The Brew Blog

Posted By sbarker on January 24, 2010

It’s been a crazy few weeks for all of us at Merry’d Men Brewing, both from a brewery and a personal perspective. Things are finally settling down a bit after the holidays and the new year is off to a rushing start! So what’s been going on? Well, let’s see….

First, we have a contact at the local chapter of Score.org. This is a small business advisory service that helps small businesses build contacts, investments, business plans, etc. That’s exciting in and of itself, and there’s even more.

A couple alumni from the University of Missouri have reached out with an interest in providing advice and possibly even investments. We’ve been talking with them, and working to put together several iterations of startup business plans. Plus, two other people here in Burlington have reached out indicating they are interested in talking with us as well — mainly advice on getting started. At this point, that’s a huge help, trust us!

And then, the highlight of the last few weeks for the three of us (not to say the other stuff I just mentioned wasn’t great…) — we got a personalized, backstage tour of Magic Hat Brewery here in South Burlington, VT. WOW! First, a huge thanks to Matt Cohen. He really indulged us with our questions, comments and excitement. It was a great tour and only served to get us that much more excited. Of course, we learned a lot — but we plan on putting all that to work as we continue to move forward. If you haven’t tried the Magic Hat brews, you owe it to yourself to give them a shot. Their standard, cornerstone brew is #9 — definitely unique, but definitely worth it! Two things Matt shared with us that we really took away — first, the brewing industry is very close knit, friendly and open. That’s a great feeling, I have to say. The other? The gang at Rock Art started out by brewing and selling out of their home. If we could get started like that, it would be great!!! Matt said he would introduce us to the Rock Art gang so we can chat.

As we continue to pursue all the different aspects of this effort, I’d like to know just how much paperwork there was prior to the Federal Government’s “Paperwork Reduction Act.” I’ve never seen the likes of paperwork, and that’s just the federal side. There is that much more to do on the VT side.

Well, as you can see, it’s been busy and hopefully it will get even busier. We’re looking at putting together a set of glasses, coasters and t-shirts for sale to try and raise money for the initial licensing. Stay tuned on that front! We’ll let you know how it goes.

And, as always, tell your friends about our site, the blog, our Facebook pages…we need all the fans and friends and links and eyeballs we can find!

Take care and we’ll talk again soon!

–Scot

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Posted By sbarker on January 23, 2010

Hey gang. First, thanks for all the support lately — please, bring your friends to the sites. We’d love to get more fans and followers. To everyone who checked us last night while we were down, we’re back up! Yay! Thanks to the team at Fat Cow our blog is back.

I’m going to write more later, but wanted to say the brewery front is starting to move. I’ll give a bigger post to that later this weekend, but suffice it to say, things are looking better and better!

Thanks again for your support, and keep telling people about us!!!!

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Posted By sbarker on November 7, 2009

It’s been way too long since the last post, so I need to get everyone caught up on the goings on.

Well, we continue to brew…and drink…and share our passion for well-crafted homebrews. We’ve started to branch out a bit in terms of our experiments, bringing two batches of hard apple cider through the process. We bottle that today (11/7/2009) so we missed Halloween, but we’ll have it rolling by Thanksgiving. We fortified one batch with 5 pounds of honey and the other with 6 pounds of brown sugar. The results are totally different colors — both beautiful — and the potential for some bodacious alcohol content! We’ll have to see how they taste.

And back to beer…Scoob and Charles crafted a recipe for our X-periment. They used the grains from an Irish Red and the hops and yeast from our English Ale. The result was outstanding! Everyone loves it — it has a beautiful red hue and an amazing taste! Nice job guys.

On the business front, if you know people who are interested in investments, please spread the word. We’re definitely still working to get licensed — which is a lot of work — and costs a bit of money to boot. So, we are in the process of building business plans to use for investors. Our goal is that by this spring we are ready to move on the licensing. The interest in drinking our beers doesn’t seem to do anything but grow, so we remain encouraged that we have an opportunity — so we keep moving forward. We’ll keep you posted!

That’s about it. I need to let the delivery guys in — they just pulled up to deliver our new dryer. The old one died a horrible nasty death after about 20 years of existence. I’ll let you know later how the cider turned out!

Bottoms up!

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Posted By sbarker on September 30, 2009

I won’t take too long, but I couldn’t not tell everyone! Spread the news, we had our first press coverage today — and we can’t even sell anything yet. The local alternative newspaper (Seven Days) wrote a short piece about us today. You can check it out here: http://www.7dvt.com/2009booze-news.

Take a look and let us know what you think! Share it with your friends, spread the news!

And, while I’m here, I should give you an update, I guess. We decided to create a seasonal batch (OK, two batches) of hard cider. We’re hoping that our Lionheart Stout can be our winter seasonal, and the hard cider can become our fall seasonal. Which leaves just spring and summer for us to come up with a special seasonal. Becky is hoping we’ll put together a Belgian White for our summer event. Anyway, we tried one cider with brown sugar as the additive and the other with honey. We’re using Champagne yeast with both of them. We’re anxious to see how they turn out. But, we’re going to have to wait a while. They’ve been fermenting for over a week and they are still bubbling strong. Looks like we’re going to have some high alcohol content on these!

We also have another batch of Kissing Trout going, as well as a brand spankin’ new recipe — we’re calling it Experiment 57. It takes what we like about the Kissing Trout, combines it with what we like from the Infrared, and we added a dash of some darker grains (Scoob really worked the recipe — he is the chemist after all!). It’s already done fermenting and during the transfer to the carboy it had an amazing aroma. We can’t wait to give it a shot!

So, check out the article today. We were very excited! Talk to you all soon!

– Scot

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Posted By sbarker on August 26, 2009

Tonight we moved the two batches from the fermentation tanks to the carboys. These batches, just to keep everyone up to date, were a batch of the Infrared (one of our staple brews) and a Belgian Wheat (as yet un-named).

As we opened up each of them, the aroma of young, green beer wafted up. The color was good on both batches, as was the clarity. As we took the beer from the fermentation tanks and into the carboys, the aroma was so good we just kept breathing deep — wonderful!

And now we wait for sedimentation. That will take a few days, then we take it into bottles for carbonation and conditioning. So, we’re about two weeks or so from trying our newest brew, Belgian Wheat, and enjoying what is hopefully another great batch of Infrared! We’ll keep you updated.

– Scot

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Posted By sbarker on August 20, 2009

Much merriment as the latest brew session kicked off. We started by pouring a glass of wine made by Charles’s friend, Marty. He made up a batch of chardonnay and asked the Merry’d Men Brewing Company to taste and give a comment. As we tried that, we realized it is a solid effort. Good clarity and color (though colored a bit more like a pinot grigio than a chardonnay). The aroma is a nice bouquet and the flavor filled the tongue well. All in all, the three of us thought Marty did a fine job.

Otherwise, we kicked off a new batch of Infrared, and a new recipe, a Willamette Wheat beer. As we brew, we’re trying to figure out a name for that one. More updates on that as we come up with something.

We are encouraged as we read the latest edition of Zymurgy magazine — where some homebrewers much like us have been able to make a go of it as a real life — meaning they do this for a living. A dream become a reality for some…we keep faith alive on our end.

As we cracked open some of our Kiss My Trout (possible name change on the way….stay tuned), we decided we should film the pours in an attempt to post some beer video on the site — ultimately hoping we can get a nice pour video for each of the flavors. Let us know what you think.

We’ll give more updates later tonight. Things are starting to come together and we need all hands on deck to keep things moving in the right direction.

– Scot

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Posted By sbarker on August 15, 2009

As some of you may know, Scot and the fam just went back to our old stomping grounds in the St. Louis, MO area. Saw family and friends and had a great time! We went back to Mizzou for a day, but we didn’t make it back to Flatbranch, unfortunately. We used to go there when it first opened and we were in college. It’s nice to see they are still around. I assume their beers have only gotten better, but they were very good when we were in Columbia. Check it out if you get out there.

We did, however make it to Trailhead Brewing Co. while we were in town. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet Jen (brewmaster) but we did get to sample all six of their selections. They were all very good and it was interesting to compare some of the Merry’d Men’s brews with those at a full service micro-brewery. We had five people in our group (including me), and three of us had tried some of the Merry’d Men selections. According to them, we stacked up pretty well. So if you get to St. Charles, MO, you really need to check out the Trailhead Brewing Company. It’s in an historic mill building on S. Riverside Dr., right down the street from Missouri’s first capital building. Well worth the trip. And try to get a tour when you’re there. They had what looked to be a slick operation!

So, check these guys out! I look at it as research as I travel. You should look at it as a way to find good, quality brews on your travels, in your world, and even in your own backyard!

– Scot

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Posted By sbarker on August 4, 2009

As I was working on our blog the other day, I ran across a couple others beer blogs that piqued my interest. I wanted to pass them along here, so others of you may enjoy them as well.

The first one is called The Smoking Bottle. It’s not only a blog about beer, but the author Philip Madden also talks quite a bit about grilling and smoking meats to drink with his beer. I liked it — and it turns out he has the same grill as I, so we had that in common as well. Granted, mine isn’t green, but what can I say?

The other one I found is called The Tale of the Ale and is written by Reuben Gray. He too, is a homebrewer, but also does a nice job reviewing other beers, as well as Scotch and whiskey. I have to admit, that was what originally caught my eye.

So, give them a look and let me (but more importantly, them) know what you think!

–scot

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Posted By sbarker on August 2, 2009

• Well, OK. Not a winner, really. But, strong confirmation that our brews are quality beers that have all the potential we have always thought they have. So how did it all happen?

Well, as Anne threw a non-birthday birthday party for Charles, we decided to have an impromptu taste-off. We happened to have some commercially bottled brews that matched three of our batches — Kiss My Trout, Infrared and Paleo-Bru (our English Ale, Irish Red and German Alt). And after some crafty anonymous pouring (thank you Anne and Chares for keeping people busy while we hastily set up), we had our test. And this was truly a blind taste test — only Scoob and I truly knew which was which).

This incredibly scientific representation (OK, really, they were all friends of Charles — about 15 people in all) came out like this:

• Our Kiss My Trout won out over the commercial English Ale (all names withheld) by a nose. Our favorite complement, other than Tom saying he liked the bouquet of ours, was “I’d buy either of them, I can’t taste a difference.” Scoob really liked that, saying it was a true complement. Charles and I had hoped people would say ours was hands down better, but we’re really not complaining.
• Our Infrared was a resounding winner over the commercial variety. We were extremely happy about that, especially considering we all agree that this batch of Infrared is probably the best batch of anything we’ve made. It has such amazing quality, color, clarity, flavor…simply put — it’s amazing, and a lot of people told us that yesterday.
• With our Alt, we found that people chose the commercial version better than ours. Frankly, we’re happy to see that people told us that, as this way we have something to improve on. Of course, given that we’re so proud of our Paleo-Bru, we’re rationalizing this by saying that the Alt we chose to put up against ours was a significantly different style. So, we’re convinced it wasn’t a fair competition. We’re going to go out and find a version that is more closely brewed in our style to see what happens.

All in all, though, we’re very pleased. Of the 15 people or so who took the test, we couldn’t ask for more! You guys were the best taste group yet (as you had no real reason to tell us how good our beers are — we are always afraid our wives may be trying to placate us…).

So here’s to a happy birthday, Charles! And many  more happy ones…as well as many more happy brews!

–Scot

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Posted By sbarker on July 29, 2009

Happy Wednesday to everyone! I wanted to share a video I was sent by a fellow homebrewer. I went to school with Kym and she sent this video about homebrewing to me. Admittedly, I didn’t watch it for a couple days due to some time constraints, but I finally watched it this morning and I really liked it. Take a look here.

After you watch it, let us know what you think!

–Scot

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