Cheers to everyone in the Ranier and International Falls communities! For new years eve celebrations we'll be having an open mic, karaoke, and free champagne at midnight.

One Door Ends...
2016 was definitely what you could call a learning year for Loony's Brew. In retrospect, here's a few things that worked and others not so much.
What Worked:

• Diverse Products: This includes a wide range of options for beer, wine and liquor. We went through over a 100 different types of beer, tried a myriad of different wines, and established a few specialty drinks such as the Loony's Cooler, homemade Bloody Mary's and Long Islands, Moscow Mules in Copper Cups, and a few others.
• Live Music: It's been rare that the stage wasn't used at least once during any given day, whether for a live band, open mic, or karaoke.
• Deck Bar: Combined with the music system, made the deck a great place to hang out and have a few whenever the weather allowed.
• Brewery Infrastructure: Yeah, while a far cry from the original forecast of having it up and running by last March, it's now pretty much done, we're federally approved, and should be completely done in January.

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What Didn't Work:

• The Weather: Summer was pretty much restricted to July, with June a rainout and August filled with cold fronts and storms, escpecially on the weekends. Next year will plan better with having a few tents and some other bad weather accomodations.
• Day Shifts: Started in May, ended in September, tried all sorts of things through the summer but nothing worked, theoretically lesson learned. That said, with the brewery up and running next summer including growlers, might open it back up, will be going much more slowly this round.
• Brewery Being Launched: Yeah, sort of like Chinese water torture, it was a brutal year in getting this project up and running. If we knew what we were doing a bit more, the schedule could have been cut in half. The reality was we'd run into a new problem and instead of it taking a week or two, would end up being 2-3 months. From which you start going fast again for a couple weeks before another 2-3 month problem hit. Anyway, water under the bridge, it's a new year.

Another to Begin...
Moving on, 2017 should be an exciting year, some of the activities in store:

• Brewery Ramp: Providing everything is done and licensed in January, will be ramping as fast as possible and through the year should increase from the one 2.5 BBL fermenter we have now to a range of 6-8 fermenters, increasing our capacity to support a variety of beers including ales (blonde, amber, strong), IPAs, stouts, wheat, lagers, and the seasonal varieties.
• First Floor Expansion: With the north and south ends of the building already commercial, it only makes sense to connect them and give a little more indoor room. This will help for any live bands/performances and more room to move around with different groups of people.
• Grilling on the Deck: We were planning to do this last summer, for August, but got too busy with other things, didn't work out. Which in retrospect was probably a good thing considering how crappy the weather was, would have been a disaster. Next summer we'll be more properly prepared with grills ready to go in the spring and tents to protect from an occasional shower.

Wishing everyone the best in health, prosperity, and good will for the new year.

Cheers,
Loony's Brew

After a few days of trying to figure out which ingredients to go with, selecting from a daunting
+200 different grains and +300 different hops, settled on a bit of range, to give plenty of options for tweaks. The beers targeted included a blonde ale, pale ale, strong ale, IPA, wheat, and a dry stout, saving the lagers for spring when more fermenters are running. The ingredients include:

• 11 types of grain: Including for pale malts, a pilsen, wheat, chocolate, black, as well as flaked barley and wheat. While some beers may use only one type of grain, most are a combination of 3-4 types. The grains are shipped whole, we'll be doing the milling before each batch.
• 7 types of hops: For these you need to specify both the year (2010 through 2016) and form (pellets or leaf). The hops selected include Galena, Cascade, East Kent Golden, Citra, Nugget, Centennial, and Magnum. Most were ordered in pellet form, the Citra in leaf. From this we get a range from the more bitter types to what are termed the aroma hops, used at the end of a batch. 
• 5 types of yeast: Including a yeast nutrient, all from the company Fermentis, a temporary solution until we can develop our own strains, the yeast nutrient being for the strong ale.
• 12 types of spices and other items: Including gypsum, irish moss (seaweed), star anise, chamomile and more.

It's a start and will give us lots of options for tweaks. The initial test batches will be ~10-15 gallons (1 keg), enough to run through the brew tanks but not too much as we're limited on fermenters, will be using the smaller 5 gallon solutions such as used with a homebrew.

Tonight at the pub is Happy Hour from 4-6pm (2-1's), and Vinyl night, where we have a vinyl record player available. Our selection is currently a bit limited so if you happen to have any, feel free to bring one in, we'll give it a spin, and your first one's on the house.

Thanks to the help from Nick Taylor from Taylor's Plumbing and Heating making extra time over the weekend, we were able to get the plumbing part of the system done! This includes hooking up the water line from below, an output for the wort chiller, a line going through the water filter, water heater and back to being right next to the first tank of the brew system. The water heater was installed on Wednesday. 

This is another big milestone after being Federally approved and allows us to start working on:

• Doing a thorough cleaning of the system.
• Hooking up the hoses and doing a water test batch.
• Water testing, before and after the water filter.
• Finalize initial recipes and order ingredients, we're currently working with BSG in Shakopee, Minnesota.
• Purchase remaining small equipment needed such as extra hoses, yeast cultivation equipment, more shelving.
• Setting up the serving parts, including kegs, keg cooler, and tap system.

Other areas being worked on include:

• Ventilation system installation: This is the last part to be fully operational.
• State approval: This is in process, a review is done in St. Paul followed up with an on-site inspection, from which we can apply for a City license.

Will be a busy week and very much looking forward to the above 0 temps. Events tonight include happy hour specials from 4-6pm, the Boly and Ringer Sports Back-Talk Show, followed with comedy/game night, now have backgammon.

In case you haven't seen already, there's been a filmed sighting of...

​Go here to register online, this is a part of Ice Box Days celebration, going from Wednesday, January 18th through Sunday the 22nd.

Loony's Brew will also be hosting an event with various specials, some beta testing for the event idea is being done today, will be announced soon if all goes well.