1st quarter down, still in business

So it's been a long time since I've written anything.  There's two reasons for that.  One, we are really busy, which I'll expand upon later.   Second, there is a RAT amongst us.  Yes, a rat.  Whenever I share something that is borderline "appropriate" or "not public information", this person goes running to tell on us.  It's annoying because I'd prefer to share the entertaining stuff with all of you, but this person is ruining the fun for everyone.  I am asking you politely to stop.  Yes, we know who you are (your name has 5 letters). Please, just relax.

Anyways...back to hard cider.  Like I said, we've been really busy getting ready for launches in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  In addition, we're finalizing everything we need to launch our cans as well.  Oh yeah...we're adding a new flavor with all of this.  Add this to the normal routine of selling and producing cider for a rapidly growing list of accounts throughout Maine (http://downeastcider.com/locator.php), paying the bills, supplying accounts with swag, going to beer/cider festivals (http://www.kjonline.com/news/a-sampling-beyond-just-beer_2012-04-07.html) and promo nights, and you've got a busy crew.

That's not to say we're not having fun.  Almost everyone we've met along the way has been helpful and supportive.  We've been bothering anyone who will listen, trying to get advice, and have found a lot of open ears.  We see many of the Maine breweries at various events, and I can't say enough good things about them.  They have their own stuff going on but they're always willing to help us out with this or that.  The customers have also been great.  Thank you to everyone for your support, advice (both positive and negative are welcome), stories, and kind words.  As a small, and flexible company, we absolutely listen to anyone and everyone, and attempt to fulfill your wants and needs while sticking to our principals.  If you think we are failing, email or call Ben or Tyler and let them have an earful...I was on your side.

Random side note here.  We were at the Central Maine Brewers Festival last weekend and found ourselves in the booth next to Shipyard.  Their set-up obviously had a little more pizazz than ours, and we found ourselves with a bit of an inferiority complex.  To compensate, we had Ben's parents, who were coming down to the event, drop by our apartment and pick up a bunch of stuff.  In another impromptu decision we decided we should sell the stuff, which included mason jar mugs and tin wall tackers, at cost.  We were also giving away our cork coasters, which are kind of expensive, and realizing this, people were nabbing like 5 at a time (we eventually figured out that the less coasters we put on the table, the less likely people were to take a ton).  So in a bit of rolling thought right now, I think I'm going to attempt to set up an online store via facebook where you can purchase whatever POS (Point Of Sales, not the other POS) we have...pint glasses, mugs, tin tackers, shirts, etc...so keep an eye out if we ever get to that.

I think that covers the general gist of what we're up to right now.  If you're telling yourself, "I'm pretty sure that was just random streaming consciousness of seemingly non-connected ideas that followed absolutely ZERO organized, or otherwise thoughtfully planned direction" then I say to you:
you get exactly what we're doing right now.

Oh, and I usually end these by making fun of Ben and Tyler in some way, and I don't see why that has to stop so I thought I'd share a brief story about the three of us in college.  When we were thinking about starting a hard cider company, a fad known as Four Loko was taking the country, and college campuses, by storm.  For those that don't know, Four Loko was a 24 oz alcoholic beverage that had something to the tune of the equivalent of 4 beers and 4 coffees (still exists, but the caffeine was removed and the alcohol was toned down).  That company was started by a few Ohio State alumns, which sparked an "if they can do it we can do it" attitude (obviously we went in a slightly different direction with our product...).  Anyway, we only got to drink these infamous cans once, and I think I can safely speak for not only myself, but Ben, Tyler, our friends, the Bates College campus, and anyone who came withing striking distance of us on that fateful night, it was a good thing we only made one go of it.  Unfortunately this isn't the right forum for describing what happened that night in full detail, but I can show you a picture of us from the beginning of the night, when things were normal:


To say the night went downhill from here might be doing downhill an injustice. For the protection of those with "real jobs" I went with some high tech editing all over this photo.

PS - If you're wondering about the clothes, I'm not 100% sure.  I want to say it was Halloween, but in all honesty, I'm not sure it was.

Concentrate...We Hate You

One of our recent projects has been working on our second draft flavor.  We don't want to be a one trick pony, and have come up with a lot of good ideas, but executing them is a different story all together.  From the start we've changed our minds about a how to go about almost everything we've done.  One of the few things that has stayed constant is our rule about the cider.  Best ingredients, no shortcuts.  This means absolutely NO concentrate.  Apple concentrate is used by the majority of hard cider makers.  Obviously it's a lot cheaper to buy a whole bunch of apple concentrate and just add water.  But we're not serving astronauts, so the just add water method isn't our jam.  Even worse, the concentrate is usually imported from either China (cough, cough...WOn't say who) or that classic concentrate brought in from the "foothills of Italy" (cough, cough...ANd again I won't name names).

So back to our second flavor.  One of our ideas was to do a perry, or pear cider.  This was all well and good until we found out we can't get pears or pear juice for any sort of reasonable price this time of year.  Concentrate is plentiful and cheap, but it's against our morals.  Over and over we came up with great ideas, over and over we got shot down while concentrate is always there, poking its big, cheap, convenient head in the door to say hello.  WE WON'T DO IT!  Stop bothering us concentrate, nobody likes you!  So rest assured everyone, you will never, ever, ever find a drop of juice concentrate in any of our products, mark my words, no matter what whistle-pig and whomping willow are doing.

So what'll be our new product?  It's a secret.  I'll give the most vague hint I can think of, and if you guess, you not only deserve to know, but I think you've got a job offer waiting for you.  It involves Tyler and Celery.  Good Luck.

KEGSSSSS!!

Good news, aka our new kegs, arrived last Friday.  After about three weeks of enduring the debilitating stress of living day to day with our kegs, we more than doubled our cooperage, bringing our total number of kegs to 201.  This should be enough kegs to service about 50 accounts.  These are all kegs that we own.  From here on out we won't be purchasing kegs any more, but instead, renting them.  Like I have written before, you need about 4 kegs per account.  If we were to have cider in 200 accounts, we would need about 800 kegs, which at $100/keg, we'd be looking at $80,000 in kegs.  Obviously we don't have 80 grand to sink into kegs, which is why we're going to rent now.  We have 330 of these kegs coming, which will give us well over 500 kegs.  Very exciting...for us at least.

I'd like to reiterate our thanks to everyone who showed up at Brian Boru last Saturday.  It was great talking to everyone, and we appreciate your support and kind words about our cider.  You drank a ton of it too.  We had a great time and if you're the owner/manager/bartender/influential-because-of-the-massive-quantity-you-drink at a bar, and you want us to come do a promo night, give us a call or email and we'll come party like it's the spring of 08'

Side note: we promise not to actually party like it's the spring of '08, and for the matter, the entire duration of our 4 years in college.

Double side note: We have been invited to do a tasting at Bates by the good Dean Tannenbaum.  I hope you have a sense of humor sir, because strong doesn't even begin to describe how strong the irony is that I, along with Ben and Tyler, will be invited back to Bates to PROMOTE drinking.  We obviously won't be funneling Beast Ice, but still...

Triple side note about sense of humor:  About four years ago I was sitting in the Dean's office at Bates College being read an email that I had sent to my dorm.  Two grown adults were reading an email that included such topics as urination in the elevator and defecation in the hallways of our dorm, all in reference to the out of hand drinking that populated Parker Hall, forcing me to admit that my mockery of the situation was in bad taste and poor humor.  Straight faced, line by line, looking me in the eyes.  The jury's still out on that one...

Got Fur?

I am writing this is a state of insanity (not linsanity, just plain old insanity).  Occasionally I have a day that is pure computer work.  Ben has been working in the mill doing mad scientist experiments with the cider, while Tyler is out selling.  I've been staring at my computer screen for the better part of 8 hours trying to tie up odds and ends, as well as finding out how much money we actually need to do everything we want to do.  The odds and ends remain untied, and the answer to the latter question is more than we have.  One day you're on top of the world, planning global expansion, the next day you're ready to cash out the bank account, fly to Costa Rica and disappear.  Unfortunately our bank account account could probably only get me a Greyhound bus to Philly, so for now, I forge on.

I have a few things to note.  We have a couple events coming up that we would love people to show up to.  This weekend we'll be at Amalfi on the Water in Rockland for a Blue's, Brew's, and BBQ event from 1-5, so if you're down for beer, music, cider, and bbq come on by.  Sunday we'll be at Gridiron in the Lewiston, not sure of the time, but we'll let people know via facebook.

Also, the following weekend we will be hosting a meet and greet and Brian Boru in Portland starting at 5:30 on SATURDAY.  Unfortunately you will be meeting and greeting us, but on plus side, they have really good food and drinks.  Again, we'll be posting all this stuff on facebook, so stay tuned.

Last but not least, for those of you who don't live in Maine, let me give you a taste.  The other day I was driving out of Brunswick and I saw a pickup truck in the side of the road.  The back was open, and inside there were at least 30 dead foxes.  Probably closer to 50.  However, when I pulled around, I saw a large decal of a fox on the side of the car, and for whatever reason it all made sense to me.  Keep on keeping on Maine...

Grapefruit and push-ups

First and foremost let me say to all of our friends who are fans of the new york football giants, enjoy it.  That's all I have to say on that matter.

Moving on to matters of cider, we're still waiting on our new kegs, which is holding us back a little.  We're like a sprinter in those relays with the batons (4X100?), we're running just in front of the guy behind us trying to grab the baton (kegs for the metaphorically challenged), waiting to get going full speed.  Hopefully we end up like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzSpPaCIG0g, and not this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12a5O94riKU.  I realize that I went completely rogue on that metaphor, but I think you get the point, and watching 3 minutes of people hurting themselves in track and field is better than a mishandled baton pass.  If you take anything from that paragraph, it should be that as soon as we get our new kegs, we're going to burst out of the gates (a close second is that hurdles absolutely makes for the best track and field blooper, see: second link 0:54.  If we fail as a company, I want to do it just like that guy.  I'm not sure what the cider industry equivalent is, but I would find it and own it).

As I usually do, I'll give you a little insight into our lives.  Our Fall activities were apples and football.  We've moved on to grapefruit and push-ups (we are obviously still into apples, but the days of picking ripe macouns off the trees in the Manter's orchard are behind us).  On any given day we eat as many as ten grapefruit.  If you haven't gotten into grapefruit in a big way, I highly recommend it.  If not, you are outside of your mind.  I could write about grapefruit for hours, but maybe I'll save that for a new start-up.  Grapefruit Aficionado Quarterly?  Stay tuned.

Our other hobby right now is push-ups.  You might be asking yourself, why would Ross Brockman, Ben Manter, and Tyler Mosher, three of the most muscular guys in the game, want to tack on even more mass?  Simple.  Biceps equals success, have you seen this guy?  Oh, he's not successful?  Maybe I'll just grow long hair like this guy.  Really?  Him too?  I guess I'll do this?

THE WORLD DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!!!!!!!

 For those of you keeping score, last weeks correct answers were:
1. Ross
2. Tyler
3. Ben