Pink Boots at Cape Cod Beer

"Be bold and mighty powers will come to your aid." ~Basil King

August 31: One of the most fun things about working at a small brewery all day is that I get to see and experience a wider variety of tasks.

Today I spent the day with the kind folks at Cape Cod Beer Company. (They have really been taking care of me!) Todd and Beth Marcus began their microbrewery in 2004 when the brewpub where Todd brewed stopped brewing beer. The beautiful copper-clad brewery just sat there.

Then Todd made a deal to lease the brewery from the restaurant and begin self distributing his beer under the name Cape Cod Beer. When the restaurant went under, Todd bought the brewing equipment and moved it to a commercial location. Cape Cod Beer will produce 2,400 barrels this year, seven barrels at a time. Photo at right is me mashing in two bags of pre-milled malt for the first of two batches of Cape Cod Red that Brewer Brian Flagg made today.

This is one of the hardest working breweries I have visited on my trip so far. Owner/Brewmaster Todd Marcus and Brewer Brian Flagg regularly put in 16-hour days. Photo at left is Brian acid-washing the yeast for the second batch. Cape Cod Beer acid-washes their yeast every time they repitch.

Not only did Brian brew two batches of Cape Cod Red today, he also filtered a double batch of Cape Cod IPA through the plate and frame filter. I had to catch up on blogging, so I spent a good portion of the middle of the day in Sales Guy Blake Decker's office on my laptop. Blake not only takes orders and delivers the kegs, he also fills his own kegs from the Bright Tanks.

The whole family gets involved in this Mom & Pop brewery, including Beth's pop, Jim Melvin. (Beth's mom Barbara volunteers family duty babysitting the two boys.) Photo at right is of Jim restocking the growler cooler. Jim was busy on his feet all day, washing and filling growlers, and waiting on customers. Today was the Friday before Labor Day Weekend, and the crowd was non-stop in the gift shop, buying t-shirts, hats, but mostly getting their growlers refilled and buying more and more growlers.

All of Cape Cod's beer is sold as draft, whether kegs to retail accounts, or growlers to beer fans who come from all over the Eastern Seaboard to buy Cape Cod Beer's "A Vacation in Every Pint" beer.

At the end of the day Todd took me with him on a few keg deliveries to local accounts. Cooperage is a bit tight, so they mostly clean and fill kegs as soon as they come back. There are virtually no dirty, empty kegs sitting around waiting to be cleaned. The kegs we delivered were the kegs that Todd cleaned, sanitized and filled this morning. Photo at left and right are of Todd making his deliveries in his Dodge Durango. (An improvement over using Beth's Chevy Venture minivan that Todd made deliveries in back in 2004.)

Todd and Beth gifted me a really nice 16-oz coffee mug with their logo on it.

After the end of the day, an old brewing friend of mine, Jim Migliorni, picked me up to bring me to his house for dinner. Jim (photo below) is now a middle-school teacher on Cape Cod, but he used to be the Brewmaster for Heartland Brewing Company in New York City.

Jim made a splendid dinner of local Quahog Clams (pronounced co-hog), devilled with some chorizo sausage and green and red peppers. After that appetizer we had spiced chicken over spaghetti.

Jim and I had fun catching up. He pretty much disappeared from the brewing radar when he quit Heartland and moved to Cape Cod. If any old buddies want to get hold of Jim, just email me and I'll forward you his email address.

All this socializing keeps me up late at night, but my husband is three hours behind me on Pacific Standard Time, so I still get to talk to him each night. Now that he is between jobs for a week, he is busy condensing and packing all of our things for our future move to Portland, Oregon. We used to be spread out over two sides of a duplex. Now we are condensed into less than one side of the duplex. He tells me I won't even recognize our place it is so jam-packed. Yikes! It will be an interesting move, no doubt.

Just as I was packing up to leave, Todd gifted me three growlers of Cape Cod Beer, and a very special, 1 out of only 200 bottles of his Bourbon Barrel Aged Strong/Old Ale. I'm saving that one to share with my husband Jon.

Thank you to Cape Cod Beer Company for letting me tap into their Internet to update this blog.

P.S. This great-looking, hard-working 7-barrel brewery is now for sale, and Cape Cod Beer is upgrading to a new 15-barrel system. Call Beth at the brewery for more information.

Drive to Hyannis and Coastal Cape Cod

"What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can." ~Henry David Thoreau

August 30: Up at 7:15 am, showered and at Allison's kitchen table by 8:00 am blogging away. Former brewer and old friend Jim Pericles stopped over at about 9:30 am with fresh tomatoes from his garden. Jim and I had a great time catching up for an hour, and I forgot to take a photo. Oops! Jim now works in the biotech industry.

Then I blogged, packed, worked on photos and did a load of laundry. Finally at 3:00 pm, Allison said, "You have to leave or you'll never get to Cape Cod by 5:00 pm." So I drove off, a can of diet Dr. Pepper in hand.

Arrived at Cape Cod Beer Company in Hyannis, Massachusetts just as a few dedicated homebrewers were showing up. Owner/Brewers Todd and Beth Marcus had set up a little reception for the local homebrewers and regulars to meet me.

In the photo above, L to R: Beth Marcus, John Brinkerhoff, Teri, Bruce Malin, Carl Layman, Paul Smith, Jim Migliorini and Todd Marcus.

We hung out and talked beer & brewing, drank Cape Cod beer and ate snacks for a couple of hours. Everybody was really nice. It was fun to see my old friend Jim Migliorini who is a also a former professional brewer. Jim is now a school teacher on Cape Cod.

Time was flying as usual on this trip, and as the sun threatened to set we hopped in Beth's car, Todd jumped in their new 20 foot antique Winnebago (affectionately known as "Winny-bagel" or "Brave Little Toaster" or "BTBTA: Brewery To Beach Transit Authority") and drove to the beach at Sandy Neck on Cape Cod.

Here at Sandy Neck, people can drive cars and RVs on the beach. We don't get to do anything like that back in Oregon. Before driving your vehicle on the beach, you have to "Air Down" or deflate the tires to 18 PSI. This keeps the vehicle from getting stuck in the sand, and it keeps the beach ruts from getting too deep. Photo at left and right show the Marcuses and their sons Jake and Harry deflating the tires on the car and the camper.
A second cool thing you can do on the beach at Sandy Neck (besides just driving on it) is that you can park your self-contained RV on the beach Thursday night, and just leave it there for the weekend. That way you get a good parking spot before the place crowds up. After work on Friday you pack up the car, go back to your camper on the beach, and there you are for the weekend.

Another cool thing, which we can actually do on the Oregon coast, is that you can have a bonfire on the beach. The photo at right shows our lovely campfire built in a shallow dug pit.

Everybody set up camp when we got there and Todd fired up the grill. We enjoyed hamburgers and hot dogs as we watched the moon rise over Cape Cod Bay. It rose rather quickly through the long fingers of gray-blue clouds, surrounded by the black star-speckled sky. The moon was just off of full. It's bright sepia color and tall oval shape reminded us of an old-fashioned hot air balloon rising into the darkness. It cast a lot of light over the beach. We could see cars and self-contained campers in both directions.

After the Marcuses dropped me off at my camper at the brewery, I pulled in front of the entrance in order to plug in my extension cord. Not sure why, but I haven't had electrical in the trailer the last several nights.

It was already midnight, but my husband Jon wasn't home from his job at Wyeast Laboratories in Hood River, Oregon, three hours away. I left a message and worked while I waited for his return call. I pulled my printer/scanner off the table under my bunk, moved the stuff that is "stored" on the bench seats while I drive, and tipped the table up sideways. That gave me access to the cases of beer that I have been collecting on this trip. I pulled most of the bottles out of the cases/12-pack carriers as I was a bit short on 6-pack carriers. Then I repacked the beers for future brewery gifts.

I packed one bottle of my Steelhead Root Beer into each 6-pack. I'd bought several cases of it before I quit my job at Steelhead. Then I packed five different beers into each 6-pack carrier. My goal was to set up a bunch of mixed 6-packs. As I travel, I try to gift these mixed 6-packs to breweries in such a way, that the receiving brewery is getting beer they normally can't find in their geographic area, and the giving brewery's beers are "distributed" by me to brewers outside of their distribution area. Very fun for all the brewers and breweries involved.

Finally an hour or so later, my husband called. We worry about each other and talk on the phone at least once a day, and always before bedtime. Tomorrow is a big day for him. Stay tuned for details...

Thank you to Cape Cod Beer for letting me use their Internet to work on blogs and emails.