Monday, May 26, 2014

What a Month!

Well, friends. It has been a few weeks since we first timidly opened the doors to our retail store at 412 William Street and delivered our first kegs to local restaurants. It would be an understatement to say that we have been on a roller coaster of epic proportions. We have had some very rewarding successes and some very public shortcomings. But at the end of the day, we own it all, we have learned a ton and are in a great position to be truly up to speed by summer.

In the success column, we introduced three of our beer brands recently. They are North Shore Blonde, Cliff Top Pale Ale and White Sail Wheat. At their best, the response has been solid. In particular, I was very pleased by the response to White Sail, our North American Hefeweizen. I believe that it will be in steady rotation through the summer months.

On the set-back side, we have learned some lessons about our carbonation process, and particularly about yeast management. As some of you may have experienced, we had some under-carbonated Cliff Top sold over the long weekend. In addition, we utilized an unproven yeast strain recently which lead to a batch of North Shore Blonde with pretty undesirable results. Regretfully, some of it was sold on Thursday of last week, although only about 50 bottles. Some of you have already reached out to report this and I appreciate your kindness and understanding. If you purchased a bottle of Blonde on Thursday and haven't opened it yet, don't. If you did open it, please bring the empty bottle in to the store and we will rectify the situation as best as we can.

Going forward, the good news is this. We have brand new, fresh and vibrant yeast being propagated for us in a lab environment as we speak. This will improve and shorten our fermentation and allow us to offer you a better and more consistent product. Also, we are acquiring new fermentation vessels which will dramatically increase
our production capacity.

The retail store will not open this week (May 29-31), as we are refilling our production pipeline. We appreciate your kind patience as we continue to work out these early jitters.

Cheers.

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