And speaking of things, we know that Joybringer is a favorite to many of you out there in Blog Readership Land, so it's in your/our best interest for you to know that we've got Joybringer back in bottles right now, but we ain't got many! Long story short, we brewed ol' Joy to use in a lot of the blends that we're releasing for our Shitty Wednesday Bottle Extravaganza (more on that in a sec) but also we wanted to have some bottles of the Last Ever Batch of Joybringer, so we bottled some off! But we were only able to squirrel away a couple cases, so if you need some Joy in your life you might wanna get gettin' while there's gettin' to be got! 

And gettin' on down to that ol' Bottle Hoedown or whatever I called it, we've got some kinda Bottle Hoedown goin' down! More specifically, we like to do something special for the day we know as Shitty Wednesday (also known as the worst traffic day of the year and/or the one time of year that you go to a bar in your hometown only to be aggressively reminded of why you never bothered keeping in touch with people from high school) and that "something special" happens to be releasing a shitload of bottles! We've currently got SIXTEEN FRIGGIN' BEERS available in bottles and SIX of those were created and/or bottled specifically for Shitty Wednesday (and/or Horatio Day, when they'll all be on tap). Of the six new ones, two are rereleases - Joybringer (which I already mentioned) and Joyrider (this time featuring beer aged in the Horatio's Reserve whiskey barrel); one is a new spin on an old favorite (barrel-aged Biere de Krampus); and the other three (Close Encounters, Sam's Elven Explosion, and Tears of Krampus) are brand spankin' new! And. AND. To "sweeten the deal" and get you to come out on a day when it's objectively terrible to even think about being in a car, buying bottles (specifically six or more) gets you a free glass! Oh and also we've still got a bunch of other stuff, including Ginger Hootenanny and Calico which were originally supposed to be Shitty Wednesday releases but they were ready early and we got excited. Listen: we're not saying that bottles and glassware from Bone Up should make up your entire holiday shopping list, but we are saying that bottles and glassware from Bone Up should at least be most of what you give people for The Holidays this year. ​

And then the week after that is Horatio Day, because what this time of year really needs is More Holidays.

Howdy friends! We here at Bummer Announcements Incorporated made another big ol' bummer announcement recently, so click on over here if you're not yet up to speed on that. And yeah, it is a massive bummer (I mentioned this), but we're still here for now and we're still doin' as much cool shit as we can possibly cram into our schedule, so let's party it up while there's still parties to be partied!*
​
And we'll kick things off this week with what will hopefully be some "frown upside down" kinda news** for y'all and that's the triumphant return of cask! Our cask program returns from its lengthy slumber (two week hiatus) with taproom-favorite Extra Naked and in honor of this most auspicious of occasions we also dry hopped the cask with a buncha Pekko and it's gonna be great and also it's getting tapped on Thursday and you should drink some! 

In news that won't come as a surprise to many of you, but which is nonetheless very difficult for us to deliver, we are officially announcing that Bone Up will be closing at the end of this year; our anticipated last day of taproom service will be Sunday, December 31. You'll note that we're not saying "we've made the decision to close," because that would suggest that this is a choice of ours rather than something we're being forced into (for those of you who aren't "in the loop" on this, the tl;dr is that we can no longer sustain operations in our space. There's more info here if you want to read something long and kind of depressing before you read this long and kind of depressing post). At the heart of this is, of course, the ongoing dispute we've been having with our landlords since early this year. There's more to it, of course, but there's only so much detail we can/should go into here and now (we assume you have some questions, so skip to the FAQ if you want answers sooner rather than later). 

It's completely heartbreaking to make this announcement. Bone Up means a lot to a lot of people, and there's nobody who understands that better than us because this place means everything to us. We (Liz and Jared) have had Bone Up as the primary focal point of our lives for most of a decade (and I do mean most - we signed our original lease in 2014), and during that time we've taken an industrial space and turned it into a weird little brewery featuring beer that mostly just confused people and from there we (well, you) developed a full-on community that was partly/entirely centered around said brewery which was still making beer that mostly confuses people, and that's really goddamn special. Like, you see the word "community" thrown around a lot by people who work in marketing (or at least we do, it's beyond overused in the craft beer sphere) but y'all are some of the most genuine (and, often but not always, genuinely weird) and welcoming people that we could ever hope to meet. We are so honored to have been given the opportunity to put our passions out into the world and to have them make a positive impact on so many people.

And that's really the point we want to drive home here - we're incredibly lucky to have met so many people who have responded so strongly to what we're doing here at Bone Up, from beer collabs to made-up holidays to coloring contests to weird niche trivia to dog-related events to live shows. It's not that we're doing anything wildly unusual, but we know what we like and not everything we’re into is gonna be for everyone; y'all have given us the opportunity to do the kinds of things that we want to see in the world and that's increasingly rare these days (hell, given the direction Boston seems to be moving in, it's more and more rare to see a place around here with any personality at all). In short: we get to do a bunch of cool shit because y'all are a bunch of cool people, and instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for ourselves we're gonna cram as much cool shit as we can into these last precious weeks. Sure, it'll be a bit bittersweet, but we'd rather go out with a bang (and besides, "making the best of a shitty situation" is kind of our whole deal, so this is fitting, in a way). 

Anyway, like we said, we're sure you have questions, so here are some answers:

You're really closing?
Yeah, I'm afraid so. We're gonna party it up through the end of the year, but come 2024 our doors will be closed (at least metaphorically. We'll still need to move all our stuff out). 

Are you going to be moving to a new location?
Currently no. We're not ruling that out as a possibility, but finding (and building out) a new location would take time (and money. Mostly money) that we don't really have right now. Plus that's not something we'd want to rush into - trying to blindly shove the contents of this building into a different one would feel slapdash at best - and it's difficult to form a cogent plan for our future while simultaneously dealing with the active unfolding of the worst crisis that we as a business (and as people) have ever faced. So the future of Bone Up - if there can be a future - would look less like "moving to a new location" and more like "starting something new in a different spot" (though, again, this is purely hypothetical at the moment). 

So what's going to happen to you guys? 
I dunno, we'll probably get jobs? 

Seriously?
Yeah. You hiring? We've got some seriously great people on staff who are gonna find themselves funemployed pretty soon, and we'd really like to do what we can to help them land on their feet. 

What can I do to help?
Same as always: come enjoy the taproom! We'd rather approach The End of Days hanging out with the people who made Bone Up a great place to be (which means you! Probably) and we've tried to pack the schedule as full as we can with things that you (and/or we) will enjoy. As our friends at Metal Monkey Brewing (which is sadly now defunct) put it, we'd rather laugh with you than cry with you. Plus we've actually still got a handful of beers coming out in the nearish future, including a couple Old Favorites on draft and also So Many barrel blends (followed by So Many wild blends. Please for the love of hops grab some bottles), so our beer menu should remain reasonably well stocked for a little while yet (though it is worth mentioning that we'll start running out of things - case in point, we're down to our last few cases of Extra Naked and Shut Up Kelly cans). 

I don't live anywhere near your taproom but I still want to help, is there anything I can do?
Other than staging a letter-writing campaign? We've had a few people ask if we've set up a crowdfunding campaign (and/or insist that we should do so) and we feel weird about just... asking for money? But also we don't want to turn away people who want to help (and it's not like our legal fees are exactly minor), so we'll probably set something up soon.*
Anything else I should know about the rest of the time you'll be open?
Oh man. Lots, actually. Here's some bullet points:

• At some point before the end of the year we'll be hosting an auction for a bunch of stuff from the brewery and/or taproom (art, tchotchkes, hippos, probably some other stuff), so if there's something you wanna grab as a memento, let us know and/or keep an eye out for the auction date. 
• We'll also be more quietly selling off a bunch of the Less Sexy stuff from the brewery/taproom, so holler if you think you'll want, like, barstools or bookshelves or tables or the cold room or whatever. (Also a lot of the stuff in the brewery is repurposed homebrew equipment, so if you're a homebrewer looking for some new used toys hit us up)
• If you're in the mug club, don't forget to claim your mug once all is said and done! Liz will be sending out more info on that front.
• I mentioned this above but it bears repeating - we will start to run out of stuff. When we run out of something we'll be out for good (we are still restocking hot dogs though). So if there's something that you'll kick yourself for not picking up one last time, grab it while you can. 
• That being said, we're still blending and bottling, so new barrel-aged and funky stuff will be popping up for a little bit. We’ve found that three years (stored cool) tends to be the shelf life sweet spot for our bottles, so that stuff will keep for a while.

Anyway, this mega sucks. But we've been trying to focus more on all the cool stuff that's happened because of Bone Up - the beers for dogs and the beers for weddings (hell, you could make the case that we've been indirectly - very indirectly, in most cases - responsible for several marriages happening. Up to three, depending on how much credit you're willing to give us) and beers for bands and the kickball league and adventures with staff and all the good times we get to have at the anniversary and Horatio Day also all our other weird made-up holidays that y'all just... roll with because you're cool like that and above all that's the thing we keep coming back to - we've made friends with a lot of great people that we otherwise wouldn't have met if not for Bone Up, and we know a lot of you out there will say the same. We've got something magical here and it's gonna be a huge loss when it's gone, but I'll be damned if we're not gonna enjoy the shit out of it while we're still kickin', so come hang!
Some important dates to note:

• 11/10-11 Pulpo Day: Stout Festival
• 11/22 Shitty Wednesday Bottle Release Extravaganza
• 12/2-3 Horatio Day: Barrel Aged and Wild Beer Festival
• 12/8 Bone Up Trivia
• 12/28-31 Last Days on Earth: Music Series and Art Auction (exact lineup and times TBD)
• 12/31 Last day of taproom service

* We don't want people to think we're trying to crowdfund for a new location (if that’s something that does happen, we’ll be very upfront about it) and extensive experience with The Public tells us that even if we do say explicitly that that's not what we're doing, people will come to their own conclusions and we don't want to lead people on, knowingly or otherwise. Hell, we half expect a few people to get all "a month ago you asked us to support you, and now you're closing? What was all that support for, then?" and that reaction isn’t unreasonable, save for the fact that we probably wouldn't have even made it this long if not for the incredible amount of support we've been shown over the course of the last month or so.

Then on Saturday we've got the return of Hot Sauce Day! This time around we have Craic Sauce, The Bone Sauce, and Rhed’s Hot Sauce settin' up shop and making it hurt so good and gettin' your tongue tinglin' all afternoon and you should swing by and get your sauce on! ​

And on Sunday our regularly-scheduled cooking class is once again "Cooking With Korean Flavors" which is also taught by the delightful Chef Harold and the food he makes in this class is straight-up good as hell so you should probably learn how to make it!

And then moving right along to The Future, we've got some fun times lined up for future times! Next Thursday we've got more Simpsons Trivia (the theme this time: Season Eight) and then Friday and Saturday we're throwing one of our top three made-up holidays and that's Pulpo Day! Basically we're gonna release El Pulpo (our wintertime chocolate orange imperial stout) and also its whiskey-barrel-aged-counterpart (creatively titled Barrel Aged El Pulpo) and also we're gonna be tappin' up a whole mess of vintage versions of Pulpo (both barreled and otherwise) so you can do some side-by-side comparisons and anyway it's a hoot and you should come on by!

And on Sunday we've got our regularly-scheduled (spooktacular) sushi class with Chef Harold and I totally dropped the ball on that last week because last week it was "Cooking with Korean Flavors" and the food from that was also spectacular (as one might expect) and I think that one's coming back around 11/5, so check it out if that one "suits your fancy!" (this week is definitely sushi though, I checked)

And then next week we've also got a buncha spooktacular stuff we're doin', so check it out! Next Wednesday we've got a Wire Tree Workshop (and the event is "bring your own rock" but we'll look the other way if you need to smouch one from our rock pile) and then next Thursday we've got Tim Burton Trivia and then next Friday starts our weekend full of spooktacular Beer and Halloween Candy pairings and then next Saturday is chock full of the spooktacular times with Halloween Yoga in the morning followed by our much anticipated (by us) dog costume contest and anyway you know it's gonna be a great time, so come hang out with us! ​

And speaking of new beer, it's worth mentioning that we're also tappin' up a buncha spooktacular old beer as well! Or rather, we've been diggin' through the ol' Aging Cellar** and we dug up some tasty treats from Bygone Days (and/or several months ago, which was a less spooktacular time) so we're gonna have a couple lines that are rotating through some cellared and/or barrel-aged beer that we've been squirrelin' away, so come on by and grab some while we've got some!

Currently on from the cellar:

• The Hourglass, tripel
• Horatio's Reserve,  barrel aged barleywine
• Undercurrents, mixed fermentation farmhouse ale
• Artificial Reaper, barrel aged dark strong ale
• El Pulpo, 2019 cellar vintage (tapping today!)

And speaking of fun times (we were speaking of fun times, right? That seems like the kind of thing we would do) we've got some spooktacular fun times! First up on Thursday is Simpsons Trivia! The theme once again is "brewhouse of horror" and it'll honestly be interesting to see how Chris manages to milk more questions out of the same twelve halloween specials, but you'll have to come out to find out, so come hang out! 

Then on Friday we've got more live music in the taproom! This is an acoustic set (a normal one, not an acoustic extravaganza like last time) featuring new-to-the-taproom Michael Boezi so come on out and give a listen! 

But wait! Did somebody say "spooktacular?" Probably not, because people don't tend to say "spooktacular" that much in normal life (especially without reason) but that's okay because we've got some spooktacular Halloween Metal Yoga happening on Saturday! 

And of course on Sunday we've got our weekly sushi classes and we're gonna keep mentioning those every week because they're a lot of fun, dammit (and also Chef Harold is pretty much the nicest person ever), so come check one out if you haven't already!

And then looking forward we've got more fun times up ahead! Next Tuesday we've got InebriArt in the house for a bong painting workshop (I did that one last time and it was super fun) and then next Thursday we've got Chris back for more Simpsons Trivia (the theme is, naturally, Brewhouse of Horror) and we've got an acoustic set from Michael Boezi in the taproom next Friday and some Halloween Metal Yoga next Saturday and anyway the point is that we've got lotsa fun times comin' on the horizon, so come hang with us! ​