Sunday, December 11, 2011

Next steps, and another birthday!

Well, I wrote recently about the birthday of our company.  That was really the first big step for us as in order for us to make any real movement towards selling our first beer, we had to legally form our company.  Since then, we have opened our bank account (resulting in the first official mailing to our company...checks!), visited/reviewed potential locations, contacted our Trademark attorney and started the process of getting our name trademarked.  It's like Dominoes, once we get one thing taken care of, that leads us to our next step.  While there is a lot to do, it is helpful that much of the big stuff has to be tackled in a very specific order.

While the four of us have been busy with the above, Ryan and Brandon's wives have been working hard to produce a logo that we can use in marketing materials as well as the front of the tap room.  Those two have put up with lots of differing opinions and suggestions from all of us, but have truly come up with a wonderful design.  They are now hard at work designing business cards, letterhead and promotional materials.  If I haven't said it before, we are extremely lucky to have these two talented women helping us with this journey.  They have made our choices extremely difficult by providing many wonderful logo options for us to review and decide between and we are all eager to unveil our name and our logo to the public!

We have narrowed down our fermenter options and our brew house options and are very nearly ready to write a really big check to place our order for these critical components.  Ryan has been heading this search, but all of us have weighed in on the options he has presented to us.  This is obviously a very important decision for us, not only because of the money involved, but because these are the pieces of equipment that we need to trust to produce the quality of beer we want to deliver.  We can adjust our malt supplier(s), our hop supplier(s), etc. but once we purchase our brew house and fermenters, we have to raise a lot of capital to replace them!

In addition to the logistical part of getting this company off the ground, we were actually able to share our beer with a group people we didn't know for the first time.  We brought 3 styles (Numb Nut Ale, Berliner and an American Wheat yet to be named) to a pot luck at the Valley Junction Foundation a few weeks ago.  The tastes of these individuals ranged from someone who drank nothing but Coors Light, but came back up time and time again asking for Numb Nut by name to another who enjoyed all styles of beer and asked for a different flavor each time and truly seemed to be enjoying himself and the variety!  It was really great to see the reactions that strangers had to our beer partially because it was an extremely positive reaction, but also because it really was the first time we got to experience the realization of the basic reason we wanted to start this business in the first place.  While our actual mission statement has yet to be formally drafted, we all wanted to provide a higher quality, better tasting beer to the people of the Des Moines area.   Seeing the smiles and feeling the excitement that our beer helped create was a really fun experience and I can't wait to do it again.

If all that wasn't enough to be excited about, Dave and his wife welcomed a new baby girl to their family!  Dave's cell phone had been a constant companion at our meetings for awhile, never knowing if he would need to take off.  In the end, it was a very happy early, early morning for Dave and his family.  Congratulations you guys, now get some sleep if you can! :)

Until next time, Cheers!

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