Time to SELL SELL SELL!

Now comes the part I hate.  Sales.  In a lot of ways I've been dreading this day.  It's the part of this whole operation for which I am the least experienced and have the least tolerance.  In my former career I had to deal with salesmen making cold calls all the time.  I used to hate it and now I have to do the exact same thing.  I'm sure most bar owners hate it too.  They have a lot more important things to do than deal with some goofy looking guy trying to sell them something.  But hey, at least I'm selling beer and not cleaning supplies.  No worries though.  I'll get to meet lots of new people and hopefully make some new friends along the way.  I am starting with a "soft launch" and have already hit a few local establishments.

I don't really want to do a big "launch party" until all three beers are ready.  After having to dump a batch, I want to make sure everything is just right before planning any events.  I'm still working out the kinks in the process (I'll spare you the technical details) which is making the batches take a little longer to get finished than I would like.  It is an iterative process and with every batch things are getting a little better (and easier).  I have a batch of Movin' On ready to go, and another in process.  The first batch of Pour...Wait...Repeat will be ready in a few days.  Ryesing Up is taking a while as the Saison yeast is very finicky.  That beer probably won't be ready until around the middle of July.

So here's where I need your help.  As I mentioned earlier, I have already hit a few places in the area around the brewery to make some sales.  So far its been tough sledding.  When you are cold calling there's about a 20% chance that the person you need to talk to will be there when you show up.  Sometimes they don't have room for you on tap right now, and sometimes they "only buy from XYZ distributor because they give the owner Reds and Bengals tickets".  That last one is a true statement told to me at one restaurant (the distributor name has been withheld to protect the guilty).  Anyways, as I roll out around town to "peddle my wares"  it would be great if everybody could start putting the word out around your favorite watering hole that there's a new brewery in town.  When I go into a place to make a cold call my chances are better if the owner already has heard of me and has had people asking about Blank Slate.  Also, if anybody has any suggestions for places I should make a sales call, let me know.  I'll add them to my list if they aren't already on there...

Thanks for your support and maybe I'll see you out there "on the road"...

I will sell no beer before its time.

As mentioned previously, we are finally brewing!  Four batches have been made so far.  But, two of them may be headed for the drain...

Due to a combination of yeast and pH adjustment issues the first batch of  Pour...Wait...Repeat didn't ferment fully and nothing seems to be able to get it restarted.  It will be dumped as soon as I muster up the courage to do it (or need the tank space).  The first batch of Movin' On fermented OK but I am having a lot of trouble getting it to clarify.  I originally wanted to stay away from filtering my beer and just use finings to get the final beer clarity that I wanted.  For several technical reasons (that I won't go into here) this no longer appears to be possible.  So, the filter arrived yesterday.  If I can get the beer clear without messing it up, we just might have something sellable.  The first batch of the Saison is still fermenting (it takes a while).  The second batch of Pour...Wait...Repeat is going in the fermenter today so we'll see how it goes.

This wasn't completely unexpected.  When you are scaling up batches, learning new equipment, and basically just trying to figure out how to make it all work there's bound to be some issues.  You can only test so much by running water through the tanks.  Since the first brew day I have modified the mash tun screens, adjusted the kettle burner, modified my grain bins, and as I mentioned, determined that we will have to filter.  In the next week I will be having my heat exchanger modified to increase its capacity and be installing an additional glycol unit to help with some cooling issues that I am having.  All of this was unanticipated, but as I said, not unexpected.  I knew there would be some things come up in the brewing process that would need to be modified, I just didn't know what they were...until now.

So what impact does this have on the "official launch".  Well its going to be at least a few more weeks.  As the title says, I will sell no beer before its time.  You only get one chance to make a first impression so I want to  make sure everything is right before we hit the market.  The learning curve in this process is steep, but I'm getting exponentially "smarter" every day...

Stay tuned...