I gotta say I really like Avery Ellie's Brown, and the Maharaja was PHENOMENAL.

Picked up a sixer of Victory Hop Devil, so glad I did, this beer is ace. Victory never disappoints.

I've been having really good results w/ Nottingham fermented really cold (56-58F). I made a Munich Helles w/ it and it came out fantastic. Nice and clean, crisp, and dry.

Finally tried Surly Wet this weekend. So much hoppy. Maybe the most bitter beer I've ever had. I really enjoyed it.

Also tried a brand new beer from a brand new local brewer called Fulton Wagging Tail IPA. Completely the opposite kind of IPA from Wet. Very sweet/fruity. Also enjoyable. So new it doesn't even have a single review on ratebeer yet! I'd be the first but I wasn't very sober when we ordered it. The father of the brewer came over to us (in a crowed campus bar before the Sat. night Gopher football game) and told us all about his sons brewery/plans. It was pretty cool. Def. worth checking it out if you live in the Twin Cities. We had it at Stub & Herbs and I think there are a handful of other bars in the area that have it.

Hmm, didn't find Wet to be all that hoppy. I kind of have an immunity to hops or something. I drank a bottle of Hop Stoopid (102 ibu) and really wasn't impressed by it's supposed hoppiness. I must have poor tastebuds or something.

Are you sure it's called the Wagging Tail?

I was at Acadia Cafe on the 28th when Fulton was their with all 4 brewmasters. They were pouring the Sweet Child of Vine IPA...

You're dead on with the character though, very very floral, almost reminded me of dish soap (horrible analogy). I could drink a **** load of that beer...really mild for an IPA...felt more like a PA imo.

I talked to a guy at my liquor store and I guess they won't be bottling for another year or two.

I thought that is what it was called, could be wrong. Wet hop wasn't the most hoppy beer I've had, just the most bitter IPA.

Just tried Avery's Brabant Barrel-Aged Wild Ale. Interesting and unique flavor. Will probably drink again.

Wedding in NYC - one of wifie's best friends, so she was a bridesmaid (ie; free time for me cos I had nothing to do ).

3 days in NYC when I'm usually stuck out in the middle of nowhere. So I sampled (...thanks to a review of this thread the week before):

Ommegang 3 philosophers & ommegang dubbel
La Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Trippel
Stone Ruination
Chico Estates from sierra nevada
Westvleteren
Lagunitas IPA
4 pack of dogfishhead 90 mins
6 pack of dogfishhead 60 mins
Ithaca IPA
couple others i cant remember

sorry...hic...no reviews. Too pizzed. btw the first night I spent drinking bottles of dead guy ale with other wedding invitees until I couldn't remember, so the rest were spread over two days plus a few bottles back at the in laws later...now my kidneys & liver hurt . That's how it is when you get to escape from two young kids for a weekend...

The only review I can give you here is that Wookie definitely likes the stronger tasting/flavoured beers, thats going from the notes I scribbled to go purchase beers (mostly at a big whole foods in midtown NYC, btw).

the wedding was ok; snazzy penthouse in manahatten w/ tux code; bud light etc only tho

Wow. That's an awesome selection of beers, esp. if you're just trying them for the first time. How'd you find the Chico Estates? I thought that was no longer available.

And yes, I'm pretty forthcoming that I prefer bolder flavors. I like to savor all the tastes.

I'll post this link here for posterity's sake and for those that don't read OOT:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...e-test-625223/

I do one of those Oktoberfest beer tastings for an apartment party every year.

This year we had:

Spaten Oktoberfest
Summit Oktoberfest
Schells Octoberfest
Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest

Schells for me. Summit is almost too malty, the others aren't very well done imo.

Oktoberfest is one of the few styles I don't have much experience w/, but agree about Spaten's offering. It just seemed lacking and I can't really describe it any better than that.

Alright I figured I'd ask you guys since this is pretty much the exact market we'll be going after...

My brother and I are sorta/kinda putting the pieces together to start a brewery. It's def going to be a few years down the road before anything gets going bc of funding, equipment, etc, etc...but I wanted to start promoting the brand early.

We want to start hosting events where we give out free food/beer, hire a band, and other fun stuff we think of later. This is the only way we can recover some of our costs since legally we can't sell beer w/o going through a **** load of red tape.

Anyways, to my question....

********************************
We plan on having 3-5 beers for everyone to try. What styles would you guys like to see? (remembering that the general public often doesn't like 100+ IBU hop bombs and 1.100 RIS)

Also, what do you think the average person would be willing to pay for entry assuming there's a decently recognizable band, free BBQ, and all the free beer you can drink.

Oh wow. Obviously there's a lot to this whole thing that can't really be understood in a 2p2 post, both from your POV and from mine. I've worked in a packaging brewery for about 3 years now, and I've also reviewed the business plan for a packaging brewery that was presented to potential investors but hasn't gotten off the ground yet.

First, if you don't have any experience in a professional brewery, stop everything and get it. Every week I hear from random people and homebrewers that I'm "living the dream," and if only X happened, they'd start a brewery. I was sort of the same way before I started my current profession. Reality is radically different than even the most grounded dreams I hear. From the production side, brewers aren't brewing as often as they are cleaning. For instance, we mash in, and then go clean things. After about an hour, we start running off - so we take two minutes to open up a valve and start the sparge - and then we go clean for a couple hours. Once we get our preboil volume, we spend maybe ten minutes shoveling grain and mashing in, and then we go clean. A production brewery isn't about digging your hands through some new malt, or grabbing a handful of hops and inhaling while you dream up a new recipe. It's about making sure you get beer transferred from tank A to tank B so that you can knock out batch C into tank A, and while you're getting all that ready, don't forget the 30 minute hops and the yeast dumping from tank D.

I don't know the sales/business side nearly as well, but I do have a couple observations. First, it all starts with the beer. If the beer sucks, it doesn't matter what else you do. Second, marketing matters, first notwithstanding. Stone makes great beers, but marketing is a huge part of their success. Dogfishhead makes beer, of sorts, but marketing is a huge part of their success. And while throwing a party with food and your beer is marketing, it seems kind of useless if you can't sell your beer commercially for years. We give away a ****load of our beer for various events, and I'm skeptical of the impact it has, and that's while we're easily the most recognizable brand in our market, much less being an unknown start-up that nobody can buy. Sure, some of the people that come to your party will be beer enthusiasts, and if your stuff is good you'll gain some fans that will look for your brand (and forget about it when they don't find it anywhere in the next couple days), but it seems to me that pushing your brand on consumers is the wrong approach for a start up. Instead of pushing your brand on retailer consumers, you should focus on pulling the market to your brand by selling to account managers at bars and liquor stores. Come out with a couple really well-made beers and get local sales people behind what you're doing. They're the people that will put your beer on tap, that will put it on their shelf, that will answer questions like, "What's new?" with answers like, "These guys just started up right here in town, and they have this killer ESB. Check it out." It's really market-dependent, but depending on where you are, shoving dollars into advertising and events in the effort to get people asking retailers to carry your beer is going to be much less efficient than winning over retailers and having them invest in pulling the market into buying your brand.

I've started rambling, and as I said, there's enough fodder in, "Should I start a brewery?" that a conversation could span hours, much less what can be communicated in a 2p2 post. But judging solely on your post, I'd say that you don't have enough experience in the industry on either the production or the sales side. Lots of people can make great beer, and lots of people can run a great business, but the number of people that can make great beer a business without having any real experience in either area is probably counted on one hand.

And to answer this, a pale or IPA is more or less a must. Getting a pale/IPA from a new brewery is like getting Pad Thai from a new Thai place: it gives you a benchmark for the quality of the entire lineup. I'd also include something like a kolsch, something that BMC drinkers - especially chicks - won't be turned off by. A bonus of those style is that they have really low ingredient costs while they sell for the same price as everything else. If you have a hit beer that's 4.5% ABV and 20 IBU, you're selling a ton of it at the same price point as your 7%/60IBU IPA, while the cost is way lower. Besides a pale and a lighter, clean beer, I think things are really open, and you never know what tastes will be a hit. Something like a German hef or Belgian wit has the chance to cover both the lighter/non-offensive area of the kolsch-type beer and provide flavors non-craft drinkers don't think of as "beer" flavors, like banana and spices, etc. Along that line of thought but on the other end of the spectrum is something like a big stout, where it tastes of coffee and chocolate and vanilla. The beer geeks will love it, some people that claim they don't drink beer will be surprised to find those flavors that Bud Light never led them to believe could be in beer, etc. But I'd think your core lineup should be a pale/IPA (doesn't have to be American pale ale, English works as well and is less flooded), a less "intimidating" beer like a kolsch or session mild, and something a little more offbeat. Get those nailed, and then you can go into 8% ambers and whatnot.

I'd not tried these beers mostly. We get good stuff here, just not the variety.
Chimay, Fin d monde, dead guy ale, and some others are all locally available, but no huge variety. SO I took the opportunity to try some recommended in this thread. Not surprisingly, no duds at all; loved em all.

Was blown away by that sierra nevada chico estates. Wow!! A thick and heady jungle of beerness flavours. It was just sitting on teh shelf in the Whole Foods on West 24th St & 7th ( I think) - so quick; run down and see if any's left, for anyone nearby.

absoludicrous, I just read this post and the bolded part caught my eye. The bolded part is exactly what I think of many English IPA's. I've always thought many or most of them were best described as 'mild and soapy'.

I go back to the UK sometimes and always try a few. FWIW, I much prefer the american style superhopper IPA's.

New to the thread and apologize if this has been posted before, but all this talk about IPA's inspired me to post my favorite one: Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company. In the bay area, this beer can be found in most Whole Foods or groceries stores with a good beer selection. This **** is the ****, I **** you not. The above-linked Beer Advocate reviews sum it up better than I can.

A perfect beer for those interested in trying out some Belgian sours is Flemish Red Ale Grand Cru. I knew nothing about it when I found it at my local liquor store the other day -- first time I've ever seen it there -- but it was quite a treat. It was cherry-red in color and featured a delicate balance between sour and sweet. Great after dinner beer. Too bad I haven't found it since.

@ Rundownhouse...

Awesome post and thank you very much. FWIW, I realize we are nowhere near the point of diving in head first. I know a lot of people think they can do it (and I think we can), but I also am not arrogant enough to believe we know even 1/2 of what we need to be successful yet. I do know that I'm willing to do whatever it takes to learn though because beer really is my passion.

As far as throwing these events, I realize it probably isn't ideal but it might be the only option we have at the moment w/ limited funding. My dad and his friends appear to want to invest in something (retired, bored, etc...), but I think they want us to prove that we can crank out consistently good product and be motivated to push the brand before throwing money at us. We also thought throwing events like this might help make some contacts that could be useful when we are ready to actually dive in.

We've also become buddy buddy w/ a decently sized local brewery (doing very well), and they have been unbelievably helpful so far. Their head brewmaster pretty much told me "I usually don't tell people to go ahead because it's a tough business, but you guys have something here". He was legitimately impressed w/ our beer and basically said call him and he would help us out w/ pretty much anything we wanted to know. He also seemed more than willing to let us come in and run through the entire process.

This is pretty much exactly what we were thinking. I haven't perfected an APA yet (at least IMO), but we have a really nice Kolsch, a solid "Munich Helles" (using Notty and it came out really nice), and a Pilsner-ish (again Notty) that seem to be a big hit w/ most BMC drinkers. We also have, what I think is, a really solid sweet stout but I'm not sure if a basic dry stout would be better for the average beer drinker.

Either way, thanks again. I've been super lucky so far in meeting knowledgeable people that are willing to help and I'm always extremely grateful for it.

Good luck to you, and if you have any questions or want to hash things out, just let me know. Again, what I think is the most valuable advice I can give to those who want to start a brewery is to just go work in one. It's really hard to get the day-to-day operations of a brewery without that, and there's tons of breweries and brewers who are happy to have an extra hand for the cost of a case of low fills.

Would you consider doing a trade for some Surly Furious?

Never had Surly Furious, but was always curious about it. It sounds delicious. I'd certainly be interested in a trade. PM me with details. I've never done something like that before.

ChicagoRy graced me with another shipment of beer that I can't get out in my part of the country. I'll be doing full write ups on each of them in here as I go through them. Up first is the Founder's Centennial IPA. You'll have to get prices from him, but it's an unfiltered IPA, and 7.2% ABV.



The beer isn't as cloudy as I might have expected from an unfiltered beer, but neither is it as clear as a lager. It's got a pretty good persistent head on it.



The aroma of the beer is all floral hops, just my style. The flavor has more to it than that. The hop flavor also has a hint of grassiness and pine, and the hops don't overpower the malt, either. You get a malty, yeasty flavor through the hops that really make the beer. The finish is all hops, though. I wish I had a bottle of the Lagunitas IPA to try side-by-side with this, or better yet, blind, but if the price is right, this beer is a real winner amongst standard IPAs.

I had Surly Darkness last night for the first time. They had it on tap at the Triple Rock. It was delicious.

They also have free bacon at the Triple Rock on Wed. nights. I had some of that as well.

Drinking Avery's Maharaja Imperial IPA right now.

I have really been digging this beer atm.

Also bought a bottle of Goose Island '09 Bourbon County Stout I had at a Strong Ale Fest last weekend to put away for a couple years. Good stuff.

Also: Good luck with your brewing loosbastard.