Vinnie and I are attending the Craft Brewer’s Conference in Boston this week!  It’s always a pleasure to catch up with our friends and suppliers from around the country, as well as a few from other parts of the world! 

 I have a tiny window of opportunity to give a quick update from Boston.  This morning Greg Koch from Stone Brewing gave an excellent Key Note Speech, with the strong message about how collaborative and friendly craft brewers are with each other, which is truly the case!  He even poured Collaboration and Isabel Proximus, 2 beers that we had a hand in making, for the toast.  Great job, Greg!

Three prominent industry members were awarded the following:

Eric Wallace, from Left Hand Brewing, was awarded the “F.X. Matt Defense of the Industry Award”.  Eric is a friend and our interpretor when we go to the Salone in Italy.  Congratulations to Eric!

Steve Parks, from the American Brewer’s Guild (from whom we get our interns), was awarded the “Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Brewing”, which is the same award Vinnie won last year!  Steve is sending us a new intern from Iceland, of all places!  Congratulations, Steve!

Finally, Ken Allen, founder of Anderson Valley Brewing Company close to home in Boonville, was awarded the “Brewer’s Association Recognition Award” for being an asset to the industry all these years.  So when you see Ken at the Boonville Beer Fest in 2 weeks, be sure to congratulate him on his lifetime achievement award!

Gotta run!  I need to get back to the trade show and buy something shiny and new for my brewers back home!  There is also a seminar pitting brewers against wholesalers, which sounds rather entertaining!  Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Cheers!

Natalie 

It was about a year ago that we started brewing at our new production brewery.  A year later we are brewing at 100% capacity and as many of you know we cannot get enough beer to our distributors and accounts.  It is a good problem to have, but, it is still a problem.  At least the beer is staying fresh though.  For the most part, it is Pliny the Elder that we cannot make enough of.  It takes 24 days to make a batch of Pliny the Elder, but know that we won’t shorten the amount of time it takes to make our beers.  However, we are planning to brew less of other beers which hopefully will allow us to make a little more Pliny the Elder.  In time we’ll get caught up (we hope) and we can get back to a decent amount of beer being shipped to each of the markets we distribute in.

 In the meantime, we wanted to thank our loyal customers both at our brewpub and out in markets we sell in for supporting us.  Without our great customers we wouldn’t be in business!  Thanks for all your support as we work through some growing pains.

 Oh, and by the way, I’m drinking Blind Pig while I type this instead of Pliny the Elder, that is one more pint of Pliny we can ship out to you!