Together Everyone Accomplishes More (or T.E.A.M.)
Back in the old Four Peaks Employee Meeting days of the late 90's and the early 00's, Mr. Joshua Townsley always made a point to stress the "no i in team" philosophy that we originally learned in elementary school. Simple, effective, immortal. If not for the tireless efforts of the brewers, cooks, managers, wait staff, and Steve Lynch we wouldn't have gotten very far over the years. In the same way, the entity known as Four Peaks depends on others from time to time to get things accomplished. Case in point, just yesterday. I spent a great deal of my day overseeing a photo shoot involving our Photo Shoot Outtake | beers. For about 10 hours I watched as we took shot after shot of beers at different levels of consumption. Why? It's all going to be part of our new web site! It's true, we have begun the arduous task of building a brand new internet home, one that will propel us well into the 21st Century! It's going to take a lot of time, a LOT of time, to get this thing up and running, but when we do prepare to be dazzled! A navigation page that will be much easier to use, a merchandise page with stuff we actually have, iPhone applications, and a "Beer Finder" icon are just a few of the things we will be implementing and updating! This is the Four Peaks Summer Project 2k10, and to do this we needed to hire a team. Yup, we have people from Scottsdale to Palm Bay, Florida working on a web site that is bound to be groundbreaking, we'll be keeping you updated. NEW BEER ALERT!!! You love the Hopsquatch Barley Wine. You look forward to it coming out the first of every month. You stop in and have one on a Sunday and then stop in again after work on Monday just to find that it's...GONE. It's here for 3 days and then for the following 28 days we have an open tap handle. You know, we should really get someone to look into putting a beer on there for the rest of the month. Well we did and it's happening. NOW! Our Four Peaks Tempe location will now be offering a special Guest Beer for the times that our Hopsquatch is in hiding. Earlier today we tapped Stone Brewing Company's Old Dominion Barley Wine. Coming in at a robust 11.3% Alc./Vol. it deems the same respect that you would show our own Barley Wine. So come on in and have one today, because when it's gone we will move on to something different! What will it be? We leave those decisions to the brain trust. More on Old Dominion Barley Wine
MOTHER'S DAY BUFFET!Don't forget about Mother's Day next weekend! We still have space available for anyone wanting to make reservations to our Mother's Day Breakfast Buffet in Tempe. Call us at (480) 303-9967 or send an email to steve@fourpeaks.com to get your request taken care of. Make sure you bring your appetite (and mom)!
MADE IN ARIZONA BEER FESTIVAL Are you ready for the Made In Arizona Craft Beer Festival this Saturday at Heritage Square in Phoenix this Saturday? Well it's ready for you! Join Four Peaks and many more breweries from around the state of Arizona for this 2nd Annual event to benefit Channel 8, Arizona PBS. It's cold beers for a great cause. This signature event from Arizona PBS and the Arizona Brewer's Guild is a celebration of craft beers made exclusively in the state of Arizona. All varieties of of locally produced ales, lagers and specialty beers will be available for your tasting pleasure. Food? They got you covered with a wide array of American, Mexican and International culinary concoctions as well. Sliders, enchiladas, brats, and pot stickers are just a small sample of the items on hand. Buy your tickets HERE if you haven't already, see you on Saturday!
LASTLYI'm going to keep it short and sweet this week. We have quite a bit of activity going on right now with building new web sites, getting ready for Mother's Day and Graduation, as well as preparing for an eventful summer. I'm going to leave it to the capable hands of my associates to keep you entertained for the rest of this issue. Have fun this week everyone, stop in and have a couple beers with us while your at it, we enjoy the company! ----------------------------------
p.s.I promised myself I wasn't going to talk about the new Arizona Immigration Law in this weeks issue. Turns out I don't have to thanks to the Daily Show, The Colbert Report, SNL, Twitter, and everywhere else on the interwebs! Have fun watching and reading those links and be prepared for the dreaded "Arizona Boycott" that's building up out there! |
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The Brewers Blog
During the life of a brewery it's
easy to forget the impetus for many of the decisions that get made over
the years. It's usually brought to light when explaining a long
held process to a new employee and when asked if they have any questions
one is inevitably confronted with, "why do we do it that way?"
And, after some searching, the answer is, inevitably, "because that's
how we've always done it".
We had a similar event happen a few
weeks back when a fan of the brewery e-mailed to ask if the 8th Street
Ale was made with Maris Otter malt. He could swear it was  Maris
Otter, it just had that Maris flavor.
Maris Otter, for decades, has been
the malt of choice for many English brewers. It is premium barley
with low nitrogen levels and an affinity for being malted. Those
that use Maris Otter usually mention it in their marketing; it's that
special. But with special comes a price; it's expensive, and
frankly, agronomically speaking, there are modern malts that perform
just as well. Like the kind we use now; it produces wonderful
flavor but its upside is that it is far more versatile than Maris which
is almost exclusively used in making pale ale, a huge benefit when
producing
a whole range of styles.
Still, Maris is the benchmark of pale
ale and the question posed by the e-mailer jogged our memory to a place
it hadn't been in 13 years. When developing 8th St.
Ale we wanted to use Maris but it just wasn't practical. Being
young and full of hubris we decided to embark on a series of trials
where we would blend our base malt with varying specialty malts to try
to mimic Maris. Shoot, if we could do it with our water why not
our malt? And you know what? We got pretty damn close.
At least close enough to convince our e-mail friend. But, to be
honest, we had completely forgotten about the trials.
The whole situation started a
revisiting
of many of our processes; to stand there and look at a procedure and
simply ask, "Why?"
It can be an eye-opening, sometimes
embarrassing, sometimes edifying experience for everyone, and,
ultimately,
it will, and has, made us better brewers.
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Upcoming Events & Ticket Finder
Saturday, May
1st: "Made In Arizona" Craft Beer Festival to
Benefit 8 Arizona, PBS at Heritage Square. Tickets are $65 and are
available HERE.
Wednesday, May 5th: Cinco
de Mayo and the 1 Year Anniversary of Kilt Lifter in a can, so stop in
and buy a 12 pack!
Sunday, May 9th: Mother's Day Buffet
in Tempe
Wednesday, May 12th: Our Fifth Cheese Puff Day of the
year 2010!
May 13th - 15th: ASU Graduation
May 17th - 23rd: American
Craft Beer Week! Check out their website for updates on what's
happening throughout the U.S.!
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Cask Conditioned and Seasonals
IN SCOTTSDALE THIS WEEK: 8th Street AleIN TEMPE THIS WEEK: Dry Hopped Golden Ale: Currently Pouring!
8th Street Ale: Your late week selection SEASONAL: Leroy Brown! |
The Grill & Tap Dispatch
with Dave Tanzi This week, some random musings on current events, the existential dilemma of the modern house cat, and why Bobby Cox thinks Albert Puljos should get paid $50 million a year.
IN FILM: Death at a Funeral is perhaps the most unlikely film production since Francis Ford Coppola tried his hand at a musical with Finian's Rainbow. First of all, it's the first black comedy that's also a black comedy - and it's not directed by Tyler Perry. Secondly, it's a remake (almost word for word, actually) of a British film of the same name from 2007. This is not The Ring, a Japanese movie sensation remade for Americans four years later; this is an English film being remade in English in less than three years. Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence must have bumped into each other at the British premiere and said, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Lastly, the guy who did direct it is Neil Labute - primarily a playwright and also a Mormon from BYU. That's like making Pat Buchanan head of the DNC.
IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD: I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the past week walking two things that really weren't designed to be walked - my bike and my cat. The former due to a blown tube on my cruiser, and some unrideable sections of Wingate Pass, and the latter due to my Gestapo like HOA insisting that there is no specificity between dogs and cats under the association's general pets bylaws - both must be supervised to be outside. Thankfully there is no leash law; then I would really look preposterous.
IN SPORTS: Ryan Howard signed a 5 year, $125 million dollar contract extension. The Phillies were on the road in San Francisco when the deal was announced, so the press conference took place at AT&T Park in San Francisco, with the Giants logo on the back drop and the microphones, yet Howard kept talking about his special relationships with the fans "here," how much he enjoys playing "here" and how happy he is to be "staying here, in Philadelphia." Yet all I could think was 200 strikeouts a year, times five years, divided by $125,000,000. That's $125,000 per strikeout! Where's the batting cage?
IN THE NEWS: Lastly, I'd be remiss not to mention the big local news, specifically how it affects the Grill & Tap, and you should all be happy to know that Leroy Brown's papers are in order, plus as we all know, he's the baddest man in town - not even the po'lice are messin' with him. That being said, I just can't predict if or when he may leave town in protest, or for that matter, when he'll be back. So enjoy him while you can.
You can
contact us in
Scottsdale at 480-991-1795 or at
Scottsdale@fourpeaks.com
Send
all "Show Us Your Cans" submissions to:
mike@fourpeaks.com |
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