Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Experimental Results

Every night, after closing, someone pulls the Z off the primitive Casio till and peers at the numbers. This is myself, whether primarily or ultimately; I like seeing if we made any money, for one thing, but also how the grand experiment is progressing. Grand Experiment, you say? Yes - how is the real ale selling?

I sometimes view this project, the Oakridge real ale pub and brewery, as having two parts. The first is that, for some crazy reason, I want to run a pub and brew and drink real ale. The second, for equally crazy reasons, is that I want to see what happens when you stick with your guns and do all the things that you were told not to do but which you believe in anyway. It's for this second reason that I really enjoyed Sunday night's Z from the till; and this is a fairly typical example:

REAL ALE QT 50
36.36% $163.75
CO2 DRAFT QT 3
3.33% $15.00
etc.

What this means is that 50 servings, whether pints, halfs or 5 oz tasters, were served, as opposed to 3 servings of keg beer. 36% of the sales came from the stuff concocted in the back of the building. I do get to enjoy a happy moment from time to time.

Next time I post I'll be sure to find something to complain about.

5 comments:

Whorst said...

Sounds good. I was DEAD WRONG about Nottingham. It's a good yeast. How's it working for you in lower gravity beers?

Unknown said...

Well that's good. A good proportion of a firkin. Things must be looking up.

Brewers Union Local 180 said...

Sausage: I've used Nottingham in everything so far except that last batch of my English IPA, for which I used SO4. This is still conditioning, and I'm eager to see how different it is from that last batches. The taste out of the fermenter on casking up day was nice. The Nottingham is consistently neutral in my low gravity beers, so I get to see what the grist and hops are up to.

Dave: We flirt with being in the red a lot these days, to be honest. We're still a new business in a bad economy. Also, the skiiing has not been up to snuff lately, so the custom trickles in. Snow is in the forecast. Some new customers last week dubbed us the best pub in Oregon last week, and one new guy now thinks of us as his favorite new Eugene pub, even though we are 45 miles away, so word of mouth is starting to circulate.

Unknown said...

OK, hang in there. Easter is only 6 weeks away. You get busy then right?

Dave A said...

"new favorite Eugene pub" I can see that I need to find out who this is and we can car pool! Ha!

I for one am glad to see the response in numbers that the "real ale" experiment is leaning towards success. If not in $$ then at least in numbers...the dollars will follow.