If our brewery had a soundtrack right now, it would pretty much start and end with the Jeopardy music. The last month has been excruciatingly slow as we wait for the State DOHS Division of Fire and Building Safety to give us the green light on our building plans. The good news is we’re expecting that green light any day now and with the building prepped and equipment on site, we should hopefully have you drinking Black Dog beer in October. Now, don’t worry. It’s not like we’ve been sitting on our hands for the last month, which means I’ve got plenty to share in this update.
If you’ve followed us for awhile, you know I spend a lot of time singing the praises of our brew master and for good reason. His “kung fu” is some of the best true-to-style beer I’ve ever had and I can’t wait for all of you to start enjoying it. Quite honestly, it’s so good, it’s created a problem for us in the planning process. Let me explain.
In the state of Indiana, the top
three craft beer styles are IPA, Amber, and Blonde/Cream Ale (based on volume sales). Those are pretty general categories as some beers tend to fit in and some don’t but you get the idea. We use industry sales volume data to give us an idea of where to start in terms of targeting beer styles for our opening day lineup. We’re planning ten taps during phase 1 and once we have the full taproom open in phase 2, we’ll likely expand to 12. I know that sounds like a small lineup for a craft brewery but fewer taps help us with freshness and quality control. I could give you the full dissertation on too many taps but we’ll save that for another discussion. Anyway, we take a look at these industry numbers and bounce the ideas off of Shawn. He then builds the recipes and produces small batches so we can sample and discuss. Here’s the problem: Every beer he crafts is our new favorite! Every. Single. Beer. For instance, awhile back Shawn put together his ideas for a saison with a hint of clover honey. We called it “Barn Stormer” and I just assumed it would be one of those fun seasonal beers that would rotate in once a year. This beer not only blew my mind, but after having a few investors sample it and provide feedback along with leaving a few of those “I don’t like craft beer” types completely blown away, I’m pretty sure we have to find a more frequent spot in the rotation for it. To add to the challenge, I had my first sip of his most recent creation last night as I was checking carbonation levels. German Hefeweizen was not really on my radar (as far as being a mainstay in our lineup) but sweet 6lb 4oz baby Jesus. Every. Single. Beer.
Somehow we have to take this portfolio of deliciousness and cut it down to only 10 beers for opening. I suppose we should do another round of sampling. And then another one. And probably at least three more…possibly a fourth. I know, I know…first world problems.
Along with brewing beer and dialing in some of the business planning, we’ve also been able to knock out some minor items at the brewery. Over the past few weeks, some of you may have noticed the sign went up on the building. I have gotten a few emails asking about the size because yes, it does look a little small. This is because we have to add a little more to that front portion of the building. This is illustrated in the picture at left. So sit tight, it’s still all coming together. The good news is that it’s working. The amount of walk in traffic the sign has generated has been nothing short of fantastic. Unfortunately, there are lots of sad faces when those walk-ins find out there’s no beer. So if you happen to have walked in recently looking for a growler or some samples, I sincerely apologize! Soon, my friends. Soon.
Finally, three big items on the to-do list are coming up this week. First, we’ll be heading over to one of the local hop farms ahead of the harvest. Our friends over at Indy High Bines on the near south side are putting together another bumper crop of the finest flowers known to man. I can’t wait to walk through the fields and check it out! We’ll make sure to add plenty of pictures on our social media stream so if you’re not following us on social media, get with the program already!
The second big item on the list is getting started on the bar top. We’ve been eyeing some designs and we’re ready to go ahead and start the work. So, this week, we’ll be picking out materials and getting our contractor lined up to create our taproom centerpiece.
Rounding out our busy week is tasting some potential food offerings. I don’t want to let too much out of the bag just yet but I have to tell ya, I’m pretty excited about this one (’cause food). I’ll leave you with that little cliff hanger until our next update!
One last thing, we’re getting a lot of inquiries on employment. We’re not interviewing as of yet, but in the next few weeks, we’ll be adding a beer careers page to the website. On this page, you’ll be able to find out what jobs we’re currently hiring for as well as submit your resume. So stay tuned.
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). We only have a few shares left in the first round of equity raise. Once the first round closes, initial investment cost increases significantly. If you’ve been thinking about it or have been harboring some questions, now is the time. Once the tanks show up, we don’t expect those final shares to be around any longer. Reach out to Jeremy Kuntz: 
rewing operation. Our brewhouse is a 20 BBL system which means we can brew about 620 gallons of beer at one time. If we were to brew 5 days a week all year long, we’d be able to brew 5,200 BBL’s or 3 million gallons of beer. To take the math a little further, that’s 24 million pints of beer! Now, we would probably upgrade the brewhouse to a 40 BBL capacity before we started making Shawn brew every single day but you get the idea. Our goal is to eventually become a regional brewery, pumping out 18,000 BBL’s every year – that’s just under 96 million pints of beer! Is your mind blown yet? I hope you all are ready to drink some beer.
As far as the taproom itself goes, hopefully you’ve taken the 
use beers – Shelby Dog IPA, D5 Amber, and My Girl Blonde, but we’ll have a number of seasonals and limited releases available as well. We are a craft brewery, after all. Each lovingly handcrafted beer will have it’s own story and it’s own reason for being. It goes back to our mission of creating a better craft beer experience. It’s important that each one of our beers tells you it’s story, whether it’s served from the tap or from the bottle, because that’s the first step in enhancing your experience as a craft beer consumer. We’ve also been dropping hints about a very special limited release in the works. I’m not quite ready to share the artwork but I’m pretty excited about this one. It’s extremely important to us that we have a positive impact in our community and one of the many ways we plan on doing that is through this limited release. It will not only celebrate the heritage of Mooresville, but will give back to the community as well. More to come so stay tuned! 
The next beer on the small batch schedule is District 5 Amber. As many of you know, amber is one of my favorite game day styles and every time we’ve put this beer together it’s a fan-fav. Shawn has done a great job in crafting what I would consider to be the perfect amber. Now, if I can just get Kelly to make some more of those honey-barbecue meatballs we had at the party, I may in fact be able to catch a glimpse of heaven! I’d love to hear about your favorite beer and food pairing in the comments below. Drop us a line. 
breweries start on smaller systems but when you have an award winning head brewer making the beer, you’d better have enough for everybody.
These are basically hot and cold water tanks. 
So if the hot and cold liquor tanks aren’t sexy, then the fermentation tanks are borderline pornographic. This, my friends, is where the proverbial magic happens. Once the beer has finished boiling and is cooled down, it heads on over to the fermentation tanks. Here we’ll add the yeast and the soon-to-be-beer will spend about 14 days, depending on the beer style, in fermentation. 
Brite beer tanks are like the on-deck circle in the brewery. Once the beer finishes up in the fermentation tanks, it’s moved over to our brite tanks where a couple of things happen. First, the beer gets carbonated through the use of what’s called a carbonation stone – a hollow cylinder that pushes CO2 through tiny holes, directly into the beer. As the beer sits in the brite tanks, it also tends to refine over the course of the next week, allowing some of the particulate matter to fall out as well as maturing a bit in taste. 
This beauty, called the “8 Shooter” from Martin Robotics, is an eight head bottle filler and labeler that will help expand our reach beyond the tap. The images we’ve shared previously were provided by Martin Robotics but the one pictured here is our very own, freshly delivered. The 8 Shooter marks a very exciting time for Black Dog Brewing Company as it’s our second piece of major capital equipment and a big piece of the puzzle. I should add that we’ve been getting lots of questions about seeing it in action and we’ll be more than happy to include a bottle filling session on the tour, once we’re officially open for business. We may even let you push a button or two…unless our insurance agent is reading this post then of course we wouldn’t let any random person touch our capital equipment. Why would we do that? That’s crazy. You’re crazy, man…haha ha. 
Aside from the 8 Shooter excitement, I wanted to share another piece of big news. For those of you that have been following for awhile, you’re acquainted with the original Kuntz Brewery and Kuntz’s Old German Lager (if you’re new to the story, check out the 
In other Black Dog Brewing Company news, we have what is hopefully our final renovation meeting early next week with demolition starting shortly thereafter. We’ve had a few minor delays but nothing really unexpected. Also, with the fabrication timelines of our remaining equipment (fermenters, brite tanks, etc.) in the three to four month window, we’re still on pace to have some Black Dog beer in your hands by Memorial Day. That being said, I know what some of you are thinking. If we’re not brewing beer all the time, how do we keep an award winning brew master busy? Well, it certainly helps when your brew master doubles as a forklift operator! That’s our brew master in a clutch performance, unloading the 8 Shooter as the truck that was supposed to have a lift gate showed up with nary a lift gate in sight. Special thanks to our landlords from H&R General Contractors for getting us a solid deal on an emergency forklift.
Moving on to Old Gnarly Bones, I’d just like to say thanks to everyone who participated in the naming contest over social media. Naming a beer is perhaps one of the most entertaining parts of the R and D process…well, aside from drinking, anyway. Thanks to social media, we get to share that entertainment with our fans. In terms of the brewing process, hard cider isn’t really beer. Technically it’s wine because we don’t “brew it” per se. Unlike beer, where the brewer has to work to pull the different flavors and starches out of the malt (grain), the apples have already given us all the flavor and sugar we need for the most part. As far as research goes, we’re essentially figuring out what type of yeast to use (many ciders are made with champagne yeast while we elected to use an ale yeast), and what other ingredients make sense. In our Old Gnarly Bones cider, we added wildflower honey, which imparts a bit of flavor but also added a few more sugars, bringing our ABV to a comfortable 6%.
Our final bit of R and D this month came in the porter category. Now, I love dark beer and quite honestly the sky is the limit when it comes to experimentation here. From Russian imperial and oatmeal stouts to coffee and chocolate porters, if you like roasty flavors, there’s a dark beer out there with your name on it. Some are quite dry and light like Guinness, while others are almost a meal unto themselves, like Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Shawn put together our Black Cat porter as the perfect in-between. It’s not too heavy but the undertones of deep roasted coffee and a nice chocolatey finish come together to make a great beer. Shawn has won medals with a number of his dark beers and this one could stand right next to the others. He decided to add some oats to the grain bill and the result is a silky smooth mouthfeel and a beautiful brown head that goes right along with the coffee and chocolate flavors. 
