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