Archive for the ‘Beer’ Category

Posted in Beer, OCB, Cameron's, Cameron's Brewing Co. | 1 Comment »

See you all there.  Cameron's has booths 22 and 65 this year and will be serving all four of our beers at both.  Stop by and check out our new American Apparel clothing line, it's pretty sweet.

Cheers

Jason 

Posted in Beer, Summer Plans, Tourism, Ontario Craft Brewers, OCB, Cameron's, Toronto Festival of Beer | No Comments »

Val here………..Just giving an update on our lost machine.Yes, it finally arrived on Thursday. It took about 5 hours to uncrate it but lo and behold what a magnificent sight! …………….Molson and Labatt eat your heart out.

Hopefully, when the engineers have set it up for us this week (sorry all you can collectors ,they won't be available for a few weeks yet) Neustadt can start canning…………..yea!

Posted in Beer, Ontario Craft Brewers, OCB, Neustadt, Canning, Frusso | 2 Comments »

Hmmm…first time I lost my work.  It seriously felt like a highschool nightmare.  I’ll try to write this a second time, although this time around I’ve got a pint beside me, so it will be much more enjoyable.  UPDATE - I've now tried about 6 times and feel like a techno-idiot…luckily I was smart enough this time to save the work in word before trying to publish - take that Murphy and stick your law into it!

Anyway, we just opened a retail store at the brewery…nothing too fancy, but the highlight is that we’re now selling our beer for the first time to individuals instead of exclusively to bars and restaurants.  We had a Grand Opening on the long weekend to celebrate, which you can read about on my blog:  http://beausbeer.blogspot.com/ for all the gory details.

But the point of this blog is our new package:  ½ gallon old-school hillbilly jugs.  I’m guessing that if you are reading this blog, you are hip to the craft brewery jive, so you’ll call the jug a growler, but being the only micro in this corner of Ontario, we figure we might as well call it what it is; a jug. 

Ok, switch topics:  I sit on the OCB marketing committee.  We’ve been working for months on a way for a potential customer to tell the difference between a true Ontario Craft Brewers member, a macro-beer impersonating a micro or a non-member.  There has been at least a million discussions about the best way to do this, but in the end, simple is always best and we landed on a sticker.  

That’s right, a sticker.  One that can be put on each of our six-packs or two-fours, or whatever, so that when you are at the LCBO, you can quickly spot us in the aisles.  If you are like me and try to drink OCB beers exclusively, this is a Godsend. 

Our new ad agency is awesome, and they developed a sticker that kind of looks like a wax seal, all traditional looking and awesome and we got these stickers just in time for our Grand Opening.  We are very proud of our design work on the jugs, but wow, with the sticker attached, this jug just sings.  Check out the pic, yo…

Posted in Beer, Beau's, Ontario Craft Brewers, OCB, Growler, seal, trustmark | No Comments »

So a couple weeks ago My sister, brother and I met up at the brewery about 3am and started driving to Toronto. We were enrolled in the PR course that the OCB's new agency was putting on (our previous agency is entirely on mat leave…insert joke about OCB's potency here). We got to the downtown offices for about 9am and after figuring out that not all the elevators went to the same floors we got to their offices overlooking Yonge and Bloor.

 The company is Fleishman Hillard http://www.fleishman.com/ and they handle accounts such as Gatorade, AT&T and UPS if the flash on their website is correct. I'm pretty sure they took on the OCB mainly for the beer. The course was on being a PR spokesperson for the OCB and to kick off what they call viral marketing. Sounds like something Pfiser would be into, but apperantly it means putting crap on the internet and hoping other people read it and add their own 2 cents to it.

The PR stuff was cool and I think I did ok; although OCB president John Hay had a much more politically-sensitive response to the question "why isn't Creemore part of the OCB?" than I did. Doug Pengelly from St. Andre had the funniest answer to a question though: Doug: So you see, there really is a style for almost every occassion Interviewer: So what would you suggest for doing housework Doug: Something really bitter The viral marketing stuff was kind of funny to me. Hearing professional pr people talking about the power of youtube and facebook and stuff just seams odd - I enjoyed the clips of the spiders on drugs and Biff from Back to the Future singing about people bugging him non-stop for movie trivia ("was it real manure? no it wasn't, was it real manure? Its a movie!"), but finding out how serious the PR world takes blogging is at the same time funny and scary.

One of our account reps has his own blog about pr, which you can read to get a sense of how important he feels this viral marketing stuff is:http://www.prworks.ca/ The best part of the day was at the very end, when most people had cleared out and just a few veterans were telling war stories from back in their Molson's days over a couple beers. Although also high on the list was getting a hug when I showed up from our other PR rep Anne Yourt - you see, she grew up a couple town's over, roomed with one of my buddies during college and that's just the way it is when you're from a small town.

If I can figure out how to upload pics on this blog thing, I'll post a pic I took of the group…if not I'll post it on my Facebook group the beau's army and tag everyone on it. Cheers!

Posted in Beer, Beau's, OCB | No Comments »