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.