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2015 -- WOOT!

1/1/2015

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Happy 2015

We’re so glad to be able to say we opened last year.  LAST YEAR!   From the grand old age of 8 months, I’d like to say, “WAHOOOO!”  It is such a relief to be through initial construction, the long uncertainty about the nuts and bolts of putting the system together and how it would work, and myriad other build-out, brewing, and pre-opening worries.  We have enormous empathy for the brewers (and we know a few) who are currently in that planning and building, pre-opening stage.  It’s not easy.  If you guys need a beer, come on over.  So while we have big question to address in 2015 and a lot more decisions to make,  and we’ll be even happier when we’re 5 and can look back on being 8 months old with fond memories of (hopefully distant) growing pains, may I just say that for a brewery, life post-opening is far, far more fulfilling on a day-to-day basis than life pre-opening.  Which is to say, though of course we tried to relish every moment, January 2015 is surely going to beat the heck out of January 2014.

As to growing pains, there are plenty.  We’re still pretty hit-or-miss on anticipating how quickly something will run out (e.g., Vanilla Caramel Double Cream Ale, or XL zip-up hoodies), on when the taproom will need 3 of us behind the bar, and on getting reporting done for all hundred entities that could benefit from it while we’re focused just on those that demand it.  We learn something new every single day.  We make mistakes.  If “real life” is any template, I’m sure the making mistakes part will continue indefinitely, though hopefully we won’t be repeating many.

For 2015, there are some giant question marks.  We’re looking at how to get some of our beer a bit further afield.  Is this the year to start bottling or canning?  How can we structure some deliveries to y’all’s favorite bars and restaurants in Denver, if they’re willing to give us a try, so that you Denverites who have been so good about supporting us in the taproom can try some of our new beers without the drive? How can we compost hop cones and paper towels economically?  Who invented liquid soap and why?  [Well, okay, that last was a question from The Sure Thing, not from us.  But still.  A lot of questions to address in 2015.]  And then, of course, the fun questions of what beers to brew and when, and the most important one:  how to ensure we maintain the awesome tastiness.

On this January 1 though, we’re trying to temporarily ignore all those queries and take a moment to be glad just to be a part of this community, to be meeting some pretty amazing and interesting folks in the taproom and in the trade, and to be grateful we have freshtastycraft beer in our lives.   We hope you guys are having the opportunity to do the same.

Cheers!

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Craft Beer Folk Is Good Folk

7/15/2014

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In the Google page for "bad blogging technique" I am surely currently featured.  The last time we posted was just after Earth Day in April.  Since then a lot has happened, including, but not limited to:  we opened.  May 1 was the day; since then it's been a tad tornadoish in our lives.   As an example of where we are in the tornado, I keep finding notes on my desk saying things like (these are real-live examples):  “Sean, ½ bbl, phone #XXX-XXXX,” and, “SAM!  First hop t-shirt!”  No idea.  I hope I haven’t left Sean in the lurch and Sam surely deserved a Facebook posting with that tshirt on.  There are also disturbing letters from the CO Dep’t of Labor saying we owe them $1.07.  How they know that our latest payment of unemployment insurance is $1.07 off is beyond me, but I guess I'm getting the checkbook out.

Before we get into random ramblings about life at Horse & Dragon, let's talk beer. We're playing some with it, which is, as you might imagine, fun.  Linsey brewed up a Dusseldorf altbier with Ryan Kopp of Pueblo's Steel City Brewers club for a pro-am entry at GABF this year.
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Ryan brewed a batch that Linsey thought was terrific for a homebrewing competition and the two of them have worked their magic to replicate this delicious German amber.  It's bubbling away happily in a fermenter right now (making a noise which I still avow is one of the best in the world):
We'll be serving that in the taproom come mid-August and it'll be served at GABF, too, so stay tuned.  [On the topic of GABF -- if you want tickets this year, be on-line to to try to buy them at 9:59 am on July 30 -- July 29 if you are an AHA or BA member!]

There're a couple of new brews in process and a pin and firkin in the big 'fridge with interesting ingredients that should provide a flavor sensation or two.  We'll be announcing on our FB page when we're tapping those, but for sure mark your calendars for July 23, 12-6, when one will be making an appearance on the dragon bar in the taproom for our First Annual Habitation Day Celebration.

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Now to the rambling.

Meeting people in the taproom and around town at the great craft beer bars & restaurants of FoCo has been terrific.  The number of people beercationing through Fort Collins who manage to find us tucked away back here on the airpark is a bit astounding.  Although most afternoons 12-4 looks like this:

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In the taproom, we've had fascinating conversations with a high school social studies teacher who is clearly inspiring but seemingly unimpressed by that and with technicians who do all manner of things I could never even begin to master.  A couple who just moved to Fort Collins delivered crab and ¼” thick bacon the day after we met them, and a family shared their craft beer treasures from a roadtrip with us just because they borrowed a growler from TimCo’s office one night.  Two people pointed out to us that our quote attributed to Plato (a Greek) is in Latin.  [We were aware of this and still attributed the phrase to Plato, but one of these folks has convinced us to take down the attribution and allow Anonymous the credit.]  We've talked with folks who are getting married and folks who are on their first date.  (Our daughters can tell you how fun it would be to have us in on the convo on your first date.)  A couple left $100 toward the next many pints in the taproom, and one day the "pay it forward" tip went on back through about 30 customers.  All of this adds up to the same thing:

CRAFT BEER FOLK IS GOOD FOLK.

As well, craft beer taprooms can be pretty magical places.

We've had some brewers and brewing teams stop in, which we love.  e.g.:  a couple of Left Hand Brewing Co. sets (missed a photo of the brew team -- sorry!):

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They have -- how cool is this? -- a stretch limo with a major bike rack on the back.
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The brewing team from Odell (to which we are forever indebted, as you probably know) also came by.  It's awesome to see brewers relax over a beer.
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The Liquid Poets Society had a meeting, which was pretty inspiring, in the taproom.
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And some long-time friends from previous lives (Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Colombia, Colorado, Canada -- good, beer-drinking folk all) have stopped in.
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Around town we've gotten the chance to check out some pretty darned amazing FoCo restaurants and bars.  In so doing I managed to kick our own keg -- twice -- at The Colorado Room.
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Hopefully if you're a photo-type you took a look at the opening weekend and first couple of weeks of albums on FB.  Since those, we've gotten some new fermenters in -- woot, 
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Those are still being piped, but soon we'll be able to experiment with a few more brews.  So the tank forest is looking a bit more populated these days, though there's still plenty of empty space left to fill:
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[Foresting the brewery.]
We co-hosted a breakfast stop for FoCo's Bike to Work Day.  Seeing all those bikers was muy fun, and we hope to be in the same spot next time.
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We also had good times at the Colorado Brewers' Festival (or at least:  those of us who weren't in the ICU that weekend -- ahem, TimCo -- had good times), where we loved seeing some people sporting H&D gear:
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We might have watched some World Cup games in the brewery.
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Jim Hogan, the fellow from Knotty Ginger who made our taproom furniture, and his wife welcomed a baby girl into their family.  We expect to see a lot of her on the throne chair at the big table in the coming years.

Linsey did this:

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...but that's a whole 'nother story.

We sold out of growlers for a minute there -- big no-no for those of us who love the growler culture -- and got some more in; we received some other fun merchandise that included Silipints -- awesome silicone pint "glasses" that travel anywhere, are almost indestructible, will hold your coffee in the morning and your #freshtastycraft beer in the afternoon (keeping it shaded so as not to let it skunk), and that really do keep your beer colder – but only if it takes you an hour to drink a beer (?!).

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We tested two pints for temperature at 1 minute, 15 minutes, and an hour.  At one minute they were the same temp, at 15 minutes the Silipint's beer was a degree colder, and at an hour the Silipint's beer was 8 degrees colder.  So if you're a slow sipper, run on out here and get you some.  But wait a couple of weeks, because we're temporarily sold out of those, too.  Whoever is doing our supply chain management for merch is clearly weak.

Next up:  commissioning those 30 bbl fermenters, heading to Beer Camp Across America (Rocky Mountain Region) on July 25, a beer dinner or two, celebrating Habitation Day, and trying to keep our feet under us.

We'll do laundry next year.

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The Best Time to Plant a Tree 

4/22/2014

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My grandfather always said that the best time to plant a tree is today and twenty years ago.  Here's how H&D started the week.
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Gitte showed up on Saturday to do some heavy lifting in the side yard.  (She also delivered us life-saving curry yesterday.)

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And then, here was Earth Day 2014 at the Horse & Dragon:
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Trees!  Hooray!  3 ginko bilobas to one day shade the Horse & Dragon Brewing Company's parking lot!



We had the perfect crew here working on this:   
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Before we even got to the digging, we borrowed Kim's truck.  A word to the wise:  beware of telling people starting a business that you own a truck...
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Shannon provided some landscaping expertise:
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Best sunhats ever?
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They function pretty well as a beer shade, too -- "Use the cone, avoid the skunk!" might be our beer festival mantra.
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TimCo channeling agricultural practices seen in Vietnam 15 years ago.
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Shannon giving thirsty spring pansies a drink, too.
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Be happy here, gingko trees!

Kyle and John at work on their brainchild.

Bike Tree -- just too awesome.
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Bike on out here and have a great, tasty, fresh craft beer with us!  Make every day Earth Day.
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Twenty years from now let's reconvene in the shade here and be grateful that we chose the best time to plant a tree.
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Cans vs. Bottles (or:  People Are a Moving Target)

11/4/2013

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Cans vs. Bottles [or:  People Are a Moving Target]

Over the weekend we had a Movember event here at our home.  It wasn’t an official Horse & Dragon thang, but, happily, a lot of craft beer lovers came by.  Movember, for those of you wanting to find out more, is a movement begun in Australia to raise awareness about and funds for prostate & testicular cancer research and men’s mental health issues and treatment.  As an outward sign of being part of this movement, some men form teams, shave their faces clean on November 1, and grow moustaches throughout the month.  Others, as we discovered, are passionately attached to their ‘staches (some of which have been growing since the 70’s or 80’s) and are afraid to attend an event where a razor might be present.

I did an abysmal job of photo-documenting this event.  For e.g., no photos of the 4 men who asked beforehand if they would be required to shave at the party.  [Answer:  no, and we think your current facial hair is magnificent, of course!]  Nor any of the Movember team TimCo is on.  Nor even of our party game/market research attempt to compare canned vs. bottled craft beer in a blind taste test, which was set up in our overcrowded garage and would have made for some great pix as our awesome servers navigated the maze out there.  Ouch!  I can only plead distraction by virtue of guests’ convo topics being too interesting.  Dumb it down, people!  We have pictures to take!

The week started with double this amount of ginger for making dinner for folks who came, so you know it was going to end well.

For the can v bottle taste-test, we bought 5 different types of beer that is sold in both of those packages (marketed as the same product; presumably the same recipe or close to it).  We had a team of awesome 21+-somethings pouring shotglasses of each type and offering them around for side-by-side taste testing.  And we had folks fill out a response sheet as to which they preferred of each style of beer.

The results of our snapshot, small-sample-size survey are:  people prefer bottles.  Or they prefer cans.  It doesn’t correlate with their age group or gender.   2 beers showed a swing toward one or the other – an IPA skewed toward cans, a chocolate stout toward bottle (but this was tainted by the fact that we unknowingly bought a widget can for the chocolate stout – “reading is hard!”).  The other 3 showed an almost even split between those who thought beer tasted better out of the can vs. those who preferred the bottled beer. 

The missing piece in our survey was asking what people thought they preferred.  Because really, as anyone who’s ever tried to pin down what motivates the social animal has discovered already, there’s no hard and fast rule for predicting how people are going to behave.  What we think would be a logical choice is obscured by so many confounding factors in social science that we cannot predict a given person’s behavior or selection.  I think it’s safe to say that in a situation like this and given a choice, people will choose what they think is better – not necessarily what is better by some objective – or semi-objective -- measure.  Their taste buds might tell them craft beer is tastier, or fresher, or more pleasing to all their senses when poured from a can, but when it comes right down to it and they’re standing in the liquor store aisle surveying the awesome array of tasty craft beer in front of them, they’ll reach for a bottle because they still believe bottled beer is better.  Or perhaps the reverse.  Changing those beliefs would take a lot more than one taste-testing (particularly if the results of that taste-testing are 50/50!). 

The happy upshot, if we choose to base the decision on this tiny survey, is:  consumer preference doesn’t yet dictate whether new breweries should bottle or can.  Craft beer tastes great out of either package, particularly if you have awesome people with whom to share it.  So gather some friends, people, and crack open a bottle.  Or a can.

[**I still vote for the wonderful reusable growler and legalizing satellite locations to fill them.  C’mon, Colorado!]

For anyone who participated or who is interested in specific results, here are some (below).

Favorite comments from the survey: 

On the “new to beer à Total Beer Geek” scale, someone gave herself a “1” and added, “but old to beer.”  Ripe for conversion!

A fellow who, I happen to know, brews quite amazing beer in his own brewery nearby (and brought several growlers to the fiesta, hooray), who rated himself a 6/7 on that same scale.  If he’s not a 7, who are we waiting for, Randy Mosher & Michael Jackson?  Love the humility, though!

A couple that filled out one form and explained O’s were for her, X’s for him.  They agreed on preference for 2 of the 5 beers.  Sounds like the recipe for a great relationship – agree on some things, but keep your own opinions, too.  And, of course, drink craft beer together.

Survey results:

(NB:  The total samples for each type of beer differs because we removed the people who noted “no preference” on any given beer.)

Overall:

Avery White Rascal (Belgian White) – 24 bottles, 25 cans

Breckendridge Avalanche (American Amber) – 19 bottles, 24 cans

Avery India Pale Ale (American IPA) – 23 bottles, 25 cans

Sierra Nevada Torpedo (American IPA) – 17 bottles, 27 cans

Young’s Double Chocolate Stout (Chocolate Stout) – 32 bottles, 20 cans

The following numbers indicate total # of samples (not # of people or beers).   [Yes, I realize the results for what people thought they would prefer would be a lot more interesting here than how they rated in the taste-test!  Next time….]

 “Newbies” (self-rated 1-3) vs. “Beer Geeks” (self-rated 4-7)

Newbies’ preference: 13 bottles, 13 cans

Beer Geeks’ preference: 104 bottles, 108 cans

Female vs. Male:

Females: 52 bottles, 53 cans

Males:  65 bottles, 68 cans

Ages

20’s – 42 bottles, 58 cans

30’s – 42 bottles:  34 cans

40’s – 16 bottles:  11 cans

50’s+ -- 17 bottles, 18 cans

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    ...is the dragon's wanderings through the world of craft beer. It may be hard to follow. This is best read with a great microbrew at hand!

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Horse & Dragon Brewing Company   ••  124 Racquette Drive  ••  Fort Collins, CO  80524  ••  970-689-8848
For bar/restaurant/liquor store beer orders, please contact Luke Margheim, 970-980-6564; LukeM@hdbrew.com