Anatomy of an All Grain Brew Session

Hello again one and all,

An Update:

Our Suds Club campaign is off to a great start–hats off to those of you who have taken the plunge! Your support is truly essential and deeply appreciated! Those of you still thinking about it, feel free to get in touch with any questions or concerns. We know it's not something everyone can do at this point, and we have also had a number of inquires about sharing memberships. While we wholeheartedly encourage this activity, we just want to clarify that we will still only be able to honour one coupon per month–this just means that you will have to work out amongst yourselves how you'd like to share the coupons, either by taking turns redeeming them, or by making monthly dates to meet up for a tasty meal and libations, and putting the coupon toward a shared bill. 

Attention non-beer drinkers:

While we will naturally be promoting excellent craft brewed draught beer at the brewpub, our own and a number of the Maritime's finest, we assure the less beer-inclined among you that there will also be an excellent little wine list, and some terrific ciders available as well. In fact, we'd love to hear what you think about having cider on tap (how many of you would actually order it?) and what you'd most like to see on our wine list! Comment on the blog or drop us a line!

And now, back to the main event...

The Great North Grant Pale Ale Session

Recently our friend Tom and I brewed a batch of English Pale Ale in Tom's cozy and rustic barn/personal brewery in North Grant. We thought some of you might like to see the process as it unfolded. This is a very basic description of the process, there are awful lot of very complicated chemical processes taking place, we'll just highlight the most rudimentary ones.

Welcome to The Suds Club!

Happy new year, folks, and apologies for the long hiatus. We trust the holidays were memorable, and that everyone is off to great start for 2012! When not participating in a higher than normal volume of Christmas/New Year's festivities, we've been working furiously behind the scenes, working out cashflow projections, meeting with accountants and lawyers, and we are pleased to announce that we are ready to take a major next step in launching the Townhouse! 

We need to raise a modest amount of money to help us secure the perfect downtown location and meet our working capital requirements, and we'd like you to help us do it. The "next step" is to launch our CSR, or Community Supported Restaurant subscription program, which we've decided to call the "Suds Club." 

Background on CSRs

Antigonish has spoken, and the CBC covers craft brewing!

Well, the survey results are in, and, yes, it appears Antigonish does want a brewpub! Thanks you all for responding to our call. More than 500 people filled out our survey, and with overwhelmingly positive responses, which really helps to back up our claim that there is a demand in this town for a cozy local brewpub and eatery. If you'd like to see the results for yourself, click here.

WHAT DO YOU THINK??? Does Antigonish really need a brewpub?

Okay folks, it's crunch time. We're getting closer to pinning down our location and getting our funding in place, but right now WE NEED YOUR HELP! We believe Antigonish really needs a cozy little brewpub with great beer, great food, great service, and great atmosphere. But maybe we're wrong? We need to be able to demonstrate this demand, assuming it really exists, to possible lenders and investors. This is where you come in: If you also think Antigonish could do with a proper cozy little pub, please take a few minutes to fill out our anonymous online survey and let us know! Feel free to forward it to friends, relatives, coworkers, and anyone else you think might be interested. The more responses we get, the better.

A new season, and a new brewing system...?

Well, it's officially fall, I guess. The air is certainly crisp, and the nights are unquestionably cooler. And as you can see, our Cascade hops are pretty much ready to be harvested!  In fact, Terry's latest IPA was brewed using some of these very hops - we're anxiously awaiting the first sip...

Not a bad crop for their first year, but we're looking forward to checking out the notes from last month's Hops Workshop in Cornhill, NB. A friend who attended reported it was a day crammed with excellent information, and should help us increase our yield in the coming years.

Lessons from a Community Owned Pub and Veteran Brewer

Well, we have one more whirlwind trip to the valley behind us, and finally some potential pub locations before us! But we'll have to move quickly, so we're thinking about our funding options again. As part of the Self Employment Benefits Program that has allowed us to dedicate so much of our time to getting this whole brewpub thing up and running (someday, sooner than later, god/universe willing), we’re paired up with someone from XEDC, as kind of a business mentor/therapist/case worker. We recently were assigned to a new XEDC liaison, Melissa MacMaster, who has turned out to be a real dynamo! She’s really gotten behind the brewpub idea and is actively investigating the community-supported funding angle with us. She thought we should have another, closer, look at the CEDIF model (Community Economic Development Investment Fund, discussed on this blog a while back along with Community Supported Restaurants), and recently arranged a meeting for the three of us with the CEO of the investment group behind The Port Pub, a community owned “gastropub” in Port Williams (which we visited once earlier this spring and have also discussed here), to talk about their experience setting up the CEDIF that raised $1.2 million to fund their start-up.

Bitters are Best! Notes from a beer tasting

The aftermath...

Hi everybody, before we get to the tasting I just want to mention that all may not be lost on the downtown brewpub location front! It’s incredible, for the past month we’ve been feeling rather stuck, that we had completely exhausted all the options for a decent location, and that no matter how much effort we put into this the horizons continue to look more like brick walls. And then one week later, and I won’t say much more than this (I’m hoping I’m not already jinxing us by saying anything at all), we are feeling a seismic sort of shift in the universal alignment and #boom# a host of new possibilities appear! Our hopes are cautiously renewed, and with them comes renewed energy and optimism. Cross your fingers for us, please…