A Post Four Years In the Making

Four years! Wow. Lots have happened and we don't really know how to even catch up with all the stories we can write about. Maybe some day we'll get inspired to put memories to keyboard, but....yeah.

You might be saying, "slackers!" Hey, we've been busy running a brewery, opening a new brewery in a town that desperately needed one, cranking out beers and generally being immersed in Colorado's beerscape. We'll spend more time and write about beer and our adventures. In the meanwhile, this little post is just to say we'll write again soon. Time to get that follow button clicked.

#partywithcaution

BIG NEWS

After much anticipation, we just received city approval and will now commence the "construction phase" of our microbrewery in Denver.

We need to build a cold room, put in a long trough for drainage, and seal the concrete floors and the walls for caustic acid. Then we need to hook everything up with plumbing and electricity.

We are getting started this next week, and (since we are self-financed) are looking for contacts who will work for cheap + beer to help us out. We have a few already lined up, but if anyone knows of others who have helped build breweries before, please contact us at:

betty@cautionbrewingco.com

or...

danny@cautionbrewingco.com

We will host a big-bash-brew-bash once we're up and running!

Cheers,

Betty Fey

Brewmistress

Honorable mention...at a wedding?

We were proud to have been able to give the gift of our beer at a recent wedding of one of Danny's oldest and dearest friends. We brought 3 kegs of each of our blonde and amber ales with us, which both turned out to be a big hit with the guests.

The father of the bride favored our amber and hunted us down through the crowds to thank us personally for our wonderful, flavorful concoction. If this was not enough, he also raised a glass in our honor during his wedding speech, and blamed us preliminarily for the hangover he knew would be coming the next day from his indulgence.

His biggest question was "Where can I get more"?

To which we could only answer, "You can't...sorry...not yet anyways"!

After months of waiting for the city to decide on something that had not been allowed yet in Lakewood, they finally told us that, "No...you cannot start a commercial brewery in your garage...even if it was detached from the house". We know that others have been able to get around this national law, but we didn't want to argue the issue anymore after all of our cards had been already laid out on the table. We couldn't wait any longer to get our beer "out there".

That same week, we found a wonderfully tiny unit, barely big enough for our operation to get going...and then more waiting...

Last week we finally finished getting all of our forms in to the state - along with very expensive mechanical engineering drawings of our space - for approval. It's been going along well now, but there is still some waiting to be done before we can start the "construction & setup phase of our operation". We want to make sure that everything's a "go" before we pour more of our own money into something they suddenly decide can't be allowed in the space.

As most may not know, we are 100% self-financed, which always makes things slower at the get-go. Our goal is to stay small at first and then grow slowly but strongly, concentrating on the quality and not the quantity of our product.

For anyone who's been there, the red tape phase of starting a business is the worst! Wish us luck!

Betty

Brewmistress

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"!