It’s been a long day down on the canning line. What began as a remarkably, delightfully smooth morning turned viciously on us right after lunch. Without any provocation one of our new pieces of equipment began merrily massacring cans, tearing into their sides four at a time before launching them off the end of the conveyor belt spraying lovely amber-brown Siamese Twin foam all over half the crew. Seconds later, as if it was feeling left out, the can seamer munched two cans in a row to cover everyone else. And then the printer quit. There we were with shredded cans at either end of the line, beer on the floor, beer on the equipment, and on the walls, but mostly on us.

Two technical service calls later everything was back up and mostly running, and dragging on. The brite tank seemed bottomless. We kept going, on and on. In all of the rushing about fixing equipment none of us paid much attention to the unlikelihood of being able to fill a barrel of beer into cans every twelve minutes, but only seeing a quarter of a barrel drawn down on the brite tank gauge. It was like getting free beer. Sure we were running slower than we should have been, but it was beer from nowhere.

We finished up the planned pallet of cans, enough for the 25 barrels that we started with, but somehow still had 8 barrels registering in the seemingly bottomless brite tank. There was a few minutes pause to get another pallet got dragged downstairs and the rest of the canning line reset to keep going for another few hours. Everyone got to their places, the line started up, and shot nothing but air into the cans.

The sight gauge was only cracked open. The tank was emptied with five cans left from the first pallet. It hadn’t been registering accurately since sometime after lunch. Apparently there really is no such thing as free beer.

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In other news, uncommon beer drinkers out in New Jersey should start keeping an eye out on shelves, because Regal Wine and Beer Imports has started carrying us in the Garden State. The early buzz is that we’re a hit in Jersey.

Halfway back across the country, we’ll be entering the Chicago area market on February 6th when River North Sales and Service launches with cans and kegs of Siamese Twin Ale, Golden State Ale, and a little bit of Baltic Porter. Also keep an eye out for a few kegs of Bacon Brown Ale.

Oh yes, the Bacon Brown Ale. It’s finally going to be entering our regular lineup. The Bacon Brown cans arrived last week, along with a new label for the Siamese Twin Ale. We’ll start shipping the first 200 cases of Bacon Brown within the next 2-3 weeks.

If you’re up in the Boston area in early February, our Brewmaster will be bringing some fun new projects to share at the Extreme Beer Fest. Then it’s on to Chicago to help launch the Uncommon takeover of Chicago.

Still covered in beer…

cheers

Mark your calendars for May 11-12th and fire up the old electronic travel agent, because tickets are about to go on sale for the Copenhagen Beer Celebration. We’ll be joining dozens of wonderful breweries from around the world for a one-of-a-kind event.

A little closer to the horizon, anyone with the urge to visit Reno this weekend had better not pass up the 3rd Annual Canfest, Reno’s International Canned Beer Festival. It’ll be happening at the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino this coming Saturday the 12th of November. The VIP event starts at 5pm, and general admission an hour later at 6pm.

More equipment delays have us, once again, pushing back the release of our new can labels. Our head brewer doesn’t remember ever having a day of smashing mirrors while walking with black cats under ladders, but it’s getting harder to discount that one happened.

On the upside, we’re happy to announce that we’ve reached an agreement with Atlantic Importing Company to carry our beers in Massachusetts. The first cans of Siamese Twin Ale, Golden State Ale, and Baltic Porter should start turning up on store shelves later this month.

It’s a bit short notice, but we’re pouring beer in Redwood City at the peninsula Oktoberfest all day long.

We’ll also be down at the San Jose Biocenter for a special event this coming Wednesday. Check out the link for a special event discount. Dr. Charlie Bamforth, the UC Davis God of All Beer Knowledge will be speaking… and we’ll be pouring our finest beers of course.

We were settling in for a nice quiet recovery from the Great American Beer Festival when the email server started going bonkers this morning. It was a quite pleasant surprise to find an article up on MSNBC’s main page offering kind words about our Bacon Brown Ale.

A lot of people have been in touch with us about the beer, asking where they can find it, and if we ship it out of state. We’ll be doing our best to get back to everyone who wrote, but in the meantime:

1. Yes, it does exist. Our Bacon Brown Ale is a CCOF Certified Organic beer that’s brewed with bacon and buckwheat.

2. For the near term the Bacon Brown is only available on draft at a few select locations in Santa Cruz, California. We’ll be brewing another batch in the coming weeks. Assuming that all the labels get through the approval process smoothly, there will be 16oz cans of Bacon Brown Ale joining the rest of our lineup before the end of the year.

3. Keep an eye out for our beers, and definitely ask for them if you don’t see them, in Whole Foods, BevMo, and other quality markets and liquor stores around the Bay Area. We’ll be starting up distribution in the Sacramento and I-80 corridor in the coming weeks. Further afield, it’s possible to find our beers in Oregon, Nevada, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. As soon as the Bacon Brown cans are finished we’ll be doing a big push with our distributors in those states to get it out in draft and onto store shelves.

cheers,
alec

Whoah, it’s been four months since the last post? It does not seem like that much time has passed; though if you’ve been as busy as we have been this summer, the days tend to blur together.

A quick update: We have expanded distribution through Virginia. Talk to the fine folks at Hop and Vine if you’re looking for our beer outside of the Richmond area.

We’re doing great throughout Ohio, and just added Nevada to the list as well.

Local vidoegrapher Keith Wells just posted a short interview featuring our Head Brewer up on Vimeo.

We’re finishing up work on the new lineup of cans, featuring updated artwork for the current beers as well as adding three new labels to our retail selection. Yes, there will be Bacon Brown in cans coming soon.

Our reach is growing with the addition of two new distribution partners. We’ve been licensed in Virginia since the start of the year, but only produced enough beer to ship the first few pallets out in the recent weeks. A mix of cases and kegs of Siamese Twin, Golden State, and Baltic Porter made it out to Loveland Distributing Company. If you’re interested in finding Uncommon beer in the greater Richmond area, they’re your source.

There should be news about Northern Virginia in the coming weeks, and we’ve started the paperwork for Ohio.

The news about Northern California is even bigger. We’re delighted to announce that Geyser Beverage Company will be carrying our three flagship labels across a wide range of Northern California, from the coast to the Sierras, Central Valley, and greater Bay Area.

The brewery continues to be a work in progress. It’s a good week when only one piece of major equipment goes haywire. Thanks to a stuck solenoid valve there’ll be a limited supply of Siamese Twin Ale for the next few weeks while we resuscitate the poor cold yeast.

Regular fans of the beer may have noticed that we’re running a bit light (damn near flat) on carbonation. That’s thanks to a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum: beer not getting cold enough. A few modifications to the existing equipment should have our brite tanks down to proper temperatures in the next week or so. Fortunately the beer is still quite tasty. We hope that you’ll bear with us as we get though the unanticipated hurdles of growing a craft brewery.

May also marks the start of the summer festival season. We’ll be out on the road nearly every weekend until the end of August, bringing Uncommon beer to the thirsty public.

Some of our crew will be pouring up in Anderson Valley at their annual festival this coming Saturday. Our Head Brewer will meanwhile be exiled to Kahului for Maui Brewing’s annual festival on that same Saturday the 14th of May.

There will be a more detailed post about our American Craft Beer Week events coming soon. That week will finish up on the 21st with another double header, with a tap takeover here in Santa Cruz at Burger, and a return to the West Coast Beer Festival in Sacramento.

There’s a fresh batch of the Golden State Ale into the tanks, and we’ve loaded the van loaded for tomorrow’s Bay Area Craft Beer Festival up in Martinez.

The event runs from 1-5, with a noon entry for VIP tickets.

In other news, the shipping tracker shows that the first two pallets of Uncommon beer have reached Philadelphia. Including the stack that just hit New York, that’s three pallets of our cans out on the East Coast. Two more will launch for Richmond, Virginia within the next week, along with a few kegs.

We’re looking forward to seeing the response out East to cans of the Twin, Golden, and Porter. There’s definitely room for improvement, eyeing the 03/09/11 Golden’s carbonation; but even in that challenged beer the flavor is delightful.

Speaking of delightful, we enjoyed coming across a recent review of the Siamese Twin Ale this morning in Tasting Panel Magazine.

To quote, “It takes a while to get your mind and palate around this uncommon California-brewed, Belgian-style ale, flavored with Thai spices: coriander, lemongrass, and kaffir lime. The critter from Santa Cruz stages an intense entry onto the naive, unsuspecting tongue, with edgy, bitter love-’em-or-leave-’em flavors and the downright aggressive effervescence of a soft drink. My first reaction: WTF? Ten minutes later, I’m completely sold. Heady, strange, and wonderful.”

Damn straight.

Regular customers of ours know that the beer has been a bit… unpredictable in recent months. It was, admittedly, a bit ballsy (read as: insane) to package and ship unfiltered and unpasterized beer. When we started sales in June of 2008 it seemed that selling nothing but Real Ale was fitting with our uncommon vision of what beer can be.

We’ve been working at that vision for a few years now; and our brew crew has been making constant improvements to their skills. We’re a lot better at this than we used to be. That’s been reflected in the health of the yeast cells hanging around in our cans and kegs. Quite simply: they’re too healthy for anyone’s good.

So we’ve taken a step to ensure that we’re shipping more consistent beer out the door: we’ve added a filter to our process. The results have been spectacular. The first beer through the filter started hitting local shelves yesterday, and we’ll have beer headed further afield, to Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, Oregon, and some overseas locations as well in the next few weeks.

Cheers,
Alec

We’re back in Sonoma this Saturday afternoon, pouring at the Beervana Homebrew competition. Tickets are available through the Sonoma Community Center.

Oh, and good news everyone: Any empty shelves in your area will be restocked with Siamese Twin, Golden State, and Baltic Porter cans in the next week. We’re almost caught up with demand.

A heads up to anyone who missed our three SF Beer Week events last Saturday, we’re at it again, pouring beer this coming weekend in Sonoma at the Winter Artisan Cheese Fair. It’ll be taking place on the 27th at MacArthur Place, from 1-4 PM. Tickets are available at Reader’s Books in Sonoma, or through the Epicurean Connection.

And since one beer week wasn’t quite enough, we’re also headed up to Sacramento to help celebrate theirs. Check us out at the Capitol Beer Fest, which takes place at the Cal Expo from 1-4 PM, with a VIP rare beer tasting at Noon, on Saturday March 5th.

It’s nearly March already?

Oh, and a note for anyone struggling to find our beer out on the shelves, we know that supplies are low. The transition to the new brewhouse has taken longer than planned. We should be packaging Golden State Ale this week, with Twin and Porter to follow in the next two weeks.