Thank you to everyone who came out!

Thanks to everyone who came out for our fundraiser. It was a crazy night! We just dropped a check off to the Community Foundation for $6,300 for their Flood Relief Fund. And it was such a great feeling to do it! Thanks again.

Flood Fundraiser tomorrow at the Yazoo Taproom!!

We will be holding a fundraiser tomorrow, Thursday May 6th, from 4-8 PM, to benefit the Community Fund of Middle Tennessee (www.cfmt.org). 100% of all sales at our taproom will be donated to their Metro Disaster Fund. Yes, 100% of ALL sales. It's a nice round number.

To conserve water, we'll be selling pints in our Yazoo logo pub glasses, which you can take home with you. Pints will be $5, which includes tax for this night. Growlers will be $12 new/ $9 refills. CASH is very welcome as it will speed up the line.

We also plan to tap two casks of special beers we were holding back for a special occasion. One is a cask of Pale Ale dryhopped with Amarillo, another is a cask of Dos Perros aged with cocao shells from Nashville's own Olive and Sinclair Chocolate Company.

Let's see what we can do! Last time we did this we raised a lot of money for the Red Cross for Katrina relief.

The Flood of 2010

We made it through fine. The brewery is on high ground, and all of our staff made it through with mostly only flooded basements and driveways. Thank you to everyone who has called, some from all around the country, to check on us. We're fine.

A lot of our neighbors are not. We're planning a fundraiser of our own in the next few days. Please check back here for details. I encourage everyone to come out to Mercy Lounge this Wednesday the 5th for a fundraiser they are having, instead of their Cinco de Mayo party. The show will be free with suggested donations of $20, and there will be a silent auction as well.

The bad news for beer lovers in Nashville is that three of the town's major beer distributors are surrounded by water. We hear that Ajax Turner, which is on the same road by the Cumberland river as the Omohondro Water Treatment plant, took on a lot of water inside its warehouse. DET Distributing and RS Lipman (our distributor) are both in Metrocenter, and are reportedly surrounded by water. No one at Lipman has been able to get to the warehouse, as the police are not letting anyone into the area due to concerns over the integrity of the levee. We are hoping all the beer is safe and our kegs haven't floated away.

So even though we didn't see any damage at the brewery, we can't deliver our beer to our distributor, and they can't get beer out to all the bars, restaurants, and stores in Nashville. I don't know about DET and Ajax Turner but I imagine they are in the same fix.

Answering some FAQs...

Well, we are starting to settle into the new place! We have done about 20 brews now on the new brewhouse, and Ken and Quinn are starting to become experts on all of its quirks. Colin and Chris are cranking out more cases than ever on the same old bottling line, and dreaming of the day, soon, when we will have a faster line...

But we have been getting a lot of questions since the move, and I'd like to answer some:

1. Now that you have more capacity, will you be releasing any new beers?

Yes! Our next beer in our Brewmaster's Reserve seasonal series is going to be the return of our Summer Ale. We plan on having it out in bottles and kegs around the middle of June.

2. Will you be able to brew "Sue" again? How about more high-alc beers?

When we filed for our new permits with the beer board, they had a lot of concerns about the legality of us brewing high-alc beers, even though we felt we had done everything that the ABC and TN Dept of Revenue had asked us to do (they are the ones who have jurisdiction over high-alc beers). We have a plan to get the beer board's approval within about another month. Until then, if you see some "Sue", I suggest you buy it!

3. The outside of the building still looks "unfinished". Any plans for it?

Yes! We will be building a trellis over the patio out front, to provide some much needed shade as summer comes. We'll be planting some hop vines out front to grow over the trellis as well. We'll be paving the parking lot soon, and striping it to help with the parking. We know that parking can be a hassle, but there is lots of street parking once our lot fills up, and we promise, we'll make the beer worth the walk! And Neil has plans for a bocce ball court (what do you think?)

4. It's pretty noisy inside.

Yeah, we didn't realize how loud it could get until we opened and it got crowded. We're planning on installing some "floating" accoustic tiles in the taproom ceiling to cut down on the noise.

5. My wife doesn't like beer, so will you ever add wine to your menu?

We can't. The ABC has ruled that anyone with a restaurant liquor license cannot sell "growlers" of beer to go. That's a big part of our retail business, so we don't ever plan on getting a liquor license.

First case of Pale Ale rolls off the line!

Wow! We spent the last few days taking down our bottling line at Marathon and moving it to 910 Division. It takes a lot to run one - electricity, compressed air, CO2, and water. All the conveyors and tables have to be realigned. But after a lot of hard work, bright red caps were again rolling down the line. I couldn't resist, so I grabbed one of the first bottles. Our Pale Ale has never tasted so good - maybe it was just from the relief and elation of finally tasting a beer made at our new brewery, but I swear it was the best beer I have ever had! Hey, let us know what you think - the first beers from our new brewery will soon be at a store near you, starting with Pale Ale bottled the second week of April!

Beer Board grants us permission to begin brewing at our new location!

Heck yeah! The beer board granted us permission to begin brewing at our new location! That's the good news. Here's the bad: they were uncomfortable with us brewing high-alc beers like "Sue" and felt that they needed more documentation from the state ABC to prove that we had gotten all the appropriate licenses and permits. So brewing "Sue" will be on hold for at least a couple of weeks while we try to prove that the ABC is satisfied with what we are doing. I hope it is not longer than two weeks, but you never know. Might want to run out and buy a case now - god willing, it won't be the last one for a while, but you never know!

Story and pics about the new taproom

Check it out - very cool picture of a Brian filling a growler at our new spot in the Gulch.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100405/DAVIDSON/100405036/1974/DAVIDSON/(No%20heading)

And thanks for all the great feedback on the new taproom! We love working there and I hope it shows!