Slackers

Soooo... It's been four months since our last post!! I know we are seriously slacking on keeping you updated.  Fortunately, we have a big following on Facebook and Twitter/ Instagram are on the rise and we have been updating them regularly.

What's been going on at Rushing Duck? Well we are distributing  beer to bars and our tasting room is now open Saturdays 12-5p.  Thanks to all of you our beer has been getting great reviews and has been selling. We are still only in the Hudson Valley and loving it!

We have four different beers now; Our Beanhead Coffee Porter (that won the Hudson Valley Beer Cup), Naysayer Pale Ale, Nimptopsical Ale, and our winter seasonal Ded Moroz Russian Imperial Stout.  Dan is still the only one working full time at the brewery.  He's been working extremely hard to make the best beer he possibly can.  I have been doing the office work, which I love, and occasionally deliveries and keg cleaning.  I've learned never to wear heels to the brewery or to sales meetings because I never know when I will be lugging a keg behind me.

We've have some coverage in the media that has helped us tremendously.  The local newspaper and bloggers are getting the word out about Rushing Duck and we can not be more appreciative.  We rely on social media and traditional media to get the work out because are marketing budget is still $0.  We also thank you for liking and sharing our posts!

I think I've touched on all the big news, like being opened and all! What's next for RD? Barrel-aged beer!! Dan and I are really going to blog from now on, promise, maybe.

If you haven't already follow us @rushingduck on Twitter/ Instagram and at www.facebook/rushingduck.com

Nikki

Almost There!!

Hey Everyone, It’s Nikki again! I just wanted to update you on our progress over the past few weeks.  If you have been following us on Facebook you probably know that we have been working our behinds off to get you beer. So here are some facts to keep you 100% in the know:

1)      We are not opened to the public yet.  We need to finish up our tasting room to look all pretty for you to come relax and have some samples.  We also have to get it inspected and, like everything, this takes time.

2)      We are not a bar/ brewpub.  We can give out samples to you, but we cannot sell pints or food.  Beer will be available to go and we will update you on the bars that are carrying our beers! A community board will be up in the brewery to allow you to find local places that you can eat and have a few pints of RD beer :).

3)      We are draft only to start.  No bottles just yet.

4)      We are not a big brewery.  In time Rushing Duck plans on expanding; however, in the immediate future we will remain small and only available in the Hudson Valley.  We like it here and have experienced an overwhelming amount of support from our local community.  Our intentions are to provide beer for our local bars and shops and not overextend our distribution into markets that we are not able to supply.  The Hudson Valley rocks!

Ok, enough with the boring stuff! Naysayer Pale Ale is brewed and ready to walk out the door.  We are just waiting on some more approvals from the state and we can finally be in bars.  We will let you know what’s going on! Thanks for the support.  Here is a sneak peek at our tasting room! --Nikki

Up and Running

We received the last of our permits on Fri (7/20) and brewed the first batches of beer on the Saturday and Sunday, which transformed us from a warehouse with a ton of stainless steel and a lot of debt to an actual functioning brewery!

For the 1^st batches we decided to brew Naysayer Pale Ale. Naysayer is going to skirt the line between American Pale Ale and a West Coast IPA. It will have a nice pungent hoppiness that you’d find in an IPA, but 5.2% abv and only 35 IBUs like a drinkable Pale Ale. I don’t really care for guidelines, though, so I really don’t care what “style” it fits into as long as it tastes good. The reason we chose it as our first batch is that it has a relatively low starting gravity of 12.6°Plato, which makes it an ideal beer to generate yeast for the rest of our beers.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that the first brew went all that smoothly, but it did in fact get the beer in the tank. The first brew on Saturday, we ran into hiccups with just about every piece of equipment we used, which resulted in a 14+ hr day for me and an overnight “campout” at the brewery for my dad so that he could make sure the glycol chiller worked properly. Day two went much, much better. Everything worked as it should, I was able to hit all my specs, and I was in and out of the brewery in half the time that Saturday took. The end result – my current soundtrack for writing this blog is the bubbling of the fermenter as it happily turns sugar into alcohol and the gentle hum of pumps and compressors working exactly as they should.

Later in the week we get back to brewing with more Naysayer as well as our Beanhead Coffee Porter, followed next week by a Bourbon barrel aged barleywine called Dog’s Bollocks.

Drinking fresh Rushing Duck beer is right around the corner!

P.S Help us reach our goal of $10,000 on Kickstarter to start our barrel aging program at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513672390/barrel-aging-at-rushing-duck-brewing-company! Thanks!

Nikki Gets to Blog!

Hey Everyone! I am Nikki the Pro Bono Sales Rep/ Day Laborer/ Dan’s Moral Support/Whatever clever title that involves getting Rushing Duck up and running. I don’t know why, but Dan gave me the freedom to write on his blog to let you know what is going on with RD.  If you feel like we have been slacking with our social media and our blog, we have, and it’s not because we don’t love you, appreciate your support or want to inform you of all the things we do, it is simply because weeks are flying by and I am constantly losing track of time and Dan (who works 12 hour days every day, gross).   Here’s the update:

So, what’s been going on at Rushing Duck behind the scenes of the enchanting peachy/ pink exterior walls of our building?  I can tell you it is exciting!! Dan, Tony (our engineer/slave), Les (Dan’s Dad/Chief) and I (every so often) have been getting together the brewing side of RD so that we can start making that beer that we want you to have so badly.  It’s been going great! In fact, Dan did a water brew to make sure we didn’t mess things up too badly on that side and it was successful.  Wednesday July 11, 2012 was the first time any of us felt somewhat relaxed in a long time.  Anyway, there is still work to do in the tasting room.  If you happened to have walked in (We are not open yet) in the last couple weeks you probably saw us sweating profusely and building a room for you to hang out in or saw me falling through the ceiling (yes, that happened).  The tasting room will be open as soon as we have beer for you to drink.

As you read above, I am not the ideal construction worker and tend to think breaking stuff is more fun than building stuff (you know it is). I have been cast off the RD Island most days and into your local bars/restaurants/ growler stores around Hudson Valley talking to owners/ managers about our beers.  It has been crazy traveling around the area trying to hit up every place that serves craft beer a week (I can only go out once a week), but everyone seems to be super excited about our beers! If you are in the Hudson Valley and want to plug us at your local craft beer bar I would have no objections (sad plug I know).  

Finally, we are getting shipments weekly with funstuff like growlers, glassware, hops, grain, kegs, and other materials to get RD functional within the next couple weeks.  Thank you for being so patient with us and supportive of us while we get things off the ground! Nikki

Home Stretch?

So what’s new? The answer is lots!

The good news is that by this time next month I expect to have beer in the fermenters. The bad news is that there is still a ton to do before that happens.

On the construction front, we are starting to install equipment. The fermenters are currently getting piped in to the glycol chiller which controls the temperature of the fermenting beer. Also, our brewhouse (which is heated with electrical elements) is getting assembled, piped, and tied in with our electrical service.

On the marketing front we are currently pounding the pavement trying to get our name out. We’ve been going to local bars/restaurants to let them know that we should be on tap at their establishments, and we’ve also been contacting local press to try and garner some free press. In addition to that, we also just met with our artist again (Nick at Dead Seagull) to get some drafts put together for the individual labels of our beers. It was a fun meeting. I’m already really excited about the names/stories behind our beers, and it was even more exciting to brainstorm the illustrations and word-types to go along with the names. In the coming weeks we’ll probably be revealing some of the names and hopefully the graphics of our beers.

On the licensing front, the government is being…well the government. In theory we should be hearing back any day from both the state and federal governments telling us that we either need to provide more documents or that we can brew when we’re ready. However, I’ve learned that both agents responsible for our respective applications only work four days a week, and when they do work it seems like it takes at least six phone calls from me just to get one returned. On top of that, we’re running into some more red tape with the local government.

I’m sticking with big picture thinking, though. Those hang ups should be relatively painless in the long run. To end on a positive note, I’ll remind you that WE ARE ABOUT A MONTH AWAY FROM BREWING!!!

        - Dan

Post CBC

We (Nikki and I) got back from the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego last week. It was an amazing trip! I say that because it was as much a vacation as it was a great learning experience. Because of that, I think I’ll break it down from both perspectives…

Vacation: The best part of the whole trip was amazing beer available at all times…literally all the time. We would start the day at 10 or 11 o’clock and there would be beer available that would be so awesome that it would make the average beer geek blush. Even the events away from the conference were amazing. We got personal tours that very few people of the general public would ever get to see. For example, we got to check out the brand new White Labs yeast facility where many craft breweries get their yeast. We also got to take a tour of the absolutely gorgeous new Stone Brewing Company “complex” that will be open near the San Diego Airport in early 2013.

Business: First of all we met a ton of great people, both from the local New York scene and in general. There were a lot of people that were very supportive of Rushing Duck, so for that a gigantic THANKS! Besides that, we actually had a ton of work to do making contacts for all of the equipment and marketing needs that we’ve been neglecting until now. Lastly, the seminars were completely invaluable. They spanned the gamut from technical to philosophical. I think the biggest thing I picked up, though, is that everyone seems to say that at our size, our biggest problem will probably be not being able to sell beer fast enough….You cannot imagine how much I hope that that’s our biggest issue!

That’s it for now, but lots of updates to come. We in the middle of upgrading our electrical service, building our tasting room, and we are getting scary close to hearing back from the government on our alcohol licenses.

-          Dan

Rushing Duck Logo

If you’ve looked on our Facebook page recently you might have seen our logo was finally posted (it's also at the bottom of this post). It was done by Nick Penta. He is a very talented artist and he also happens to own Dead Seagull clothing company. I was hoping that it would have been done a while ago, but I really only have myself to blame for that. Being a newb to this whole thing, there are a lot of aspects of this that I had absolutely no knowledge of; getting our logo designed was one of them. I had no idea what the steps in the process were(brainstorming, going through multiple drafts, more brainstorming, getting a black and white version, more brainstorming, more drafts, ending with a final color logo), and therefore had no idea how long it’d take.  Regardless of my oversight, I couldn’t be happier with the logo. I think it does a great job of paying homage to the 1940-1950’s story behind our name, but still looking modern and fun. Hope you all like it too. I’m not sure how many people actually read this, but we will be printing t-shirts soon (also done by Nick at Dead Seagull). We’ll keep you updated on that.

So with that issue resolved, we move right on to the next. We need to start thinking about getting individual beer labels designed. It seems like we have a lot of time being that we are still about two months away from selling beer, but being that the labels need government approval we’re actually behind on that too. The fun never ends.

I’d like to write a bit more, but I’m actually in a rush. I desperately need or organize myself and pack for the Craft Brewer’s Conference that I’m leaving for tomorrow morning. For the next five days I’ll be in San Diego attending brewing lectures, making contacts with other brewers and suppliers, and drinking a lot of Southern California’s finest beer. Be jealous.

 - Dan

 

Overdue Update

So I’m very aware of the fact that I’ve been completely neglectful of this blog. There are a bunch of reasons as to why. For the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of back-breaking manual labor in the brewery that was leaving me completely exhausted at the end of the day and in no mood to write. We were cutting and breaking concrete so that we could have floor drains put in that would allow for proper drainage (I’m currently drooling at the idea of being able to spill liquid on the floor and having it head towards a drain without having to be vacuumed or squeegeed – ask any brewer, they’ll understand). Anyway, that process took the better part of three weeks. The drains are being installed as I write this by a qualified professional.

There were so many other things going on at the brewery at that time that when I finally did get time to write an update I was overwhelmed with all the different things that needed mentioning. What I decided to do so as to avoid a novel length blog post is just to give the cliffs notes version, and maybe I’ll elaborate on some of the bigger things later…

-          On 3/23 we purchased our glycol chiller to regulate temperature for all of our fermenting beer, and we also bought a used walk-in cooler to store packaged/kegged beer.

-          During the week of 3/26 we submitted applications to the state and federal governments so that we can legally manufacture beer. This means we are +/- 3 months from being open! (my stomach just did flips from writing that last sentence)

-          The 15bbl brite tank we purchased back in November has been completed and is on a truck probably somewhere in middle-America on its way to our brewery.

-          Floor drains (as mentioned above) are about 1-2 weeks from being finished.

-          I’ve seen the final black and white version of the Rushing Duck logo and it looks awesome. We’re still finalizing some color options, but it’s just around the corner.

-          I will be signing a lease agreement today to reserve brand new kegs to be delivered in a couple months.

-          Lots more purchases, lots more projects

That’s about it for now. I’ll try to be more up to date on things as they come up…but don’t hold me to it.

-          Dan

Who Needs Lawyers

So what’s new at Rushing Duck? We’re still working on a lot of things. Unfortunately that means lots of loose ends and unfinished projects, which is very frustrating. I’ll start sleeping through the night again once we can start getting some of these things completed. The biggest issue right now is working towards getting licensed. We were going to give the forms to a lawyer to fill out to make sure everything is done correctly, but the quote we received from the law firm to do this was well out of our budget. Instead we’re gonna try and tackle it ourselves. After going over it a ton, we think we’ve got things pretty well laid out and organized, so hopefully we can file for the licenses in the next week or so.

To balance out all of that tedious paperwork we decided that we should get some fun work mixed in to keep us all sane. We’ve started taking small steps in marketing and sales in the Hudson Valley area. What that really translates to is visiting bars/restaurants/growler shops that serve craft beer and getting a meal, some good beer, and talking about Rushing Duck to anyone that will listen. We’ve also been talking to and visiting a lot of other brewers in the general area to pick their brains about starting up, checking out the layout of the breweries, and of course drinking delicious beer. Like I said, this is the fun part.

               

              -   Dan