Merry Christmas!

I’ve been busy on all fronts the last month and have no posted here as I would have liked to. I really need to take a page out of CBWs book and do a stern 1 week update. It’s never that there isn’t anything to talk about. More an issue of, should some of it be spoken about in a public form. 

We’re trying to get a deal together on a building in Black Rock and the support from the community has been tremendous. I really can’t say how great they have been to work with and we’re only pitching some ideas right now. The actually negotiations on the building have not been progressing as I’ve like. Hopefully I’ll have better news on that front by the 6^th of Jan. If not I’ll like be forced to put everything on ice until I get back.

Speaking of getting back, I’m leaving for a bit. The USAF finally have dates ‘set in stone’ for deploying to Afghanistan. They’ve told me that these ones are for sure so I will be out of the country for 10 of 12 months in 2012. Longer then original expected but it will help buffer some of the startup costs, and I should get allot less smack talk from the Army. (a value in its self). This will delay the start up by 9 months, why so much more? Winter, its allot harder to move equipment in, doing concrete work in the middle of winter makes things harder than it should be; so we’ll wait for spring of 2013. Not what I want to do but what is necessary to do. 

This week I also brought Dana Saylor of oldtimeroots.com to do some research. She has a pretty cool site and its interesting work. I haven’t seen the finished product so I can’t vouch for her as of yet, but I feel pretty good about it so far. 

Lastly I promised more book reviews. I read a handful on my last few trips across the country. Just for a quick notes on them I’ll say if I liked them or not.

Great American Ale Trail: Its just a list of bars and a couple of lines about them. It’s sort of a good reference and The Blue Monk in Buffalo was in the notable mentions section for NY. If you’re thinking about opening a beer bar up I would say it’s pretty good. Other than that I don’t know anyone with the time or money to visit 1000+ beer bars in the country. Once we get New Buffalo Brewing, I’ll have my beer books on site so if someone wanted to stop in and check for a place feel free.

The Story of the Irish Pub: The begging with a history of the licensed trade was good, so about 70 pages of the book are good, the remaining 150, not worth it. Just little notes of where a bar is and who owns it. Over all very disappointing. If your going to Ireland it might be fun to stop  into one, but that’s about it.

In the Classic Beer Style Series, I picked up and read, Porter, Brown Ale and Stout. This series has been pretty fun to read, and for a serious home brewer I’d recommend them They all are set up with a little history, some water information, a few home brew recipes and a list of examples that are current for the time it was published (the early ones are over 12 years old). This book are really great for someone looking to starting a microbrewer, to see how far the brewing world has come in a decade. Also as an American, to see how we have consistently tossed out style guild lines and made so many great new beers. 

Porter was a really weak read, maybe if I hadn’t already read the mild book it wouldn’t have seemed poor.

Brown Ale was very good, tons of information on the different sub sets of Brown Ale and good information all around. So many beers in this style and information about most of them.

Stout has been the best read so far, The writer has a clear passion for stouts and has offered an immense amount of information on it, the different sub-styles and many references to Guinness. I’d recommend this the most of any of them so far. I will put out the disclaimer that I too love stouts. If there is just one style of beer I could have it’s a thick cream stout.

This should have been spread out to a couple of updates, but with the holidays I don’t know if I will get around to many in the next two weeks. Also one last pitch for buying our sweet gear for someone over Christmas! 

http://www.kegworks.com/search/search.php?keywords=new+buffalo+brewing&x=0&y=0

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Since Marie is so nice as to be cooking and we're in Colombia so I can't TV I can post!

It’s been a while since I posted on this blog. Google tells me one person reads this every couple of days, so  mystery person, I apologize for the lack of updates.  I’ve finished another book in the Classic Beer Style Series, this time on Porter, and by the time I get home I’ll have finished Brown Ale as well. They we’re both pretty good and a bit more fluid then the Mild Ale book. All and all pretty good. Since I’ve been following all English Beer there is allot of overlay in each one, however each adds a bit more information to the history of brewing in England, old ingredients and of course inspiration for an American Interpretation.  I might write a mini-review on them when I get back home.

I’m going to give a reason for the lack of posts, one good and one not as impressive. The not so impressive one is I have been swamped at work. With the 1^st Infantry Division getting ready to deploy (along with myself) I’ve been working allot more then the past. It’s almost a second job getting ready to deploy while still doing garrison work.

Now the good reason. I’ve found a building I would like to purchase for the brewery. It’s another historic property that is in need of great deal of work. I like preservation and would be very happy to incorporate those goals into a broader vision of New Buffalo.

The name isn’t just because I’m lazy and didn’t want to think hard. Buffalo is becoming a New Buffalo. When I was younger Buffalo was seen as a no-go zone, with lots of drug issues and violence. That is changing for allot of people, and I want to be part of the effort of rebuilding the city. Physical rebuilding would be an easy way to get that connection.

At the end of the day it is about what we can afford so we’ll see if it pans outs. Thanks for reading.

Mild Ale

Due to work, I spent allot of time flying around the country to different bases for training or to train people. The last couple of months there hasn’t been allot of  flying going on since the government didn’t pass a budget again this year. All those can’s have been kicked down to the road to the point we have to do them, so over the next two months I’ll get a solid 48 hours of time in the back of a plane. This means I get allot of reading done. So expect more book reviews like the one below.

Mild Ale History Brewing Techniques, Recipes by David Sutula.

This was the first book in the Classic Beer Style Series I’ve read, I plan on ordering the rest of them since I had such a good time reading this book. The book is mostly a history of the brew and it puts in some real information in how to make your own at home. I like history so it was great to ready about the English brewing system and the vast changes to the quality and type of beer consumed. It seems that beer smelled of “wet goat” and had a final gravity often around 1.60-1.70. Clearly there was allot of extra junk in that beer. Even the term beer is fairly modern which is pretty cool. The History section talks about the raise of victoria brewing towers as well as a float of Porter that killed. Also the use of Finings(fish bladder goo) to pull out suspended sediment in the beer was something I had thought gone away ages ago. The books claim it’s the only way to make a proper English Mild.  I’m not sure if I’m going to try that one anytime soon.

A bit more about the beerThe English Mild by style is normally a tea like brew in color and in taste with an underwhelming 3-4% ABV, its mildly hopped by Fuggle or Golding that help develop the tea like characters of the brew. Somehow an English brew tasting like tea is fitting.

The confusion of Brown Ale and Mild is explained as well. Also the history of the rise of brown Ale and many brewers renaming there Mild a Brown Ale did more to hurt the style than anything else. Even with in Mild there are some big variations. 

He closes with a collection of home brewing recipes to replicate some of the biggest Mild’s still in production as well as a formula to approximate the brew as it was in the early 1800s.

I highly encourage anyone who’s interested in the history of brewing as well as this style to enjoy the book. Its only 200 pages and the print is big, front to back it only took about 3 hours to read. Below you’ll find the link the amazon for the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Mild-Ale-History-Brewing-Techniques/dp/0937381683/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318261545&sr=1-1

A Buffalo Church as a New Buffalo Brewery

In Buffalo NY it’s hard to not be drawn to a church for a brewery right away. It’s like a brewing palace. Beautiful surroundings, ceiling heights that are unmatched, since it was for people to gather the utilities are surprisingly low (several feet of brick and mortar are even better than 6 inch of fiberglass, the temp stability is amazing) and Buffalo has a bunch of extra churches right now that could use a, well use. 

So what’s the problem? They came in a couple of flavors (Sadly the flavors are like skunked Bud Light, and not a Buffalo micro-brew). 

1) If the church is owned by the Papacy it cannot be used for a brewery, period dot. That takes out many of the primary candidates 

2) Most of the churches need some repairs, the first church we looked at required over 500k in stabilization and another 400-500k in conversation costs. The second needs 300k, but the conversion costs were down to about 100k. That is almost the entire budget for New Buffalo. In this same category, if there’s not a door I can get the tank thought I don’t want to bust down walls to get them installed, that’s not hard and fast just a bit of the preservationist that lingers. 

3) A brewery falls under a M1 Zoning, churches are a C1, the first city councilmen I tried to work with refused to talk to me about it for several  weeks before giving me a “I won’t actively try to stop you, but I’m not going to help you in anyway” kind of answer.  The Councilmen Franczyk, who’s district I wasn’t working in was excited about the idea. In any case not being zoned correctly is another huge risk for use to undertake, a 6 month wait would bankrupt us in our first year   

 4) There is no equity in churches so the bank will not lend us money to fix a church for the most part.  On top off that even as we pay down the merger costs of the church we can’t barrow against it later own to expand like a normal building. 

5) Preservation, on one hand it has some money we can tap into in, almost 50% of the stabilization or big repair costs could be deferred by public funds,  however you have to keep the building the way the rules call for which in the case of the first building, we would have had the largest tasting room in the world (not proven but I don’t know of any breweries with 12,000sqft of tasting space, and two levels with a stage in the middle) 

6) Transportation, I need to be able to bring in semi’s, right now were planning on a grain bin for the pale malt, and I have to be able to get that into the building, also just in the first year we’ll be moving a couple truckloads of beer a week. I have to be in a place they can get too. 

To sum it up, were still looking for a church that could hold us but it’s not our focus anymore. Unless we received a grant for $1million it looks like it’s going to be a goal to expand too.  I know the city has money like that, and that $5million went to the Staler. The city isn’t going to trust a young guy like me, my background is Intelligence and factory work, not history building refurbishing. 

This was a very long post, but I wanted to hit on it since several people have asked me about it. Chris Fetter has been a tremendous help, sending us updates when a non-Catholic church comes on the market.  We hope this will work out, but we can’t wait forever. 

This post is in response an exchange with http://www.communitybeerworks.com/, on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-New-Buffalo-Brewing-Co/215182275168604

First Formal Offer

Our first formal lease offer on a building as come and gone without success. The problem we seem to be facing is that a brewery needs a rather strange space to fill. 18' clear ceilings, but only 10,000sqft of space. It’s almost a giant cube. Of all the issues I expected in setting up a brewery, finding space in Buffalo wasn't one of them.

The owners we have talked to have all been great guys, but the economics of everything makes it extremely hard to make a deal. No owner wants to take on the risk, or cost of divided up there building, and definitely not at the lease rate we can afford to offer. Seeing as it will be about 6-9 months after signing a lease we can start sell beer we just can't pay the big bucks people are looking for.

So at this point were back to looking at building something new. I really don't want to do that at all. It feels unreasonable to build a new building in a city full of old ones.  Next we’ll look into finding one the city has foreclosed on that isn't so broken I can't fix it for less.

Sweet Cream Stout

A bit of home brewing this weekend is in order.

Tonight I moved our sweet stout from the primary into the secondary for some aging. I don't think this one its going to make it the full 14 days before I put it under pressure, and start tossing a few back. At just 15 days is already tasting great. I'm a bit keen on milk stouts, and I want to try adding lactose to our cream ale just to see how it works out. Possibly cut back the honey so its not too sweet.

I don't know how many beer drinkers are also lactose intoleranct. I'm sure there are some posting about it out there. With the weather finally cool off, its a great time to make beer.

English Mild

Last night our English Mild was slated to be done, so in preparation for watching Dr. Who we taped the keg to see how it turned out. The only way to describe this beer is, well, mild. Abel said it tasted kind of like tea, I'm inclined to agree with him.

It had low carbonation, so it was very easy to drink, its almost the color of a brown tea, but it just doesn't have much flavor. I know that the idea of the beer but I guess my memories form England might have been a bit skewed favorably by my enjoyable company of the English.

I might try experimenting with this some more, more malt, more hops to see if I can get a bit a flavor out of it, if not it will be a great burger and fries beer.

We now have the website up (www.newbuffalobrewing.com). There is a good chance you already knew that if your hear. I want to use the blog as a place to post less-official New Buffalo topics. What is could that be? Home Brewing I'm doing, or things for the company that aren't really worthy of facebook. That's a terrible thought I know, not worthy of facebook!

I'll get a better post this weekend of some of my home brewing escapades for the last couple of weeks. Thanks for reading.

Second Post

Posting in case anyone has stumbled upon this. The website is on track, so soon this will link somewhere. Until then. Keep it classy.

First Post

Taking the edge of this blog with the first post. I'll use this for more beer related anything. With the amount of travel for work I've had time to read a bunch of great books about beer. Some of them will make up the first posting on this site. Thanks.

Bill

The New Buffalo Brewing Co.

First Post on our Blog.