Beer Diary...

     F or the most part, brewing commercially is a series of repetitive motions that mostly involve cleaning. In the midst of it all I occasionally get to brew some special batches of beer to keep my spirits alive. The first picture below is a five gallon batch of Belgian Strong Ale fermenting away happily.    We have been brewing multiple large batches of this beer for the Cerveceria Dos Aves anniversary beer to be released in late November so I took the occasion to pull off enough wort to re-pitch a different yeast that I salvaged from a beer that was brewed last year that I really liked. This is a very pleasant Belgian yeast Wyeast Belgian Ardennes but some of the bottles ended up with some acetobactor and these bottles I expecially liked . I want to try and duplicate the results and I'm making an assumption that the entire batch was infected and that the salvaged yeast includes some of the bacteria I want but that's a big assumption. Chances are it was ...

Each year we continue to grow. Slowly. It's a struggle to make a small brewery profitable and it's an incredible amount of work just to break even. But, with our recent gold metal wins in a national competition against professional brewers throughout Mexico the hard work is rewarded with a sense of validation. This is encouraging and the pride of the achievement has energized me to keep at it. We took first place for our Am. pale ale and R.I.S.  Last year we took 3rd. place for our Belgian tripel and two years ago a gold medal for our barley wine. Needless to say, we are making some good beer now we just need to make a lot more of it. We have commissioned a local welder to manufacture a set of 3bbl kettles that we hope to put into use by the end of September. This will reduce our current work load of eight back-to-back brewing sessions in a 17 hour period down to one in 8 hours in order to get our fermentors half full. As our sales increase we can then go to bre...

Cerveceria Dos Aves now has a blog and you can follow what's happening around the brewery events and activities here Dos Aves Blog Please bookmark or follow to stay up to date on our progress here in San Miguel de allende! Set up from last year.

 We've moved! Finally after two years of brewing in what was essentially a garage, we've rented and moved into a large space to continue the growth of Cerveceria Dos Aves . No more claustrophobic, super heated brew sessions. The front of the new Cerveceria Dos Aves For those of you reading who participated in my Indiegogo crowd funding program a couple years ago, I want to thank you again for your belief in me and this project and show you that your money has definitely helped me get this business off the ground. Considering how little money we had to begin with, and the small amount through contributions, we've been able to double the expansion (sales) each year and expect to continue with that kind of growth. We are still cobbling together larger equipment as we can afford it including two larger plastic fermenters. Since we don't have a glycol chilling system in place yet we had to construct a cold room for fermentation. In the picture below you can see the co...

Thought I'd share an image that Susan made for me when we first got here in San Miguel and I started building a brewery. I especially like the dog skeleton lying on the floor. You can see more images by Susan at www.susandorf.com

After two years of efforts we're making good progress in growing the Cerveceria Dos Aves. We just received two 150 gallon fermentors to increase our output as the demand for the beers is growing. The second year anniversary just past and we released a special Russian Imperial Stout with blackberries to offer as gifts to our growing list of clients. Last years beer was the same stout but with raspberries. Next year cherries? I'm not finding much time in my life for anything but working towards the growth of the brewery and that includes writing here. Speaking of which, I need to go clean kegs now. Cheers! Raspberries on the left and blackberries on the right. Cerveceria Dos Aves 2013, 2014 anniversary beers. Notice the logo change.