thru too fast.
They had no infections or real off flavors but it was not one of my favs.

Just another reminder to all...
Big party on Febuary 6 with Atlantic Wave here @ the brewery.
See you there.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Fun Night at the Brewery!!

Hey all,

Just wanted to get a quick shot out there to let you know that on February 6th we will be having one of our famous events! The doors will open at our usual time of 3pm for tours and such. I imagine we will have some smoked goodies a cookin'.

What makes this an EXTRA fun Friday night is at 8pm our friends from Atlantic Wave will be taking the stage in front of the brew kettle 'till 11pm! We will allow them various beer breaks!

SO - Mark your calendar - plan on being here on February 6th!

(we are up to our usual antics tonite!)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Back to normal

Brr!

Ok back to normal if you like sub-zero temperatures and snow. -14 degrees this AM! Freakin Balmy!

Lets see whats going on this week.. Todd is brewing up some beer for our client in Spring Green and the boys are kegging up a ginormous amount of beer as well. Lucky me? Getting ready to file for taxes. Hey I got an idea for an economic stimulus plan! Make all breweries that produce under 15,000 bbls exempt from excise taxes and give a break to the Regional brewers till they get to 60,000! Lets do the math shall we? This past year we produced 5100 bbls which equates to $40,800 in revenue for GWB and our own Governor Doyle. If we were exempt of that tax your favorite little brewery could add a position or two for new employees, upgrade our bottling line so we are more profitable and efficient or . The result would be more revenue would roll back to the Government in the form of income and property taxes.

I like it!

$40,800 might not seem like a lot so lets look at the bigger picture shall we? (we are pretty convinced its a big thing)

In 2007 there are 1,463 craft breweries in the good ol' USA - of which 1,420 are independantly owned and operated by guys and gals like Todd and Myself. Of those 1,463 breweries - 392 are considered Microbreweries (15,000 bbls or less annual production) and 975 brewpubs.

For this little exercise we will concentrate on the Microbreweries and the Brewpubs. The 2007 produced volume for the small guys was 1,687,111 barrels of beer which generated

$11,809,777 of FEDERAL revenue. Cant get you all the State info - sorry!

How many jobs, How much equipment, how much of a better standard of life would those dollars produce and in turn what kind of revenue would it ultimately generate for going against that TRILLION dollar deficit. Not just revenue from the breweries but from the grain suppliers, glass suppliers, crown suppliers, printers, advertising folks, grocery stores, clothing stores, vehicle sales, Downtown USA etc etc. I think you get the picture.

If we don't start seriously taking care of the little guys running the small business's of the USA there wont be many of us left.

Being a father of two I work hard at instilling into my kiddos what a promise is. When they are small its easy to explain a promise as "ya gotta do what you say your going to do"
Many BIG promises were made during this last election period so its time to pony up and do the right thing.

To OUR newly elected and incumbent Wisconsin officials:

Governor Doyle, Senator Vinehout and Rep Radcliffe - Ya gonna do what you said your going to do?

To newly elected and incumbent US officials:

Mr. President Elect Obama, Representative Kind, Senators Feingold and Kohl -
Ya gonna do what you said your going to do?

edit 2/12/09 (Rep Kind had lent his voice and support for the Brewer's Excise and Economic Relief Act of 2009 - THANK YOU!)




Thursday, January 8, 2009

Friday Night the 9th

Hi folks,

Just a reminder - the brewery will be closed to the public until 8pm Friday night. We are hosting the Tri-County Bar Association Winter Meeting till then.

Thanks and see you tomorrow!

Jim and Todd

Monday, January 5, 2009

A New Year Upon us!

Greetings everyone!

Well we made it through the holidays and I hope all of you did too! With the end of 2008 and the start of 2009 it always makes me ponder life's little mysteries! First off I just want to echo Todd's post and thank all of you folks for making 2008 yet another successful year! We wound up having a record setting December and we grew another 28.1% over 2007 (for the year)

Wow! Thats pretty neat!

On Dec 31st we also had our very first New Years Eve Party! It was well attended and the food was great! Kevin smoked up a ginormous Turkey and two haunches of venison. Pic whipped up some seriously hot-kick ass wings along with some sweeter ones along with some sushi. Tom brought his 3 alarm chili and Sherrie had some wonderful stuffed mushrooms! Oh yeah thats just the stuff off the top of my head. Lord knows we had plenty of other goodies as well. If you left the party hungry you were just not trying hard enough! Thanks to everyone who brought in some good stuff. Look around the first weekend in February for our next event - complete with music. Oh yeah - It was GOOD to see you again Taylor!

Our winter warmer beer that was released (Draft only!) was a barrel aged Oderbolz Bock. It went down well. Speaking of our award winning bock beer.. we decided to brew it up this year and it will be released in February in 6 packs and draft! I can hardly wait!

Lets see what else... This week is another abrievieated week for us. This Friday we will be closed to the public! (Sorry Friday Crew!) We are hosting the Tri-county Bar Association Winter Meeting! We may open up later in the evening to the public. Keep an eye on this blog for further details!

Other than that...Enjoy the balmy Wisconsin Weather!

(i will have a few more idle thoughts on the year later this week!)

Jim