On October 6th, 2012 we headed to the Capitol City Brewing hosted Shirlington Oktoberfest.  The event had well over 50 breweries represented, and plenty of beers for sampling.  Of course, we had to go in traditional outfits, including Heidi.

On October 13, 2012 we drove up to Bethlehem Pennsylvania to attend the Yuengling / ArtQuest sponsored Oktoberfest.  This Oktoberfest is more representative of the true Oktoberfests, with a big tent full of tables, Oompah Bands, and more.  There weren’t a long list of breweries present, but there were multiple styles of Yuengling.  It is held at The SteelStacks, which is the old abandoned steel mills and the focus of a burgeoning art district.  Bethlehem was true in form of being called the City of Festivals, as we discovered it was hosting a Harvest Fest downtown as well, with beer and soup sampling.  While there, we had to stop in at Brew Works (http://www.thebrewworks.com/bethlehem-brew-works/), to pick up some beers to take home, as well as grab a bite to eat.  This is a great brewpub with a strong showing of beers as well as great food.  Here is a pic from their copper brew house.

Hopefully soon, we’ll be able to add some pictures of our own brew house.

2. Mission Small Business:  A lot of people have been asking how the Mission Small Business grant is coming along.  We received over the 250 required votes (283 I believe), so our application was accepted.  Now it’s under review, and they will announce the small businesses that were selected by September 15th.  We hope to hear good news as the grant would be of great assistance, however we are not relying on it, and so continuing to move forward.

3.  Test Batches:  We have been working vigourously on our test batch program, focusing on our Totten Bock and Apfelwein.  We are working with 1 gallon batches, and though it takes the same amount of work, it allows us the ability to test multiple variances at the same time.

The above image is a shot of some of our test batches.  In the front is a Honey Cinnamon Apfelwein, and in the back are three versions of our TottenBock (our Weizenbock beer) in different phases.

1.  We are still searching for space.  We have increased the amount of square foot we are looking for in hopes of creating more options.  Currently, we have a great possibility.  It has a decent amount of square foot, which will allow us to grow decently in the future.  The location is also pretty key, with metro access, and plenty of future growth itself.  We are hoping to be able to do a site survey, so that we can see how things will fit and if the space is in good condition.

2.  We are now playing around with what the third flagship beer may be, and exploring some fruit options.  Adding fruit will have us stray from the Reinheitsgebot, but we feel that it will be a fun and delish change.

3.  We have recently started a campaign to try and win a grant provided for by Chase & Living Social.  It’s for small businesses, and would really help provide some great capital for us.  It would allow us to expand some possibilities, and to double the size of our planned brewhouse, helping out with future demand and growth.  We are currently over a third of the way to the 250 required votes to be considered, and we have till the end of June to receive those votes.  If you could take a moment of your time, stop by and vote for Low Brau.  Just click the link below, log in through your Facebook account, and search for Low Brau.  We thank you in advance for your vote, and hope to be sharing beers with you soon.

1. On February 20, 2012, Steven Sorrell become a Cicerone Certified Beer Server through the Cicerone program. If you are not familiar with this program, feel free to check out their website (www.cicerone.org) for more information. We felt that this was a great addition for our program.

2. We are still picking up new merchandise and working on our online shop. For beer glasses, we have a logo shaker glass available, which will be one of our standard offerings, and a weizen glass which will be a limited release. We will be offering two types of stickers, the Low Brau Brewery vinyl and the logo vinyl. We have a logo bottle speed openers, just added patches, and are working on t-shirts. We hope to have all of this available online shortly, and if you are interested before that happens, please feel free to contact us.

3.  We have started planting a couple of rhizomes of Hallertau in our garden and Tettnang in our neighbors garden.  Though the first year probably won’t yield much, we are looking forward to future harvests to be used for limited special releases.

4.  Testing continues on our Totten Bock, and we have looked at other possible flagship beers.  Another possibility that we are bringing into testing is a raspberry wheat.  We will have some photos of our test batching process here shortly, and will also be able to elaborate more on what these beers aim to be.  We are looking into the possibility of having a sampling of these and Heidi Weiss as home brews sometime soon, so that everyone can see which direction we are heading in.

5.  We also have another large project, which will be more along the marketing lines, but exciting none the less.  We hope to document this project and be able to share it with everyone else.

1.  We are currently still trying to find a space in North East.  Our broker is Menkiti Group, and we have already viewed a few locations.  It appears that since we are looking for such a small space, there are less options available.  We continue looking however, and once that is complete, we will order the equipment and get the ball rolling on permits.

2.  While we are waiting on the space, we have been working on more merchandise.  Currently we have vinyl stickers and speed openers.  We had an order of glasses (the glass you see on this website) end up being not of the greatest quality, and may offer those as an limited release with a discounted price.  We do have another batch of much better glasses coming soon however.  Also, we are working on t-shirts.  Once the t-shirts and new glasses arrive, we will add the shop to the website.

3.  In addition, we are more importantly creating test batches for some of the other beers will be running.  We still want to finalize the Totten Bock and directions that some of the other beers will head.

Prost!

Low Brau recently had the opportunity to stop by and visit Hess Brewing in San Diego, CA.  If you aren’t familiar with Hess, they are a well established nano-brewery on the west coast, and in fact, is San Diego’s first licensed nano-brewery.  Many suggest that nano-breweries cannot survive in the brewery world, due to the economies of scale, but Hess has proven them wrong and is very successful.

During our visit, we had to make sure we tried their flight (ten different beers on tap) and grabbed another beer or two afterwards talking shop and beer with Michael Skubic and blogger Baltimore Beer Guy.  There was quite the range sytlewise and plenty of flavor, showing what is possible with hard work (Hess has a 1.6 BBL brewing setup) and passion.  We were also delightfully surprised that the growler of coffee porter made it through the flight.

It was great to see their set up and to experience all of their beer.  It also provided further inspiration and excitement for things to come here at Low Brau.

http://hessbrewing.com/

http://www.baltimorebeerguy.com/