ON TAP THIS WEEKEND MARCH 13-15

I'm going to start posting what we plan to have on tap every weekend, so you can plan your weekend around beer ( who doesn't?)

ON TAP

Pale Ale
Dos Perros
Hefeweizen
Onward Sout
Sly Rye Porter
ESB

Alabama here we come!

We've signed a distribution agreement with Supreme Beverage, who covers northern Alabama. We're pretty close to rolling out our beer into Birmingham and Huntsville, just waiting on approval of our brands by the state ABC board. We'll probably be launching it in April, right when the weather turns nice and people head to their favorite patio for a beer. I'm really excited about Birmingham - it's full of independent restaurants, and seems to have a really developed foodie culture. Plus, we've got good relationships with three restaurants already - Mafiaoza's is opening a Birminham restaurant and are really excited about bringing in our beer as they open; Jackson's Bistro has a Birmingham restaurant as well; and, although they don't sell a whole lot of beer, Jim-n-Nicks has six restaurants there and are really trying to support Southern breweries with their draft selections. Plus, the Free the Hops group has really stoked a lot of interest in craft beers, albeit higher alcohol ones. The interest is bound to spill over into anything new that they couldn't get before, including Yazoo!

Huntsville is suprising to me. It's becoming one of Supreme's biggest markets, and they attribute it to all of the military and NASA folks moving in, after a lot of base closings in Virginia and Maryland.

St. Patty's East Pub Crawl

We're sponsoring this year's St. Patty's Day pubcrawl in east Nashville, and it looks like it is going to be a great night, if the weather cooperates. Three Crow, Red Door East, Beyond the Edge, Alley Cat, and Batter'd and Fried are all a part of it. Most places will be running a Yazoo special all night (2 for 1, $3 pints, etc.) If you make it to all five places and get your card stamped, you can win an autographed guitar, Predators tickets, and more. See http://www.eastnashvillepubcrawls.com/ for all the info.

This pubcrawl and the one we sponsor for Halloween are some of the most fun nights in east Nashville. Come on out and celebrate!

Start your engines, it's 2008!!

2007 ended up being our best year ever! We sold over 6,100 barrels of beer, or the equivalent of 1.5 MILLION pints of beer. Damn, that's a lot of beer to come out of this little 10 bbl brewhouse.

I'm sad to report that Holly, our sales manager for the past three years, is leaving us to work for another brewery that is looking to bring their beer into Tennessee. The brewery is Boulevard Brewing out of Missouri, and I guess Holly thinks it will be a better opportunity. She says they will be able to offer her a lot more money and perks, and according to her the stress level will be less. Boulevard signed a distribution agreement with DET Distributing, where Holly used to work as a salesperson selling Miller and Coors. So I'm sure DET was happy to get her away from us, and working for their side again. I wish her the best, she was a dedicated hardworking person, and a lot of fun to work with.

Price of everything going through the roof

Wow. Just got through digesting all of the price increases on hops, barley, and glass bottles. Our hop prices have gone up 300% on some varieties this year, and we're one of the lucky breweries who will be able to actually get some. Barley prices have gone up anywhere from 30% for our pale malt to 70% for our darker malts. Glass prices just went up another 7% this month. All in all, our cost to make beer looks like it will go up 35-40% this month. Fantastic.

I wish that we could absorb this cost and not have to pass it on to our customers, but who the heck can do that when your cost to produce goes up 35-40%? We'll probably hold off for another month, but get ready, the price of all of your favorite craft beers, Yazoo included, is about to go up. Sorry.

Linus

Train Wreck!

Wow, got to work today and last night there was a train derailment behind the Marathon building. Train cars filled with new Nissan trucks and cars over on their sides. It doesn't look like it did much damage to the building, but what a mess! The police said it was a malfunction of a siding switch that caused the train to jump the track.

Mucklewain 2007 in Pinewood, TN

We sponsored the beer for this Southern Rock festival put on by Joie Todd of the Les Honkies More Tonkies. The music was great, the location was fairly good, good food, cool vendors, perfect weather. I wish more people had come out. Mabye next year.