Rudy, Dave, Dan and Ethan proclaim dominance over the market

Well, Saturday was a ton of fun.

We made some beer, of course: an American ‘Strong’ Ale (quotes due to a low original gravity, but hey: we were combat brewing!). That wasn’t the important part, though: the real fun was talking to the people who stopped by. There were quite a lot of people interested in what we were doing, and I hope that we didn’t sound weary towards the end. There was a nice mix of people who knew about us already, people who recognized us from the paper and people who had no idea we existed, but liked beer and so were interested.

Our table had a bowl of hops for the smelling (and, unfortunately for some, eating: I hadn’t tried it but homebrewer Alex’s reaction was all the reason I needed not to), malt for crunching on and an assortment of CBW paraphernalia for reading, taking and buying.

Shirts!

Buying? Oh yes, the shirts! I know I’m biased and all, but I think they look awesome. We still have some in every size from S-XXL if you’re interested, and for a mere $15 you can take one home. We’re working on allowing you to buy one from the comfort of your computer, but until then if you fancy a shirt then shoot us an email and we’ll make it happen.

We got a few frequently asked questions, so many in fact that I just stopped after that comma and edited our Frequently Asked Questions page. To summarize: we’re hoping to be open and distributing within the year, no we’re not selling these ingredients, sorry we can’t give out samples yet, we don’t have any plans for a gluten free beer but it seems a lot of people would be interested in that sort of thing, we’ll let you know when we need free labor and thank you for inquiring, and we won’t be back next week but we enjoyed this quite a lot so our Bidwell presence isn’t over yet.

Though it might be if the people selling rabbit meat heard my ‘dry hop’ joke.

It's Rudy!

Really, I hope my enthusiasm doesn’t sound forced because I really do mean it. I stood at our table and talked to people for almost seven straight hours and loved every minute of it. And I’m introverted. (for reference, I was the guy in the pi hoodie who really needed a shave). I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Dave, Ethan and Rudy also had a wonderful time, and if you braved the oddly nice if slightly chilly day and talked to us for a bit, thanks. Hopefully you’ll see us again soon in some fashion, and then this time next year you’ll be hoisting a pint of our beer.

Let’s close with a video Ethan edited of the day. If you don’t like beer that’s okay: there are cameos by alpacas and two CBW offspring.

If you’d like to see more photos from the day, check out our shiny and new Flickr account.