There’s a lot of talk, as we prepare for the new year, about how rough things are in the economy.

Rough? We didn’t know any better. The country has been in recession for a year, and Uncommon Brewers only started sales in June, so it’s been all uphill as far as we’ve been concerned.

On that note, keep an eye on this space (blog?), for news about a retail deal. One of our beers, the Siamese Twin Ale, may be a lot easier to find starting in 2009.

And as the new year starts, we’ve sent one of our brewers, Matt, to Sacramento. We’re barely out of the starting gate and our team is already being poached. He is, of course, brewing on a beautiful system several decades more advanced than ours, and we hope that he remembers what it was like to live in fear of our chiller.

The outlook for the coming year is good. We’re going to be brewing like mad, and bringing some really fun beers to market. Bacon, anyone?

-Uncommon Brewers

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

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.

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.

These have been long days, but we have our first two commercial batches in fermentation. Whether they’re up to our standards for sale, or destined to become in-house reminders of lessons learned, will have to wait until secondary fermentation completes.

Much has been learned in the process. If any readers happen to have an extra plate chiller laying around, we’d be happy to clutter up our space with it.

Roughly three barrels of our initial Golden State Ale are in secondary, and five to six barrels of the Baltic Porter in primary.

Photos of the carnage to come.

One week later, a handful of changes to the steam lines, and we achieved boil.

Once again it pays to double-check your equipment. The kettle’s thermometer read 195 degrees. An electronic thermocouple showed it to be off by 19 degrees. We technically had a boil last week, but didn’t realize it.

Lessons learned, we’ll be running a first batch of the Golden State Ale on Saturday. Check back then.

So it turns out that our safety paranoia got the better of us. A pressure reducing valve in the steam line, intended to protect the kettle from exceeding 30psi, is preventing it from reaching boil. No beer today.

Breaking out the wrenches, because we’re back to plumbing.

The first few kernels of malt hitting the rollers.

We’re heating the first liquor and milling our grain. On track for a first batch, the Golden State Ale, to run this evening.

It is Thursday, August 30th, and Uncommon Brewers has begun operations.