Karma Comes In 5 Barrels...

To beer enthusiasts around the country, Ft. Collins, CO has been one of the greatest success stories in craft brewing. From the early and humble beginnings of New Belgium, to the newest addition of Horsetooth Brewing, the craft brewing spirit is alive and well in NoCo.

Among the best brewers in the nation, Odell Brewing Company can certainly hold their own. I still remember hanging out at Lucky Joe's in Old Town a few years ago, trying the latest and greatest from Odell's. That particular memory was attached to their 5 Barrel Pale Ale. What a great beer, I though! It's still one of my personal favorites, and it's a memory that I will never forget.

Aptly named, the 5 Barrel Pale Ale had its beginnings in Odell's 5 barrel brewing system. While the system was used for all their pilot beers in their tasting room, the 5 barrel proudly stands out as being named after the system it was initially brewed on.

Odell has since upgraded their pilot system, and in early August, decided to put the 5 barrel system up for sale. It was with luck that we saw the posting on ProBrewer.com, and thanks to the help and support from Doug Odell, that we are able to acquire the original 5 barrel system from Odell Brewing Company.

We are proud to be designing the rest of our brewhouse around perhaps the most well known system in craft brewing, and a piece of Colorado brewing history. Let's raise a glass for Doug at Odell Brewing Company, and here's to good karma!

In the beginning...(part 2)

As promised, part two of our saga. It's been a long time coming, and we hope you enjoy our story as much as we have living it.

It's now late January, and (i.e.) brewing company has just gotten underway. So now we have a business name, and have figured out that we are actually decent at brew beer...now what? Why, we will make more tasty beers, of course! Our First Attempt turned out well, but it was based on an extract recipe, and we felt that it was missing something. Further research paved way for us to brew with the time honed method of all grain brewing.

All grain brewing, depending on who you ask, is the holy grail of brewing processes. You have incredible control over your recipe, are not limited to certain ingredients, and that freedom really lets you be creative with the final product. On our third batch ever, in mid Feburary, we brewed our first all grain batch of beer. It was a recipe we came up with that's based on recipes available on Beer Tools.com, and it was to be an IPA.

As anyone who has ever tried their hands on brewing at home will tell you, the equipment makes a huge difference in being able to control the 1000s of variables during the brewing process. All grain brewing introduces a whole new set of metrics that has a cascading effect as the process moves along. We found out the hard way that without planning and knowing the equipment, you will have a lot of fun cleaning up spilled wort (and mostly boiling hot, I might add) off the porch, kitchen floor, carpet, and shoes.

After the nearly 10 hours of work was complete, we had a 6 gallon carboy mostly filled with wort that, truthfully, tasted and smelled pretty good. Now the waiting begins. By the end of the three weeks had passed for the fermentation and conditioning phases, we bottled our first all grain batch of beer. It's mid March, and we're feeling pretty good about our first "real" batch of beer, and we can't wait for people to try it out.

The opportunity came in late march at a co-worker's birthday party in the Lookout Mountain area. We went to the party toting a 12 pack of our new IPA and were not quite sure what to expect. Will people like the beer? Will people tell us we shouldn't quit our day jobs? Since we're at a party where we don't really know anybody, we're bracing ourselves for whatever comes our way, realizing that at the very least, the feedback will be honest. At the end, our fears were unfounded. Everyone who tried our beer loved the taste, and all the comments we received were positive and helpful. From this party, we made a few important contacts who will become integral to setting up the brewery.

One important piece of feedback we got was the perception of the name, (i.e) brewing company. After some constructive comments, we decided to go back to the drawing board and come up with a business name that resonates with beer afficiandos and the general public alike. We needed a business name that is more than a name. We needed something we can build a brand from, and not the other way around.

In late April, our (new) official name was registered as a domain name, and we decided on CAUTION: Brewing Company. The name reflects our personalities, the philosophy behind our brews, and the brand direction we're taking. We have set out to run a brewery with gusto, throwing caution to the wind in how the beer tastes and introduce craft beers to a new generation of people who think about the beers they drink instead of what the advertisers tell us to drink.

CAUTION: Brewing Company was born, we cannot be more proud of what we have accomplished so far, and this is only the beginning.

Slackers

We'll admit it. We're slacking a bit on the blog. It's been over a month since our last update....but why? Truth is, we have big news brewing. Where to start...:

1. We're finalizing recipes for our release beers and scheduling brew times to get ready for our October 17th pre-launch/tasting party, Evite coming soon.

2. CAUTION: Brewing Company, LLC was registered as a trademark earlier this month.

3. We received a silver (33/50) for our wild rice blonde ale at the AHA Homebrew contest.

4. Found out that our brewpup, Starfox (pic coming soon), loves the brewery since he gets to lick up the spilt wort.

5. A spice (5, actually) that has never been in a beer is being brewed as a lager right now.

And that's just the short of it. I'll be posting up the 2nd half of our story in the next couple of days, keep your eyes on the blog!

Partner up!

Thomas Edison said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"...

...This definitely holds true when starting your own brewery. You learn 99% from trial and error and there is a LOT of hard work involved!

I had one of my co-workers recently approach me to ask me how I make beer. I told him to look it up...I really didn't have the time or patience to give him the run-down on the entire process. He then started firing off questions at me that only lead to more questions, some of which I did not care to answer. Really I just wanted this numskull out of my office. He asked if I could go with him to a local brew store called the "Brew Hut" in Aurora (by the way, awesome folk there...very helpful), but I told him that I didn't have the time to "babysit" him and that he should go there on his own if he was really serious about making beer. I also told him this,

"If you are serious about making beer, whether it's for a hobby or for a future business endeavor, find yourself a good partner".

Brewing is NOT a one-man job. It takes at least 2 people (if not an entire village) to make a decent beer. There is a lot of back-and-forth, playing off of ideas, getting a second opinion, handing over of bottles, cleaners, hoses, measuring instruments....etc. The idea of one person doing the entire process on their own is as absurd as a surgeon performing open-heart without a nurse.

I will pass on this advice to anyone serious about making beer: "Partner UP"!

Bathroom Lightbulb

I always have my greatest ideas in the bathroom. If I was a cartoon character, there would be a glowing light bulb above whichever stall I am in at the time. That's sort of how this whole thing started....

Danny and I were taking a tour of the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins at the beginning of this year. After listening to the guide talk about the start up of their company and the shared passion for beer of its founders, I became so excited I had to run to the restroom. As I was sitting in the second stall at the brewery, I had an epitome...the little light bulb lit up so bright I thought it would burst. I thought, "We could do this!...No...we SHOULD do this!"

When I came skipping out of the "little lady's room", Danny and I looked at each other and he asked, "You know what I'm thinking?"

I immediately responded, "We should turn your basement into a brewery?"

He said, "Yes!...Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

I said, "Yes I am!"

At least that's how I remember the story...Of course this was after a few too many samples of New Belgium's delicious beers. I am told that my short term memory is not the greatest when I've been drinking.

At least we all know that great minds think alike. And when two great minds are inspired simultaneously...LOOK OUT WORLD!

In the beginning...(part 1)

...we had this crazy idea. We wanted to start a brewery. A brewery that creates the beers we would like to drink, a brewery not satisfied with the status quo, a brewery built on passion and the unquenchable thirst for unique beers.

The idea for CAUTION: Brewing Company started during a tour at New Belgium Brewery in Ft. Collins, CO on January 2nd, 2009. Funny thing was, it wasn't during the tour when we had the idea. Betty and I both had the same thought when we're in the bathroom *after* the tour was over. Somehow, the same lightning bolt had struck both our beer soaked brains and CAUTION: Brewing Company was born right then and there. Well....kind of.

Let's step back through our brief history and bring everything up to date, shall we?

Soon after the weekend was over, we started research on the Interwebs on how to brew beer. As it turns out, there is an entire industry devoted to homebrewing. Some homebrewers are rather successful at it, too. Competitions, clubs, and stores are everywhere you look, and we found out that we have the resources nearby to help us start making beer. I trekked to the closest homebrew store, Beer At Home, and asked the fated question that got this entire adventure underway: "So, I'd like to brew up some beer. Where do I start?".

Before you know it, I've loaded my car up with things that would be right at home in a high school chemistry lab. Carboys, thermometers, hydrometers, hoses, clamps, yeast, barley, buckets, airlocks, books, brushes, caps, sugar, malt extract...whew! Diving head first into something new has never been so much fun! Armed with supplies and instructions, we set out to make our first batch of beer on the evening of January 17th.

We named our first batch First Attempt (for obvious reasons) in my kitchen. While the end result wasn't too bad, we also missed our mark with what we're trying to make. The kit stated that this was to be an American Amber. Well, it turned out hoppier than it was supposed to be and was more an IPA by taste. To be honest, we were still pretty proud of our first try at this brewing thing. The beer style wasn't what we were shooting for, but it sure tasted pretty darn good.

After figuring out our mistakes during the brewing process, we decided that we could actually get good at this beer brewing thing once we do some fine tuning. So we started brainstorming ideas for a brewery. Being complete nerds ourselves, we thought it would be a pretty good idea to put a bit of ourselves into our venture. After all, if we're passionate about the things we do, it should go pretty well with the brewery, right?

One of our first brainstorming sessions resulted in the creation of (i.e.) brewing company. (i.e) stands for "id est", or latin for "this is". In our minds, however, 'i' would stand for ingenuity, and 'e' for engineering. Not being the most politically correct people on the planet, we figured our beers would stand for German Ingenuity and Asian Engineering. We would be paying homage to our ethnic backgrounds....in a strange kind of way.

The end result of one successful batch of beer (it was at least tasty), a few brainstorming sessions, and a couple of hours on the computer later, we came up the business card and logo seen above. The domain name was registered on January 23rd, email addresses were setup, and (i.e.) brewing company was born.

continued in part 2...

A toast

I can't think of the right things to say on this, our first blog. Really.

I can start like every blog in the world with an introduction about us, our ideas, or the trials and tribulations we've endlessly toiled over. Then I thought, what better way to start this off than with a toast? A fitting beginning for the start of a new brewery, I must say.

So, shamelessly lifted from an Apple Computer Inc. ad campaign, let's raise our glasses for a toast:

Here's to the Crazy Ones.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing that you can't do, is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think

that they can change the world,

are the ones who do.

-- aired on September 28th, 1997