Year Review

This was what Justin found looking back at him when he looked into his stocking Christmas morning. Quite a sight to be sure! ha ha ha. Quick review is that it was a very well liked beer around here. We also got Delirium Noel (yummy!), Sam Adam's Chocolate Bock (also yummy, but not worth the cost we thought), Bell's Special Double Cream Stout (good, but we expected more from it), as well as some other beers that I am currently blanking on. You can see some photos that we took of the beers here though: http://flickr.com/photos/funkymamataney/3154861718/in/set-72157605649531380/ ~ This is Carrie's online photography portfolio, and that link will take you directly to beers. Always a good place to start in our opinion.
New Year's Eve finds us here at Soul One looking both back at the past year and forward at the years ahead (as we're sure it finds many people). Early in the year we began all-grain brewing and have had both success and flops with that. Lessons have been learned, and notes made for next time. We've entered our first competitions, both in our local homebrewer's guild (http://www.starcitybrewers.org) and in a national organic one through Seven Bridges Cooperative.
We've seen one site we had hoped to place a brewery get "crossed-off" because the new Intermodal is supposed to go on the lot that it literally next to it. An small, eco-friendly, artisan craft brewery and a pollution spewing Intermodal facility hardly go hand in hand. We found another tentative site, wondered if it would ever become vacant, and then watched it ironically burn to the ground (we both have alibis! ha ha). We'll see what happens next year.
We finally designed a logo (that I've yet to figure out how to upload to here .. a goal for next year?), and Justin now has our first "official" Soul One Brewery t-shirt, a gift for Christmas.
We've learned a lot this year, taken a lot of notes and talked to a lot of people, readily listening to all advice. We've got a lot planned still for the future. We plan to begin finally kegging early next year. This should be quite a triumph as well as an ongoing source of interest. Our almost 5 year old is already figuring out how to open bottles, and I myself new how to pour beer from a keg at his age ... so LOTS to consider when switching to kegging!! :)
As we mentioned in our last post, we also joined the Beer of the Month Club at Wine Gourmet. Our first month was quite a shock. We had been expecting Bell's beers and, due to an sudden spike of new Beer of the Month members, they had to switch to Ballast Point. We got their IPA and their Pale Ale. Their Pale Ale was a very easy drinking beer, I liked that. The folks at Wine Gourmet told us they hope to have Bell's ready for next month, so we're still looking forward to that as we've had very good experiences with their beers.
We wish you all a very Happy New Year. Much luck in both brewing and drinking. We hope your cup never runneth dry and that the Ales are always plenty! Cheers!!