Michigan Challenge Balloonfest is in One Month!

Howell is famous for the Michigan Challenge Balloonfest, an event put on every year with the Howell Chamber. This year’s event is June 26-28 and we are excited to be a part of it! You see, we are sponsoring the balloon Sunrise! This is a local favorite and we couldn’t be happier!

Throughout the week of balloonfest we are going to have some fun things planned! First of all, we made a special beer for the event, Night Glow Black Lager. It is lagering right now as I type. (Definition of Lagering: Cold storage, effectively for a beer to clear up and provide time for the flavors to meld together appropriately.) Night Glow will be released the Thursday before the balloonfest (Mug Club members will probably get a taste of it before then even!).

We are going to have two different Beer ‘n Brushes sessions to paint the Sunrise balloon (or whatever other balloon your heart desires) on canvas. The Ceramic Studio etc  has been coming down to help us paint wonderful things ever since we opened and now we get to paint this beautiful balloon! The two sign ups are Thursday, June 25 and Sunday, June 28.

Oh, and did we mention Barlow’s BBQ will be coming in Saturday? BBQ sold in house! Their meat is tender and smoky how it should be, and the sauces kick! We are also particularly fond of their coleslaw, which is so very different than any other.

Howell has a few professional balloonists right in town and thus we had the opportunity to meet the balloonists of Marti. Dayna got to go on a hot air balloon ride with them! Check out the footage!

We are excited for the Balloonfest! Are you?! What are you looking forward to the most?! 

Video Upload:  Automatic Video Creation from my Phone!

Dayna Selfie in the Basket

Mike helping get Marti off the ground

You can’t stop the change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.

(The first person to reply with what the title quote is from gets a gold star!)

It is interesting to me that people taste a beer once and decide they don’t like it and will never try it again. As brewers, we are constantly tasting our own offerings and tweaking recipes to make it the best beer possible. As a new business, we are settling into our new equipment and adjusting things like hop and malt additions to even our mainstay beers to balance characteristics to make the best beer we know how.

Not only are most brewers (I know we are not the only ones tweaking our recipes) changing things up over time, but the beer tasters themselves are changing as well. I have noticed that I used to love fresh onions as a kid, and now I can’t stand them.  I used to hate grapefruit and now I eat it all the time! (I even used to hate broccoli and now… well, no, I still hate broccoli…)

I guess this little lecture is trying to encourage you to try a beer you decided you didn’t like last year again this year and the year after that. Your tastes buds are changing and so is that beer. You might be pleasantly surprised! It is also to encourage you to not look at beer reviews from 5 years ago and assume the beer is still going to taste that way. For good or for bad, the beer will have changed over time and that person that did the review might taste things differently than you too! Beer flavor depends on so many factors, the cleanliness of the glass, of the lines, the age of the keg/can/bottle, and even if you ate spicey or acidic food 5 hours prior to drinking that beer! 

People change over time, so it seems reasonable that your beer can too. Don’t be shy, give it another try!

Covenant Wheat - You asked for it and It's back!

Michigan has finally hit one of my favorite times of year: the thaw after months of frozen air and frost covered cars. Heat has returned and with it comes the time to switch to the classic spring beer styles. We are heading away from the dark and heavy comfort of porters and stouts into the lighter drinks, and one my personal favorites. Wheat beer has a few different variations ranging from the German origin Hefeweizen to the Dutch Witbier. Many common wheat beer varieties have hints of fruit flavor to them, a nod to the season.

Here at Eternity our take on the wheat beer style is called ‘Covenant Wheat’. It’s a crisp beer with banana and clove flavors shining through. It was a crowd (and staff) favorite the first time around so we just had to bring it back. Smells like spring.

Euchre Tournament Re-Cap! (Sat. Mar. 28 is our next one...)

If you grew up in Michigan you know how to play Euchre, or may have been chided for not knowing how to play. This 150 year old card game is a staple in this state and we have now brought this past time to Eternity! Last month we hosted a Euchre tournament one Saturday afternoon bringing in whole families, couples and people off on their own to join in. We had full tables and everyone had so much fun with the 10 minute timed rounds and random play that makes you meet everyone there in a hurry! It rounded out with a couple lucky winners (individual play means there can be ties!) and it went over so well we had people asking us when the next one would be while they were walking out the door! 

Don’t miss out this month on the 28th from 3-5p or next month on April 18th from 3-5pm.

6 months. {:-O

We opened our doors September 23, 2014. It has been almost 6 months now! (and even longer since my last blog.) I was inspired by a mug club member to start writing again. I hope I can keep up with it now…

People come in they ask how business is going. I can’t count how many times we have answered that question. The truth is most people still don’t know we exist. We are tucked away in the corner of this shopping center and even with the giant sign a lot of people don’t see us. That being said, we already have a lot of mug club members (over 260 now!) and regulars who we love seeing every time they come in. We worked on the business for 3.5 years, so we are really doing just about what we predicted we would be doing at this point (which is comforting since we are engineers and like to plan with no surprises!).

Then after we answer the question of how is business doing, we also get people asking if we are happy we opened. No doubt, we are tired a lot the time, but it is all worth it. We love what we are doing. We love brewing, planning events, enjoying time with everyone coming in. It is exactly what we pictured and life is good.

Other business owners told us to prepare for little sleep. There isn’t really a way to prepare for that. It just kind of happens. To pay the bills, Mike still has his engineering job for probably a few years. He goes to work in the morning, comes home to the brewery and continues on with whatever work needs to be done here. I (Dayna) am full time here. I am generally the one doing the brewing starting in the morning or taking care of planning and inventory.

We are proud of our entire staff for sticking with us and helping us adjust each day to new processes to keep this place running as smooth as possible. Our staff gets to have a lot of input into the operations here and that makes the brewery fun and ensures we are constantly improving.  

I remember telling my parents when I was a kid that I wanted a job where I didn't have to do the same thing every day. Well, I finally found it, where I belong. 

 Mug Club Mug - A common sighting around here these days!

Us

Our first day - Hop Bine Cutting (instead of a ribbon)

The Date

We went quiet for a while, sorry about that. Things have been busy here the past couple months. Like any new business, we had our set-backs and were/are working through them. Alas, we can say we have our inspections all passed, and we are moving onward and upward. Well, what that really means is we started brewing beer so we can open up this joint!

People have been asking since last year when we expect to open our doors. We kept guessing the best we could based on our project plans, but we never wanted to give a specific date because we didn’t want people to be disappointed. But now, the time has come.

We are opening our doors September 23, 2014 at 4:00pm. We will be doing a Hop Bine Cutting instead of a Ribbon Cutting, because, who needs ribbon when you have hops?!

It feels so unreal. The planning of this started way back in 2011 in our minds only. The path from engineers to entrepreneurs has been an interesting one to say the least! We are excited to finally share the product of our hard work with everyone!

There isn't much in the cooler yet, but here is the start of it!

The Brewery Equipment Delivery

We were excited for the equipment to finally arrive. Mike even took off work to be there for the big day. It was exciting and nerve wracking carting all that stainless through the door. The tanks came in shipping crates that had to be broken off around them to get to the tank itself. It was a long day of moving the tanks around and breaking down the boxes.

We didn’t really have time to set them up where they needed to go. The next couple days Mike and I moved things around and the locations started to take shape and it all started to finally feel real that moment we stepped back after lining up the fermenters.

 

Take a look. Tell us what you think. Then one day when we finally open, you can come in and take a look in person. J

 

 Just boxes... oh wait...

 

 Sideways fermenter to get it through the doors...

 

Once it is sideways, you have to stand it back up again somehow!

 

 Did I mention the mess we made?!

 

Aww, pretty!