Happy New Year!!!

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.

​
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