cider and the downfall of tim tebow

Before I go into anything about cider, let me first say how much pleasure I got watching the embarrassment of an offensivive effort that was put forth by tim tebow and the broncos.  Ben has been bathing in tebow all year and I've had to listen to him talk non-stop about how all tebow does is win.  I guess it's over now and I couldn't be more pleased.

A lot of our efforts recently have been on locking down a plan for canning our cider.  We have gotten a lot of positive reviews, along with people asking where they can get our cider in stores.  We're working to make that happen.  I might have mentioned this before, but there is a law that says beer and cider can't be packaged in the same facility.  It doesn't make any sense, and prevents us from making our cider and shipping it to a packaging facility.  We have to do it all ourselves, which is a bit of a change in our plans, however, it is not such a bad thing to have the ability to control every aspect as the liquid goes from fresh-pressed sweet cider to a finished hard cider in a six-pack.

To finish off the post this week, and all future posts I suppose, I'll be giving some kind of personal insight into our lives.  We went to the pawn shop the other day and bought Madden '10 for $5 (which seems like a preposterously good deal).  Needless to say, I am the champ right now (and to Ben and Tyler, when you read this: "yes, no you won't, and I'll do it as the Rams"), but the real story is how awful Ben is at football video games.  I can't describe how lopsided our life record is.  From when we met in high school and I was spanking him in ESPN 2K5 during "senior english thesis writing sessions" I have been beating him mercilessly into the ground.  Must be why he likes tebow; empathy.

I caught some flack for making fun of Tyler and Ben last week and not mentioning myself.  I thought about it, but I'm the writer, so instead I'll include a pleasant picture of myself riding a bicycle 5 years ago.  Enjoy your week:

First Pint

Pretty monumental week for us.  We finished kegging our first run and sold about 25 kegs each to Pine State and Nappi.  We then went into Mainely Brews to have our first cider on tap.  I can safely say we were all really nervous.  We didn't expect any problems, but never having kegged anything before, we were hoping the keg didn't have just foam, or explode or anything.  No explosions, and the cider came out great.  We'll update our website with all the places you can get Downeast on tap.  We have a bunch of verbal commitments, but they have to finish the barrels that are in place before they put us on, so you should see a much more complete list in the next couple of weeks.  If you want to put us on tap at your bar/restaurant just give any of us a call, email, or just comment on the blog.

As for the behind the scenes kind of stuff, our roles are starting to change slightly.  The name of the game is selling.  Tyler is our head of sales, so he does most of the selling, but with this being a pretty crucial time to sell, both Ben and I are also out on the road.  Selling is a wild beast.  It's exciting, depressing, scary, fun, but never boring.  I never thought of myself being a salesman, but here I am going door to door cold-selling cider.  It's kind of weird because you know that a lot of people are annoyed with you, but it's your job to ignore that.  You have to have thick skin because not only can you go through really long bouts of rejection, but some of the owners can be less than welcoming.

Funny story about my first sales trip.  I went to a town which I'll call town X, so as not to offend anyone who might be from there.  Ben told me town X was really nice (there was a company with the same name that made really nice water vessels, so he assumed the town was nice as well).  As you could guess, town X was not the kind of place that a premium local hard cider was going to gain traction.  Imagine the reception you might get trying sell Ferrari's door to door in rural Mississippi.  Not quite as extreme, but you get the idea.  I established a principal about bars during the day though.  As opposed to the traditional theory that the nicer the bar, the more crowded it'll be, the opposite applies to bars in the morning.  The seedier the joint, the more crowded it will be.  Maybe a tip for those of you with nice bars that are having trouble grabbing onto that mid-morning crew: hang up a false-front with peeling paint, busted windows, and burnt out lights and you could become a day-night powerhouse.

Finally, fun facts this week to learn about Ben and Tyler.  Ben doesn't like onion rings.  He says it's because he doesn't like when you bite into the ring and the onion comes out without the fried part, but I don't know why he doesn't either eat the whole thing in one bite, or just bite down with a sense of purpose to make sure there's a clean separation, like a normal person.  As for Tyler, I don't know if I'm making too big a deal of this, but I used the word "tom-foolery" the other day and he had no idea what I was talking about.  How do you make it 23 years without coming across tom-foolery?  Both very bizarre to me.

End of the Year

Quick update here.  We have officially hit the pavement selling and hit the tanks brewing (technically we are fermenting, which is different than the brewing process, but I think brewing sounds better).  We have a bunch of accounts who have agreed to take us on, including a few locally here in Waterville, such as Mainely Brews, The Point After, and tentatively 18 Below Raw Bar and You Know Who's Pub.  In Portland we will be in Nosh and Brian Boru's with certainty, and a bunch of other tentative yes's, and up at Sugarloaf we will be in The Bag, and possibly The Rack.  We'll keep you posted on all the locations when we get them, most likely somewhere on our website.

In cider news, we are putting the finishing touches on our first full scale batch.  It is a lot longer process than I had anticipated.  I planned on throwing the cider in the tanks, grabbing dinner, and catching a 730 movie.  Six hours later we were eating leftover food from Sue in the mill trying to get everything right.  The hardest part about moving the cider from tank to tank is how much cleaning is involved.  Every time a tank is cleared we have to clean it with cleaning solution followed by sanitizing solution.  Being new at it, we are really slow and tentative because we don't want to make a $5000 mistake, which would be really easy to do.

Quick side story about cleaning solution.  Never ever ever touch highly concentrated cleaning solution....We needed to get a gallon out of a full barrel and thought we should siphon it.  Really dumb idea.  I stuck around a second too long and it touched my lips and tongue.  It felt like something was burning through my mouth.  I rinsed it out for a while and I'm alive, but lesson learned.  Don't siphon chemicals with your mouth.

Pretty soon we'll be doing some launch parties and other events at various restaurants/bars.  We'll let everyone know when and where if you want to come by and drink some cider. 

See you next year.  Have a fun new years eve, don't drive, and keep tabs on your pants at all times.

Christmas "break"

So we're all about to head out for what we all keep calling Christmas break, like we're in school or something.  Unfortunately this is real life now, and we are only taking 1 day off.  Its been an exhausting couple of days, and now that we're getting really close to launching, it was time to send out some press releases.  We got a healthy amount of responses which was pretty cool. 

First, I got a call from Ray Richardson, who does a talk show on WLOB 1310.  We are going to be a guest on his show next week, and we were all really excited about getting some media coverage.  I was feeling nervous about having to go on live radio in less than a week.  Not long after that, I got some emails from Fox 23 in Portland, and they wanted us on the show the next morning.  I had said yes to that, and about 1 minute later I got another call from TV 5 in Bangor, which I believe is the CBS affiliate, about them coming to the mill to shoot some video for a segment.  A whole stream of publication offers also were coming in, and it was pretty hectic.

After I had some time to think, I realized that we were going to be on live TV in less than 24 hours.  None of us have been on TV before, let alone live TV.  I got less than 3 hours of sleep last night because I was so nervous.  My mind was going a mile a minute with all the possibilities of what could go right and wrong.  We woke up wicked early and headed to Portland for the Fox gig.  We were sitting in the waiting area for the studio watching the TV, and kept seeing promos for our segment, which was cool, but my heart was pounding the whole time.  We finally got taken into the production studio which was a really interesting place.  Watching the news guys do their thing from behind the cameras was cool, and it really makes you appreciate how hard of a job they have.  We got wired up and sat in the chairs.  There were cameras, lights, teleprompters, and monitors that were hard to avoid looking at, and at that point everything became kind of a blur.  The only thing I really remember was being vividly aware of every movement I made.  I could also feel my heart pounding.  After a Will Ferrell-like blackout (http://movieclips.com/2gfPm-old-school-movie-thats-the-way-you-debate/), it was a relief to be done, and funny to think about how much time and worry went into less than 5 minutes of TV (I put the link on facebook.com/downeastcider). We watched it, and all in all we were pleased.  We definitely didn't hit a home run, but for a first time attempt without any huge mistakes, we were happy with the outcome. 

After driving back to Waterville we headed to the mill for the TV 5 video session.  This was much easier because it wasn't live.  It should air sometime next week, we'll post it when it comes out.  It was still a little awkward in front of the cameras, but we were a little more at ease knowing if we messed up we could just start over. 

Now we're taking care of some odds and ends before heading to our respected necks of the woods for Christmas (which, for the first time, I will be taking part in at the Hempton's, I'm so sorry Moses).  Next week will be really busy, I'll try to post when we're going to be on TV/radio/magazine/newspaper so anyone who is interested can check us out, or at least amuse yourself with our amateur media abilities.

Enjoy your Holidays and travel safe.

Please help solve this internal dispute

Here is the situation:  After a discussion with Tyler last night, I (Ross) was saying that it must be very uncomfortable for girls wearing skinny jeans because those things have such poor maneuverability.  If there was cause to begin some sort of spontaneous athletic activity, they would have no chance.  Example - walking around, find ball, makeshift game of football erupts.  If you're wearing skinny pants, there's no chance you're gonna be competitive.  This got me thinking about yoga pants.  Totally different story.  Those puppies look like a dream.  You could do anything in those pants.  Relax, perform sport, yoga...the list of available actives is pretty much endless.

So obviously I have started wearing Hot Chillys around the apartment.  I feel like a cat.  Ben and Tyler, especially Ben, are jealous of my new-found athleticism, and are taking jabs at not only my attire, but the fact that I have been lighting candles in my room at night (I wont get into it, but I'm equally as passionate.  Actually I'll get into it a little.  Candles smell amazing, I smell mediocre, I don't see what's wrong with that).

The question I have here is who is right?  I am literally back flipping and somersaulting all around the apartment with ridiculous ease, suffering the drawbacks of not adhering to typical social norms of what men are supposed to wear as pants.  Ben and Tyler are stuck in the stagnant melancholy known as denim because they're afraid to step outside the box drawn by the folks at Gap and Levi's.

Please weigh in on facebook, I could use some support.  Or maybe what I'm doing is out of line, I don't know.

PS - Our first batch of cider destined for retail is in the tank as of yesterday.  This isn't really secondary news to the pants situation, but here we are in the post script...

procrastinating

I am writing this to get away from working for a minute.  We have spent pretty much every moment today starting around 9 am staring at computer screens.  That's pushing 14 hours of staring at this screen.  We have an application for a grant due tomorrow, and in keeping with traditional college form, we put it off to the last day.  The grant is up to $25,000 for an innovative technology in Maine.  I would share our innovation, but then we'd have to kill you, and we're generally peaceful...The bright side is that as opposed to school, we'd be getting paid 25 grand to work instead of paying 25 grand to work.  Imagine that.

Once this is behind us, we can go back to cider work.  The latest update is that we realized that custom tap handles take up to 3 months to make.  We needed them yesterday, which puts a hair over three months behind schedule.  Our only option right now is to buy some temporary handles that are pretty basic, leaving us a little frustrated.  If you have any amazing ideas, let us know on our facebook page.  In general we'd like to hear any feedback you have on any aspect of our company.  I know we're not really out there yet, but when we are, the best thing we can hear is feedback from you.  Questions, comments, concerns; anything is game.  If you want to tell me how my beard look though, my mom already told me; its ugly.  I know.

As a final note, we flexed our domestic muscles tonight made some brownies after dinner. Ghirardelli super fudge or something. delicious...Thanks Sue

Success where it counts, failure where it doesn't

Hey all.  Today was a monumental day of sorts.  We officially signed our first contract (above) with one of our Maine distributors (Nappi Distributors).  For those of you that don't know, the way sale of alcohol works is we sell to the distributor, who then delivers our product to on-premise (bars/restaurants) and off-premise (liquor stores/convenience stores) accounts to sell it.  They are the required, and very necessary, middleman in our business.  Nappi distributes in and around the Portland area, and tomorrow we will sign with Pine State Trading Company, who covers the rest of the state.  They are great people and we look forward to working with them.

We are very close to arriving at a final recipe for our first draft cider, and are within days of beginning our first large-scale batch.  We have come to an agreement on our label design, and should have a website up shortly.  If everything goes well, we will see our first tap line before the month is over.  We will be hosting promotional nights in various bars throughout Maine, and everyone we know is encouraged to come.  Chances are you're gonna get some free cider, free swag, and have a damn good time while you're at it.  When we are closer to these events, we will let everyone know via our facebook page (facebook.com/downeastcider), twitter (@downeastcider), and website (downeastcider.com).

On a more serious note, the crew, plus Mike, headed down to Mainely Brews (great food/drinks/atmosphere if you're ever in Waterville, Maine) for our weekly trivia night and posted our most embarrassing score yet, answering 10 out of 30 questions correct.  Apparently our lack of having a TV is catching up with us, as we definitely had the lowest score in the bar.  To add insult to injury, we couldn't finish our 10 "damn hot" wings, which resulted in complaining, whimpering, intense sweating, and quite possibly, a few tears (Ben said it was eye sweat...).

Regardless of these minor yet shameful setbacks, we continue to move forward, and we hope to be the largest producer of hard cider in Maine by the time the snow melts.  It is only with your help that we will make this dream a reality.  Come visit us sometime and have a cider on the house, you won't be disappointed.