As soon as we get our glass (750 ml bottles) in we will be ready to bottle the Scotch Ale, should be soon. We tested out the 4 head manual filler today and it was running fine. All of our seasonal and limited release beers will be in bottle conditioned 750's. The Scotch Ale will be the first bottled beer we release. This also means that seasonals will be much more limited on draft form than Bolita was. Even with not bottling Bolita, we are still sold out of it. I believe the distributors still have some kegs, but at the brewery we have none. So future seasonals will likely be limited to under 10 kegs, unless we double batch them.

We are still working on getting 12 ounce bottles of Jai Alai and Maduro in the pipeline. But, here is the rub.....I'm not sure that if we bottled (thus opening new outlets) we could meet demand. We are in under two dozen draft accounts and still don't have a lot of wiggle room to expand beyond that because so far the places we have the beer are selling it very fast. Which is a great thing. But, as we expand accounts or pull draft allotment to bottles it will mean we have to brew less limited/seasonals, get additional tank space or find some other options. So far it's a good problem to have and we'll figure something out soon. Plus I imagine the initial flurry of being new will fade and the breakneck pace of consumption will slow down, easing demand a little.

The tasting room is progressing. Plumbing and electric for the bathrooms has been roughed in. Hopefully they will be wrapped up by next Wednesday and we can start on the floors, railing (to seperate the tasting room from the brewery) and the walls. I can't wait for the tasting room to get open because we are receiving requests for tours on a daily basis now and I mostly have to say no to these requests.

Marshal Zhukov's Imperial Stout is bubbling away happily. We will be packaging more Maduro later this week. The Scotch Ale is tasting very nice. It is is drier than many of its style, like most of our beers are, but still has a big dollop of malt sweetness and the roast elements have opened up nicely. I believe we will be filling a cask or two of this along with a few conditioned kegs, but most will go into bottles.

Wellt hat's all for now. I think I'll cajole Wayne into doing an update sometime this week. It's been a while since he did any mass communicating.

Cheers,
Joey Redner