Archives for November 2018

It’s that time of year once again as Rogue Ales & Spirits honors old St. Nick with its 2018 edition of Santa’s Private Reserve.

This annual holiday seasonal is always one to celebrate Santa Claus’ arrival to your house. The 2018 vintage of Santa’s Private Reserve is a Belgian dark ale packed with tangerines and boysenberries. The combination of spicy Belgian yeast and roasty malts with the tartness from boysenberries and tangerines captures the flavors of the season. Santa’s Private Reserve sits at 7.9% ABV and 22 IBUs.

“This year we wanted to be bold and different,” said Rogue Brewmaster John Maier in a statement. “So I brewed old St. Nick a Belgian-style beer with a Rogue twist and put his jolly face on the bottle.”

Santa’s Private Reserve is currently available through the New Year in 22 ounce bottles and on draft.

The Festival of Wood & Barrel-Aged Beer (FoBAB) is the world’s largest and most prestigious barrel-aged beer festival and competition. Hosted annually by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild (ICBG), FoBAB invites breweries from all over the world to Chicago to showcase their rarest, most innovative wood and barrel-aged brews. All beer, cider, mead, and perry featured at FoBAB has been aged in a wooden barrel or come into contact with wood during the aging process. Breweries also compete for top honors in the National Barrel-Aged Beer Competition.

This year over 400 barrel aged beers were entered by 210 breweries from 30 states.  Here are the  2018 FoBAB medal winners:

Category Cider, Perry, Mead
Gold: Cellarmen’s – Valentine Liberator Gin Barrel Aged Cranpus
Silver: Superstition Meadery – Aphrodisia
Bronze: 2 Towns Ciderhouse – La Mure

Category Wild Beer Sour w/Fruit
Gold: Rhinegeist Brewery – Perpetual Passion
Silver: The Rare Barrel- Playing for Keeps
Bronze: Horus Aged Ales – Goodbye to Beauty

Category Wild Beer Sour
Gold: Hopewell Brewing Company – Crudites
Silver: Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project – L’Brett D’or
Bronze: The Rare Barrel – The Search

Category: Wild Beer Brett
Gold: Off Color – Mousetrap – Wildings
Silver: Blackberry Farm Brewery – Barrel Series Brett Belgo IPA
Bronze: Funkwerks – Sauvin Serve

Category: Fruit Beer
Gold: Werk Force Brewing – Farmhouse Vultures Saison with Raspberries and Blackberries
Silver: Werk Force Brewing – The Legend of Mr. Birger Saison
Bronze: Brickstone – Barrel Aged AfterWorld with Luxardo Cherries

Category: Specialty Experimental
Gold: Fremont Brewing – B-Bomb: Coconut Edition
Silver: St. Francis Brewery – Teotwawki
Bronze: The Dayton Beer Company – Deep Sea Diving Aged in Bookers

Category: Strong Dark Beer Category
Gold: Rock Bottom Brewery(Portland) – 5th Dimension
Silver: Karetas Brewing – Colm Cille
Bronze: Half Acre Brewing – Orin

Category: Strong Pale Beer
Gold: Pollyanna Brewing – Orenda Volume 03 Aged in Apple Brandy Barrels
Silver: Karetas Brewing – Sacre Coeur
Bronze: Nebraska Brewing – Melange a Trois

Category: Classic Beer Styles
Gold: Middle Brow Beer Company – Sassafras Brut
Silver: Church Street Brewing – Holly Moly
Bronze: Black Horizon Brewing – Gin Barrel Aged Fooled Me Once

Category: Barleywine/Wheatwine
Gold: Verboten Brewing Cognac/Whiskey Grow Old with You
Silver: Goose Island Beer Company – Bourbon County Brand Wheatwine
Bronze: Revolution Brewing(Kedzie) – Straight Jacket

Category: Specialty Strong Porter/Stout
Gold: Bottle Logic Brewing – Fundamental Observation
Silver: Freemont Brewing – The Rusty Nail
Bronze: Four Fathers Brewing – Double Barrel Aged Wheelhouse

Category: Strong Porter/Stout
Gold: More Brewing – Barrel-Aged Mehndi
Silver: Saugatuck Brewing – BBA Gramanatrixxx
Bronze: Emperical Brewery – Neutronium

Best in Show: Bottle Logic Brewing – Fundamental Observation
Runner Up: The Hopewell Brewing – Crudites

Dana Point, California – Beginning in 2017 the Pink Boots Society partnered with Yakima Chief Hops to create an exclusive blend for use in the annual Collaboration Brew Day, which takes place around March 8th, International Women’s Day. The “Pink Boots Blend” is created each year by Pink Boots members who participate in a hops rub at their annual meeting at the Great American Beer Festival.

The “2019 Pink Boots Blend” is a new and exclusive hop blend available to commercial brewers. The blend includes Loral (3 parts), Glacier (2 parts); one part each Mosaic, Sabro and Simcoe hops. Aroma notes: Stone fruit,tropical and dank, allowing brewers to go a lot of different directions. A portion of the proceeds benefit the Pink Boots Society Scholarship Fund. Pink Boots Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to “assist, inspire and encourage” women beer industry professionals to advance their careers through education.

“We’re excited to participate in this collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops. Our members really enjoy doing the hops rub, and its really cool to see a new commercial grade blend come from our collective effort. Last year sales of the hops blend raised $40,000, all of which went toward our scholarship fund to help educate women beer professionals. This year we aim to exceed that amount,” said Pink Boots Society president, Laura Ulrich, who is small batch brewer at Stone Brewing Company.

Yakima Chief Hops and Country Malt Group will take pre-orders for the hop blend through December 3, 2018. The hop blend will be released to registered brewers prior to International Women’s Day, March 8, 2109. The blend will be produced in traditional T90 hop pellets. Cost: $12.38 per pound. Available in 11 pound and 44 pound lots. Yakima Chief Hops will donate $3 per pound to the Pink Boots Society. To register and order the hops blend, and to learn more about the Collaboration Brew Day, visit Pink Boots Society’s dedicated webpage.

White Labs is a new Collaboration Brew Day partner this year. The company will offer complementary strain suggestions for each brewers’ particular brew, and will donate a portion of proceeds from the sales of Core Strain yeast sold to Pink Boots Society. Deadline to order yeast is February 15, 2019. Brewers can register and learn more about White Labs offerings on the company’s website.
About Pink Boots Society
Pink Boots Society is an international nonprofit organization. Pink Boots Society assists, inspires, encourages and educates female beer professionals to advance their careers in the beer industry. Members in the US and countries around the world are the industry leaders of tomorrow.

About Yakima Chief Hops
As a 100% grower-owned network of family hop farms, Yakima Chief Hops is uniquely positioned to establish strong relationships between the growers who supply our super-premium hops and the innovative brewing customers who utilize our products in their beer. Our Mission is to connect family hop farms with the world’s finest brewers, providing the highest quality hop products and uncompromising service for the ultimate benefit of our customers, employees and growers.

About White Labs
What began as home brewers searching for higher quality yeast, quickly grew into a team of dedicated biochemists exploring new ways to advance brewing altogether. Today, White Labs stands at the intersection of science, education and craft. Constantly striving for perfection, and in the process continually raising the bar in the art of fermentation.

Chico, California —Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. announced today that the company will brew Resilience Butte County Proud IPA to raise funds for those impacted by the Camp Fire. Sierra Nevada will donate 100 percent of Resilience IPA sales to Camp Fire relief, and is asking every other brewery in the country to brew the beer and do the same.

Sierra Nevada will brew Resilience IPA on Giving Tuesday, November 27. The company has asked other breweries to create their own versions of Resilience on that day and donate 100 percent of the sales to Camp Fire relief. Sierra Nevada is working with hop and malt suppliers to secure ingredient donations to participating breweries nationwide.

“Although Chico and the Sierra Nevada brewery were spared, the Camp Fire has devastated neighboring communities where many of our friends, families and employees live,” said Sierra Nevada founder and owner, Ken Grossman. “This community has supported us for 38 years and we’re going to do everything we can to support them back.”

The Camp Fire, now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, started on November 8 in the hills above the brewery’s Chico facility. At the time of this release, the fire had burned 142,000 acres, killed more than 60 people and left hundreds missing, destroyed more than 9,700 homes, and displaced nearly 14 percent of Sierra Nevada’s Chico employees.

Days after the fire, the brewery established the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief fund, which will provide much-needed long-term support for community rebuilding efforts. All donations from Resilience IPA will go to this fund. Additional donations towards this effort can be made here.

Sierra Nevada will release their version of Resilience IPA in early January with limited distribution in cans and on draught.

Western North Carolina has evolved from a mountainous frontier dotted with dry communities into an international destination for craft beer drinkers. Long-time beer writer Anne Fitten Glenn penned this as a companion volume to her first book, Asheville Beer, An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing. This new history of ales and lagers includes the tales of formerly dry towns and counties revising their post-Prohibition regulations to welcome breweries. She relates how those breweries attract community, jobs, tourists, and dollars, as well as mixed emotions, legal conundrums, and entrepreneurial challenges. Glenn traces the history of Western North Carolina beer from the wild days of saloons, bootleggers, and Asheville’s first breweries, through one of the longest Prohibitions in the nation, to the craft beer explosion of the 21st century.

About the Author:
Award-winning author Anne Fitten Glenn has been writing about and working in the beer business on and off since the 1990s. She is the author of two beer books, Western North Carolina: A Mountain Brew History (2018) and Asheville Beer: An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing (2012), both published by Arcadia/The History Press. She pens a regular “Mountain Brews” article for Edible Asheville and has written for numerous other publications, including All About Beer, Smoky Mountain Living, WNC Magazine, Asheville Citizen-Times, and CraftBeer.com. She served on the Asheville Brewers Alliance Board of Directors for almost five years and was a founding organizer of Asheville Beer Week. Western North Carolinians may remember her “Edgy Mama” and “Brewgasm” columns, which ran for several years in Mountain Xpress.

Buy it now on Amazon, Arcadia Publishing

 

 

Paso Robles, California: A late grape harvest in the Paso Robles wine country this year paved the way for a boisterous group of winemakers to help blend “XXII”—Firestone Walker’s latest barrel-aged anniversary ale.

“Usually by late summer the stress of the impending harvest starts bearing down on our winemaker friends, and some of them can’t make it to our blending session,” said Brewmaster Matt Brynildson. “Not this year—and the result was one hell of a blend created by one of our largest groups ever.”

He added, “Winemakers are practicing experts in the art of blending, which is why we have sought their involvement ever since making our first Anniversary Ale in 2006.”

The Anniversary Ale blending session has become an annual late-summer rite at the brewery, and the 2018 session took place on September 4 with 30 participants in attendance. The outcome is XXII, signifying the Firestone Walker’s 22nd year on California’s Central Coast.

XXII will be released to all Firestone Walker markets in single boxed 12-ounce bottles for a limited time starting next week. It will debut at all Firestone Walker locations this weekend, starting at the annual Anniversary Party in Paso Robles on November 3. Tickets to the party may be purchased at FirestoneBeer.com.

 Spicing It Up
XXII is a blend of four distinct beers aged in spirits barrels: Stickee Monkee (Central Coast quad, 44%), Parabola (Russian imperial oatmeal stout, 22%), Bravo (imperial brown ale, 22%) and Helldorado (blonde barleywine, 12%).

The primary twist this year is the inclusion of Helldorado aged in rum barrels and gin barrels.

“Even though it’s a small percentage of the final blend, the gin barrel Helldorado adds a lot to this beer,” Brynildson said. “It brings this interesting botanical quality with spicy notes that we’ve never had in our Anniversary blends before.”

A unique synergy also emerged in the final blend of XXII. “There’s this distinct marzipan-meets-cherry note that comes from just the right amount of Parabola blended with Stickee Monkee and Bravo,” Brynildson said. “We saw that in ‘10’, our very first Anniversary Ale. That’s the magic of blending—drawing out these flavors that have nothing to do with any individual component.”

To create this beer, the winemakers were divided into teams. Each team created their own preferred blend from numerous components, and then all of the blends were blind tasted by the group to determine the favorite—which became the basis for XXII.

This year, the winning team was helmed by Terry Hoage and Phil Lamontagne of TH Estate Wines; Sherman Thacher and Daniel Callan of Thacher Winery; and longtime brewery friend and master bread baker Arie Litman. This team walked away with the coveted “cardboard crowns” that are passed along each year.

XXII: The Final Blend
Stickee Monkee (12.9% ABV) Aged in Bourbon Barrels (44%)
Central Coastal Quad
OG=27P FG=6.5P IBU=45 Color=Deep Brown / Brewed with Belgian Candi Sugar and Mexican Brown Sugar

Parabola (13.7% ABV) Aged in Bourbon Barrels (22%)
Russian Imperial Stout
OG=30P FG=8.5P IBU=80 Color=Black / Hopped with Columbus, East Kent Golding

Bravo (13.6% ABV) Aged in Bourbon Barrels (22%)
Imperial Brown Ale
OG=26.5P FG=3.0 IBU=35 Color=Deep Brown / Hopped with Bravo and Columbus

Rum Barrel Helldorado (14.5% ABV) Aged in Rum Barrels (7%)
Blonde Barley Wine
OG=21P FG=5.5 IBU=32.5 Color=Deep Gold / Hopped with Styrian Golding

Gin Barrel Helldorado (11.4% ABV) Aged in Gin Barrels (5%)
Blonde Barley Wine
OG=21P FG=5.5 IBU=32.5 Color=Deep Gold / Hopped with Styrian Golding

Brewmaster’s Notes:
“This beer is all about the barrels. Bourbon, rum and gin barrels combine forces to create incredible complexity. The stout percentage is restrained, allowing the wood to speak and be heard. I especially like the way the Gin barrels bring new spice notes that we have not seen before in an Anniversary blend. I will let you discover the rest. This beer is unfiltered and unfined, so there will be a small amount of sediment in the bottom of the bottle. XXII is best poured carefully into a half-filled brandy snifter or wine glass. Allow it to warm to 55F to fully enjoy the pleasing and complex aromas. The true complexity of this blend is revealed as the beer sits and breathes in the glass, so take your time. If you wait to open your bottle later, store it in a cool dark place. Like our other Anniversary offerings, this beer will age well and change favorably for years to come. It was an absolute pleasure in the making. The journey continues.”

Evil Santa comes ’round but once a year…and this year he’s coming to town early. Join us at The Virginia Beer Co. beginning on Saturday, November 3rd for a weekend celebrating the return of our seasonal Spiced Milk Stout!

Evil Santa will be available on draft beginning at Noon on Saturday, with multiple limited one-off variants pouring alongside. 4-packs of 16 oz. cans will also be back for you to enjoy to enjoy at home, and to share with those on your Nice List.

Seasonal pairings for this release weekend will be provided by Matchsticks BBQ Co. (11/3) and The German Snack Shack (11/4).

More: https://www.facebook.com/events/2106616982982547/

CONTACT INFO

Company: The Virginia Beer Company
Contact: Robby Willey
Email: robby@virginiabeerco.com

Do not open ‘til Christmas? Whoever coined that phrase obviously hasn’t tasted Great Lakes Christmas Ale. A Yuletide’s worth of holiday spices and sweet honey to keep you a-wassailing all season long. ABV: 7.5% IBUs: 35

MALTS:
Harrington 2-Row, Wheat, Crystal 45, Special Roast, Roasted Barley

HOPS:
Mt. Hood, Cascade

Additional ingredients:
Honey, Ginger, Cinnamon

PAIRS WITH:
Roast duck, spiced desserts, and ugly Christmas sweaters