Posts in Uncategorized
Too busy to blog?

Every week or two we get someone who says, "What's up with your website? It hasn't been updated in months!"

Guilty as charged.

We've been busy, winning awards and undergoing a minor expansion.

What awards? Well back in October we took first place in the National Organic Brewing Challenge, sponsored by Seven Bridges Cooperative with our Siamese Twin Ale.

Not about to rest on our laurels, or druthers, or much of anything else, we're just about to push a new beer out the door. The Baltic Porter is styled after a traditional British export porter, but brewed in the uncommon manner with an addition of star anise and black licorice. It will be available on draft just as soon as our keg rings arrive.

We've expanded our fermentation capacity with four brand new 15bbl conicals from Stromberg Tanks.

And we also now know how to rebuild a plate chiller. After two weeks of work the new chiller was up and running flawlessly in time for last week's batch of the Golden State Ale.

Distribution remains pretty damn limited, although we're working on that. We have a sales representative joining the team and expect to be expanding beyond our footholds in Santa Cruz and San Francisco as the new year dawns.

As always, if you want to see Uncommon Brewers in your neighborhood, or in your business, drop us a tip through this website.

Cheers,Uncommon Brewers

Uncategorizedalec
We're real brewers now

Yes, it's the day of our fourth batch and the pressure is off. We've finally had our first stuck mash.

The brewers reading this can sympathize. Everyone else should be glad that they can't.

This is our second run of the Golden State Ale. It's true to our original recipe this time, with a California Ale yeast instead of one of those wacky Belgian Trappist styles. More to follow.

Uncategorizedalec
A record pace

The boiler is quiet and we're pretty much packed up after our third commercial batch.

Better yet, it only took 13 hours this time. We're learning, and improving, although the hands-on nature of our brew system means that we aren't going to be able to shave off much more time without some equipment upgrades.

Or a brewery helper monkey. Anyone know where to get a helper monkey that's trained to sanitize industrial hoses and stainless steel? We could really use one of those. If they come in pairs, all the better.

Speaking of pairs, today we ran the Twin, the Siamese Twin, and it was without a doubt our best effort to date. The flavor of the wort is bang-on accurate to the original formula. We overshot our concentration by a bit. The beer's likely to be closer to 10% ABV than the intended 8.5%, but maybe it wants to be 10%.

Well... actually not likely. It, as well as our future customers, will be much happier diluted down to its intended strength. That and other adjustments will happen after primary fermentation is completed in four to five days.

More photos to come, once we figure out how to work the camera and brew at the same time. I'm thinking of growing extra arms.

Uncategorizedalec