We have A Brewer

This week we have brought on two more contracted people onto the New Buffalo Team. Jimmy Bass and Jon Downing, of Buffalo News Fame. Jimmy is a prior Marine and I think he will fit in with the rest of the group. (3 out of 8 players are vets).

Jimmy is developing some beers for use while I’ll be in Afghanistan under the mentorship of Jon. This is a very big deal for New Buffalo since Jimmy is training to be a ‘real’ brewer. Not to knock my home brew creations or that of any other home brewer but there is a distinct difference between a home brewer and the formally trained. Jon Downing made introductions to New Buffalo Brewing and I think we’re well on our way. Bringing on Jon and already having Tim we now have a combined 60 years and 180 breweries worth of experience.

I was also contacted to use the New Buffalo Brewing logo in an art project. 26 painting about buffalo each with one letter. They are going to be shown Nov 2^nd I think. Sadly I will be unable to be there for the display but we we’re invited to do a beer tasting. I really want to pursue that if possible. I wrote over to custom Beer Crafters to see what it would cost to do a 10bbl run.  While in Nov we’ll still be 6-7 months from producing ourselves I think it would be good to at least get some beer into the hands of the people. It would also let us spread those kegs out over 2 months or so and hit up a few tastings. 

With Jimmy and Jon on board we have the how part of New Buffalo locked in pretty well. The two remaining questions are what and where. As we said in the last post we effectively abandoned the building we had a couple months sunk into and are looking anew.  Putting that aside I’m focused on the what.

On the main page we posted most of my experimental brews for the year and a half. Jimmy is going to redo at least two of them into something that can be scaled up and start creating new brews. Statically I know what we should do, and IPA (20% market share) and a Pale Ale (18%) market share. With the assort packs, I’d safely toss in another 7% . (Assortments and Seasonals made up just over 20%). These are two styles I’m really not interested in doing. There are allot of each on the market, it’s a crowded space and there so overdone. The thing I found the most reveling in the top 15 styles, not a single black beer made it.  These happen to be some of my favorite beers. So it begs the question do we enter the fray with our own Pale and IPA or do we try to seize a niche market? 

I’m sure we can get allot of insight from Tim and Jon on the topic. Point being the other big ones with Amber larger, meaning most craft beer drinkers are still looking for a fairly pale, crystal clear beer. Bitter seems to be the name of the game for the last 10 years.

We have a little time yet, but I’d love to hear from beer drinkers what they want.