Capricho Oscuro is a blend of several of our darker ales aged on oak. The first batch (roughly 50, 12 oz bottles) will be going primarily to Oldsmar Taphouse with a few bottles held back as special treats for brewery volunteers.

But, this is how the label will look when it finally goes into full production, which will be limited to a 2 to 5 bbl (170 to 880, 750ml bottles) range at most in the first year or two. It really depends on how many casks we can procure. But regardless, it will never be much as we simply don't have the capacity for more.

p.s. We are aware of the spelling errors on here. Our label designer is great at art, but not always so great in the spelling department.

        

If you like holes in the ground scoot up to the edge of your seat, buddy, cause I am about to rock your world. If not this will be about as exciting as looking at holes in the ground.


The first step was to cut out the floor and channels for the drains....


Once cut the plumbing contractor had to dig out about two feet of earth along the entire run of the channel....


With the trenches dug I was tempted to launch a mustard gas attack on the invading Germans. That or don a pith helmet and pretend some of the exposed pipes were the ancient remains of a mysterious civilization. What I'm saying is, it was a lot of freaking digging. And I don't mind admitting, I was quite happy not to help with any of it.


Advice for the day: Never get in a fight with a ditch digger. They have insane stamina!


You can see one of the trench drains set up off to the right in the future tank farm area.


For perspective, that's me (6ft) standing in one of the drain channels, which rises up well past my knees.

I've also got a mock-up pic of the snifter glasses we'll be ordering. I plan on doing a custom mold snifter-esque glass of our own design one day, but it's just crazy expensive to start out. So in the meantime these will serve as a companion to the shaker glasses we already ordered:

        

So we signed our distribution contract with JJ Taylor about a week ago and on Tuesday we attended a craft beer trade show put on by JJ Taylor. It was mostly for craft beer retail accounts so you had the usuals like Tony from Oldsmar Tap House, Depak from Kingdom and Pete from the Liquor Store (Colony Crossings I think?) over near Racetrack Road on Hillsborough. Though a lot of the crowd seemed to be people in the start up phases of business who seemed very dedicated to offering good beer.

We took two of our pilot batches and they went over very well. The spiced brown ale we have dubbed Sugar Plum Brown and will probably introduce it as a Christmas seasonal. It went over very well with geeks and novices alike. The second beer was the ORIBA (Oatmeal Rye India Brown Ale) and we also got a great response to it. It was a nice change dealing with consumers and presenting our beer rather than choking on concrete dust and fretting over the pace of construction. This event reinvigorated me and gave me a glimpse of the payoff for the long journey Wayne and I have been on. It's easier to stay focused when you know your prize (a functioning brewery) is coming closer to reality every day.

Wayne snapped a few pics with his fancy pants new camera:


Our corner of the trade show. We got to hang out with Tom Moench of Orange Blossom Pilsner fame, who was at the booth behind us. Tom spent most of the evening soaking unsuspecting folks with water from the pint glass cleaner at the Stella Artois booth.


Myself (left) and Wayne manning the booth.


We didn't have much to offer by way of table fluff. I guess we need to get some of those high faluttin glossy sales sheets all the swells use to pimp their beer. Bell's had freaking temporary tatoos! How do you compete with that?

Another plus to the night was that the JJ folks let us take some of the leftover beer! I walked away with several bottles of Jolly Pumpkin brands, Kapuziner Hefe and Schwarz Hefe, Monschoff Schwarz, Entire Butt Porter and Kulmbacher Pils. It's not true that the best beer is free beer. Unless said beer, is also good. Then it truly is the best!

        

        

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who came out to help us rip out the stairs, storage shed and the 800 lb steel storage shelves! Jeff, Hugh, Ben, Frank, Chris, Todd, Sebastien and anyone I missed. Thanks a ton guys. We literally would not have started on time without you guys. I just wish I hadn't forgotten my camera, because it would have made for some hilarious pics! Sorry we didn't get to the beer this time.

UPDATE: Todd Sturtz snapped a photo of us moving the steel staircase and sent it off to me:



Speaking of on time. I arrived at the brewery at 4:45 AM to let the construction team in. Just after 5AM the first floor cut was made:



Several cuts and a Bobcat later we have a space for the repour for the brew house slab:



The future tank farm area is also being ripped out and repoured:



We also had to install pads for the glycol chiller and compressors for the cold room as well as a sidewalk to the new door that will, eventually, lead to the tasting room:




Expect more updates soon as the pace of construction picks up. We'll also be sending our labels in for COLA approval soon. I just have to wrap up a few details with the label designer on Sunday.

        

Greetings CCB supporters,

We got our permits and floor construction begins Monday at 7 AM! If things go well (and if there is anything we have learned putting this brewery together it is that things go well 100% of the freaking time) we could have the brewery set up by December and we will start bum-rushing the palates of unsuspecting Floridians shortly thereafter.

This undeniably great news is why I am contacting everyone that expressed interest in helping us out. We need a few people with anger management issues to do some deconstruction to a wooden wall, some built in shelving and a storage room, all of which need to go to make room for the walk-in cooler. Basically, you'll be handed something heavy and made of metal and given instructions to cause maximum structural damage in a defined location! Later you will be given beer. Yes, this is the stuff dreams are made of.

Once all of the demolition fun is over we'll need help moving some things out of the way to make room for the construction crew. We'll be doing this THURSDAY EVENING November the 6th starting around 5PM and going until it is done. Short notice I know, but in addition to the rage therapy and beer we will also outfit you in the very latest in CCB t-shirt technology and slip a CCB pint glass into your soon to be well calloused hands.

Anyone in possession of a cutting torch or a sawz-all is encouraged to bring said device as we may actually need them and even if we don't it's comforting to know that we can cut through a huge hunk of steel if someone gets the urge.

If you can make it and want to confirm, please email Wayne or myself at wayne@cigarcitybrewing.com or joe@cigarcitybrewing.com

Cheers,
Joey Redner

        

When I walked outside today nothing was frozen over. When I looked in the sky there were no pigs flying about. There was nothing about today that seemed surreal or like a waking dream. I pinched myself and it hurt. That is when I realized that I was awake and hadn’t gone to any netherworld and that it was a distinct reality that we finally were given our construction permit today.

After 8 weeks of putting all these plans together that mutated time and time again, after listening to the construction division review board with my eyes glazing over in a concentrated attempt to make light of what needed to be changed or conveyed in said plan that they didn’t approve x time around and after asking myself if I had maybe died at some point while living in North Carolina and not realized it and ended up moving down to Tampa which was dead set on being my everlasting hell since it would allow me to make great pilots yet never allow me to brew beers commercially, WE HAVE A CONSTRUCTION PERMIT!

It has been a long hard road filled with engineers, contractors and review board members. It would be an understatement to say that I learned something from all this. From beginning to move toward the start of construction to now, we have tallied up a good 7 months of time. I am relieved to say the least but I personally feel very privileged to have been able to stumble through all of this because if we ever decide to expand then I will be able to talk the same lingo and comprehend what the general contractor is saying or recommending. Having said all that, should you find yourself in the same position as us trying to start a brewery, hire a general contractor or it will cost you time and we all know that time is money.

 
We are on to the next stage now. We have to hire a general contractor (yes, there is no getting around it) to pull our change of use permits and our fire inspection permits before our subcontractors can start pulling their permits. The only real complication with this is that it requires money. We pay said figurehead to pull said permits then said subcontractors pull their permits and we are on to construction. For the newbies that are planning on starting their own breweries, there are also several fees that must be paid prior to the general contractor pulling the first two permits. These are the transportation impact fee ($1200…this is because we most assuredly will be disrupting the flow of traffic so we have to pay for it), the permit fee ($130…because the city has to get paid…right) and the final inspection fee ($200…we have to pay those hard working inspectors to tell us how we have deviated from the plans and then laugh in our faces when we are begging them to let us start production and the sidewalk on said plan is ¼” off). This totals up to a little over $1500. I wish we could have just paid them $1500 and started construction back in July or August. Damn the flaming hoop syndrome!

 

The good news doesn’t stop at the construction permit approval. We are also officially licensed by the state and the feds now. We started filling out label approval forms on Tuesday for the majority of the mock ups that you have seen. Some of them will require a statement of process since they are not on the federal list of beer styles so we won’t be able to put them together until we come up with a company letterhead which has to appear at the top of the statement of process notes. The Guava Grove falls under this category and so will the Humidor Series since they both use production ideas that are unique to the federal beer style listings. I foresee many of our special seasonals needing a statement of process form as well since many of the new ideas are starting to sharply deviate from traditional styles in the eyes of the feds. What does that mean? That my job is becoming a hell of a lot more interesting mostly and I am fairly certain that many brewers would kill to have the amount of creative freedom that I have been issued. I wish the public had come around to complex small batch beer in the early 2000’s because I was ready back then but that would not have landed me at CCB and I think that this is where I belong.

 
We added one more pilot to the first five. It will be another testimony to local Tampa culture. We are going to call it Café Con Leche Stout. If you are not familiar with the local drink then I urge you to go to your favorite Cuban sandwich shop and order one with breakfast or prior to receiving your food. The beans that are used to make café con leche are roasted more aggressively than many espresso beans but the process yields different results than espresso in my opinion. Café con leche is a 50% blend of concentrated coffee (we can most likely call it Cuban espresso) and steamed milk. I was expecting it to come across as semi sweet black coffee with sweet cream but I must confess that I was mistaken. The aroma is very nutty…almost toasty and the role that the steamed milk plays does not lend any sweetness to this beverage. It is very easy to drink and very creamy. Overall it is a great local tradition that sees its beginnings with local cigar rolling factories that were all around the Tampa area years ago.

The locals took their coffee very seriously and if you talked poorly about another mans’ coffee then you could end up getting stabbed or even shot. The rich history of this beverage brought us to the realization that we needed to incorporate it into a beer. Café Con Leche Milk Stout is the result. It is a sweet stout that is brewed with a ridiculous amount of caramel malts and comes damn close to being an Imperial Milk Stout. Following primary fermentation, the beer is then racked onto Café Con Leche roast coffee from our oldest local roaster in the middle of historic downtown Ybor, Naviera. 90% of the time this is the exact coffee used at traditional Cuban restaurants or coffee houses. The beer is then racked into a final tank where special ingredients are added and then on to sipping the finished product post carbonation. I am sure this will be a nice addition to our already local culture oriented line up.

 

Ben and I racked the Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout, Bleeding Heart Brown Ale, Imperial Pumpkin and the Oatmeal Rye India Brown Ale into the keg or secondary. That was a very pleasant experience to say the least. I noticed that the yeast beds on these four beers were substantially bigger than some of my earlier pilots. I have made some changes to the way that I make yeast starters now and this is the result of that most assuredly. The fermentations were very vigorous and rapid even though I had the temperatures cranked down below 60F during initial fermentation.

 

The Bleeding Heart Brown Ale is the most sessionable beer out of all the pilots. It weighs in at about 5.6ABV and has a forward spice aroma with some toasty malt and hints of chocolate underneath. The first sip yields a sweet toasted bread maltiness riddled with complex Christmas spice notes with hints of chocolate and a slight touch of roasted barley (that actually comes from the tea that I added and not from the mash) and then fades into a smooth spice lead out with the malt never relinquishing all control.

 

The Oatmeal Rye India Brown Ale is the hoppiest of the bunch. Even though it is about 90 IBU’s it never gives up the malt backbone. The aroma is pine, citrus, rye, caramel, hints of chocolate and toasted/nutty notes. Dark caramel notes and a piney/woody/citrusy note are up front and then the rye comes along and lends spiciness to the mix which moves into threshold undefined dark malt notes and pinnings of chocolate which then shift back into tangerine and apricot with more chocolate and rye in the finish and then finally leading to a pine/apricot infused chocolate rye finale. Yes, I am listening to jazz right now (John Coltrane – Giant Steps) and no I am not sipping one but I wish that I were.

 

The Imperial Pumpkin is one of the best pumpkin beers that I have ever made. It is a little young right now so it comes across hot in the finish but then again what can one expect from a 9% beer that is less than a month old. It is orange with an orange head (yes orange…to this day I have never seen an orange head on a beer unless it had food coloring in it). The orange head is due to the fact that I used a ridiculous amount of pumpkin in this beer. I most likely could have gotten by with 30 – 40% less but what the hell. If you can’t test the limits then was it really worth it? The nose screams freshly whipped heavy cream, pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices. The flavor profile is an elaborate mesh of sweet whipped cream, pumpkin pie spices and pumpkin that lead you to a heated alcohol finish (needs more age) and notes of pumpkin skin that come across as rindy. I was proud to hear Ben say that he thought that the nose on mine was as good or better than the Southern Tier Pumking. Time will tell and I think that time is on my side with this one.

 

Finally, the Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout is a solid imperial stout as it is but when you throw all those spices and chocolate in the mix you get an absolutely astonishing beer. The aroma is dominated by dark milk chocolate with light notes of cinnamon, vanilla and wisps of dark fruit and peppers. The first sip is a chocolate lovers dream come true. Big semi sweet chocolate notes lunge forward with notes of vanilla and cinnamon infusion. Dark fruit and pepper (very little heat from peppers…it adds more of a dark fruit acidity than heat) notes emerge that kiss the coffee like expression from the roasted barley notes with unmeasured erotic palatial ecstasy. The hops start to firm up the finish with the chocolate unrelentingly expressing that it can not be forgotten. It is liquid love ladies and gentlemen. Seek this out at all costs! I might have just designed the first true aphrodisiac! Just thinking about this beer makes me tremble (lol)!

 

That crazy Saison…it won’t stop fermenting. I wonder if it has anything to do with adding 2.5 lbs of deseeded skin on scuppernong grapes to the secondary? It smells just like I wanted it to, local wine mixed with local beer. I think that things are going to get a little wild up in here soon or later but I don’t smell it yet. It could take months to pick that character up. I am patient so I am going to wait until it finishes fermentation and then move it to a keg and let it sit for another 4 weeks at 75F and then slow cool down and carbonation. I will just have to keep posting about this one as I see it being a long term experiment.

 

Here I am into page 4. Well that is a first. I think that I have ran out of things to discuss so I am going to say farewell until next time. I am sorry that this post took so long to reach you but I feel no need to put up a petty post when nothing is really going on. The permitting and licensing have been great news and I will continue to discuss construction and so on. There will be plenty more lessons to learn and I will do my best to share them with all that are interested.

 

            Take care,

            Wayne Wambles

            Head Brewer

            Cigar City Brewing

        

So we blew our wad on brewing equipment and structure upgrades. That will be great once we start making beer. In the meantime it means we had a teeny tiny budget for web development. Which means I had to do our website myself and I haven't created a website since 1995 when I did it in MS Notepad. Times sure have changed. It's a lot easier now, but the html code is so complex now that if the design software goofs something up I have no chance to find it and correct.

Anyway, I have much of it complete and I just need you guys to be ruthless in attacking my grammar and just generally helping me find and squash any bugs and correct any mistakes. The store is not fully functional yet though there is some stuff up there and most of the pages have at least some info and so need to be examined for errors I may have overlooked.

Also any suggestions or pointers are appreciated. So here it is: http://cigarcitybeer.com/

Cheers,
Joey

        

First posted design for the limited release 110K+OT series. If you don't know what the name refers to it is basically an inside joke from ratebeer.com and you should immediately go to ratebeer.com and create a thread in which you ask--no demand--that you be told what it means. If no one responds just keep making threads till they do.


Big Sound Scotch Ale. No real changes here.


Also pretty much as the last version.



Final Guava Grove design.


Gregory looks like a tough customer.


The Humidor Series.


Warmer Winter, Winter Warmer.

Once again we love feedback and if you love them, or detest them, we want to hear about it.

Now without further ado I present to you the winner of our "Name Our Beer" Contest. Ok, no, wait I have some more ado. I just wanted to say we got some amazing entries and we will probably use some of the names you guys provided on future beers, with due credit of course, as they really were very cool entries. You guys have a feel for Tampa's history and culture and the theme we are going for here at CCB and that really shone through.

Alas, there can be only one and that one is, Greg Cotner of Brandon, Florida. Greg won with his entry of: Bolita Brown. Greg will receive a case of Bolita Brown, an assortment of CCB swag and of course recognition for his winning entry on each and every bottle of Bolita Brown Ale that we brew. Congrats, Greg. For those of you wondering who or what the heck a Bolita is, this is Bolita.



And now without further ado ado, here is the label art for Greg's winning entry:



Again, congrats, Greg and thank you to everyone who submitted entries. The response was better than we could have imagined. Hopefully we can do this again in the future.

Cheers,
Joey Redner

        

September 26^th put me back at the wheel for creating new pilots. I brewed the Oatmeal Rye India Brown Ale. A glorious smell arose from the mash as we hefted over 24% rye into the mash tun. I realized that the grist bill accounts for less than 50% base malt and there is no doubt in my mind that this beer will be very complex. A monument of malt and hop rivalry that should result in a beer that is as busy as traditional jazz. I can imagine sipping this one in a jazz hall back in the 50’s with a cigar lit…the refreshing citrus/pine notes from the hops, the spiciness from the rye, the silkiness of the oats and the chocolate malt goodness meshing beautifully with my cigar and the sounds of the jazz hall reverberating down to my very soul. I am definitely looking forward to hearing feedback on this beer.

 

            I spent Monday the 29^th at St. Somewhere Brewing assisting Bob and crew in the bottling of their Lectio. Bob allowed me to break in our manual labeler there. After a few adjustments, it seemed to do a fine job. If they can put their front and back labels on one roll, this labeler would have removed two members of the labor team altogether. It won’t be the best labeler for labeling 3000 12 ounce bottles but it will do just fine for 750’s. One of the rewards of being at the brewery was a whole flower dry hopped Saison that Bob handed me. It was incredible to say the least. The whole flower Saaz helped to tame some of the brett aroma and made the brett overall mesh much better with the beer in the flavor profile. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob’s beers anyway, but this was a special treat and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also sampled some homebrews as well. One of them was a pumpernickel porter with caraway and poppy. Other than the yeast bite, this beer was well made…firm chocolate in the background with layers of rye and caraway. The last homebrew that I sampled before I left was some form of imperial stout or Belgian strong dark base with ripe banana added to the secondary. The aroma was lush with banana and this element paired well inside the flavor profile too. It made me wonder what this beer would have tasted like with an addition of caramelized raisins, figs and dates aged on oak. Thanks for letting me break in our labeler Bob.

 

            I brewed the Bleeding Heart Brown Ale on Tuesday. I finally received a break from all the high gravity brewing. It made for an easier day and my anticipation for the end of the day wasn’t because I was ready to go home but rather contemplating the smell of the holiday tea that I put into the kettle after the boil was over. The brown ale base already smelled great and quite malty but when those tea bags hit the kettle, the brew pot told a completely different story. It released the secrets of Christmas and winter in a voice that spoke through aroma and vivid memories of my past winters and holidays came rushing back in a warehouse that was 85 degrees. I can not adequately describe this to you but only hope that you can experience it and tell me what you think personally. The fermentation fridge was overloaded with the same aroma the following day. It inundated the already active fermentation of the India Brown and reminded me of my desire to be at home over the holidays with family and friends by the fireplace or bonfire sipping this beer and laughing over the events of the year.

                              

              The Bleeding Heart recipe posing with a box of Celestial Seasonings Sugar Plum Fairy.

 

            Wednesday brought about a different feeling. It was more in season than the Bleeding Heart was. The smell of baking pumpkin loomed as the mash rested and caramel malts gave up their sweetness underlying and supporting the pumpkin inducing a feeling of fall. The lauter however was another story. I used 10 pounds of pumpkin puree to 22 pounds of grain and this was a miscalculation. The puree clogged the spaces in between the grain and the husk and was intent upon not letting the mash release its sweet soul into the kettle. After much deliberation and physical manipulation, I was successful in gathering my pre boil volume of wort. I decided that the volume of puree will have to be reduced in future commercial batches in order to alleviate any stuck mashes on our equipment. When I was moving the wort from the kettle to the fermenter, I noticed quite a bit of solids coming out. I believe these to be caramelized bits of pumpkin puree and noticed that after fermentation began that these solids settled out to the bottom of the fermenter(it wasn’t cold break because I saw a similar thing happen at lauter). Fermentation is very active and the color is pale orange. The fermentation lock smells of unspiced pumpkin pie because I haven’t casted my pumpkin pie potion into it yet. Also, I was also able to ascertain the elements of Southern Tier’s Pumking and their Crème Brulee. I was right…they are using more than they tell you on the label and I hope that you will be able to determine what I have discovered as you are giving me feedback about this beer.

 

            My techniques and precision have become much more efficient. I have dialed in mash efficiencies and total volume lost in the kettle on a standard one hour boil using a measuring tape and all just in time to make the last of the high gravity beers in this series of pilots. The Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout, which I brewed on October 2^nd, was even higher in gravity at my projected volume than I expected it to be. It finished at 26.8 degrees plato (11-12 ABV) at slightly over 5 gallons of yield. The mash looked like enough grain for a 10 gallon batch (28 lbs). The mash gave back mocha espresso with a multitude of dark caramel and toffee components. I was fortunate enough to have the foresight to put it into a larger carboy. It raged at the thought of being contained in any vessel during the process of fermentation and is still acting like a raptor even as I type…krausening 4 – 6 inches above the liquid surface (the raptors tested the shock gates in Jurassic Park). Eight different grains and 80 IBU’s are just the base of this beer. I can’t wait to get the chiles, raw cacao nibs, vanilla and cinnamon in there. Then it will be 10 – 14 days of contact time away from calling for a sacrifice on the temple steps as I hold the knife in one hand and this magical, historical elixir in the other. I guess it was all about population control back then and these guys were worse than that Cocoa Puffs’ bird (lol). 

                                  

                                                           Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout Recipe

                                  

                                                                           Peppers & Nibs

                The final pilot (of these 5) was the Saison. It was brewed on October 3^rd. This brew day was a walk in the park and a nice final pilot to brew due to its lower gravity. The mash was dominated by the smell of pils malt with underlying hints of wheat. The interesting part was adding those scuppernongs to the boil. We removed the skin and the seeds and added them during the last fifteen minutes of the boil. The orange peel, pils malt and hops dominated the smell of the boil. It wasn’t until after we moved all the sweet wort to the fermenter that we smelled the unique smell of the grapes. It was wild and almost vegetal. During my rush to get the heat exchanger set up, it slipped my mind to add the aroma hops to the kettle post boil so I had to make a hop tea at home and add it back to the fermenter. I wasn’t able to administer the tea until after the weekend. By this time, the eccentric Saison yeast had started to become much less active and this means that since there will be less carbon dioxide scrubbing of the aroma hops, we should get a little brighter hop aroma. The yeast has that classic Saison smell (apple pie) and after I added the tea to the fermenter, the aroma took on more of what I am used to smelling in respected commercial interpretations of the style. This beer still has to go through secondary on even more grapes and then it will come off the grapes and go through a “garding” period for another 4 weeks. A lengthy process that will lead to some interesting if not captivating results.

 

            Thanks are in order to Ben for stopping by several times to help me out with brew days. Thanks to Dave and Todd for stopping by on your lunch breaks to see what we were up to. Thanks to Christian and Greg for sharing the homebrews and helping with the Imperial Pumpkin (that crazy hop filter beer blew my mind you guys…I can still remember the aroma, flavor and the lack of hop astringency amidst all the big aroma and flavor…great job). Thanks to Justin for stopping by on Friday and lending a hand with the Saison and also discussing our packaging and distribution options (and for lunch). Thanks to Tracey for the pictures of the brew house delivery day. And thanks to anyone else that I might have left out.

 

            Our t-shirts and glasses came in today (10/06/08). They look great! If you look at an earlier post you can see them. The glassware came out exactly like the proofs on the web site (not to size on the web site) and the shirts are a darker blue but other than that just like you see them on our web page.

 

            I guess that wraps it up for the last week and a half or so.

 

            Take care,

            Wayne Wambles

            Head Brewer

            Cigar City Brewing