Welcome back friends! We're back with a buncha fun stuff for y'all to do (mostly HORATIO DAY which is FINALLY HERE) and also we're gonna spend some time reminiscin' on the past year or so (at... some length) so let's cut right to the brass chickens and get down to the nitty and/or gritty!
But first, a programming note: we will be closed to the public starting at 5PM on Friday (January 6th).
But first, a programming note: we will be closed to the public starting at 5PM on Friday (January 6th).
Note to Mug Club members: if you're thinking "they can't be closed, that's when the Mug Club party is!" then let me assure you that you are *so* close to figuring it out
And then. It's time for that time you've all been waiting for: Horatio Day!* We're draggin' out a buncha kegs of vintage and/or rare barrel-aged beer - including the first-and-only-time-on-draft appearance of Rumble Royale (our collab with Silvaticus) an the first-time-ever appearance of 600 (a barleywine we brewed to commemorate our 600th batch some months back) - and we're tappin' them on our portable draft system and also we've got a bottle fridge that's just burstin' at the seams and it's gonna be a fun time!
Come thirsty, my friends
The festivities kick off on Saturday and we've got Matilda's Pastelitos in the house for all your noshing needs and also there's gonna be cake at some point and, AND we've got some super sweet (and super limited) special glassware and then on Sunday we're keepin' on keepin' on only there's also a beer and vinyl pairing hosted by our friends from Light of Day Records (tickets here) and they'll also be doin' a vinyl popup and on the food side we'll have Nagomi Bento in the house servin' up some tasty eats!
On Thursday we're hosting our monthly music trivia and the theme this time is Bad Music! So if you've got any "guilty pleasure" bands that you're just, like, way too knowledgeable about, then come on out and strut your stuff!
You know who you are.
And speaking of Thursdays, starting on Thursday the 26th we're doin' a monthly comedy night! Our friends at Left Couch Comedy are steppin' up an bringin' in a rotating selection of comedians and the first one is this month, so grab yourself a ticket!
Beer made from ingredients, comedy composed of jokes
Annd moving a little (but not much) closer to now, we figured we'd give you some "inside info" on an event we've got comin' up in a couple weeks (specifically on Friday January 13th) and that's a combination beer release/book reading for our collab beer with local novelist Michael Cloherty! Michael's book is about a historic bank-robbery-turned-murder up in Malden so we brewed up a hoppy amber ale called Chalk Outline and we're gonna have him in the house doin' a book reading (and he'll probably stick around to sign some books if that's your jam) and this is the first time we've ever done a collab with a book*** and it's gonna be a good time and you should come out!
* Or rather, you've more likely been waiting for the time when you don't have to hear us go on about Horatio Day every week, but that's really the same thing.
** By "dust" I mean "our throbbing headaches"
*** Though it's definitely not the first time we've collaborated with an inanimate object
* Or rather, you've more likely been waiting for the time when you don't have to hear us go on about Horatio Day every week, but that's really the same thing.
** By "dust" I mean "our throbbing headaches"
*** Though it's definitely not the first time we've collaborated with an inanimate object
2022: A Year in Review
But anyway, that's enough talk about the present and/or future, let's get to navel-gazing about the past!
2022 has certainly been an... interesting year for most of us - full of the ups and downs, strikes and gutters that you'd expect, but also it (eventually) started to feel like that "return to normal" that we spent the better part of two years yearning for, only once we returned to normal, we learned that this normal still isn't normal, you know? Anyway, we took a deep dive through the ol' blogroll and got to reminiscing about what honestly started off as kind of a dark time in...
January when we tried to walk the line between "life goes on" and "we must be safe" by holding Horatio Day but requiring vax cards for entry.
We'd heard some chatter about that whole "omicron" thing that people were talking about, so we figured that masks and vaccines might help mitigate that risk, but (surprise!) we all got covid (or rather, everyone except for Jared got covid, he got it like two weeks later somehow). It was definitely an unpleasant time, but we managed to scrape together enough people to run things while we waited on everybody to test negative and also we didn't really need that many people because pretty much everybody else in the world got covid at that time too (for instance, most of our popups ended up cancelling that month for exactly that reason).
But! Amongst all the "worrying about covid" and "getting covid" and "getting yelled at by morons when we made the vax card policy a more permanent thing" we did manage to release, like, five different barrel-aged beers and that was pretty rad! Anyway the year was off to a pretty interesting start, but that meant that things just had to get better in...
February when things at least didn't get worse, anyway, even though we kinda sorta had to make a last-minute name/label change for a beer because Jared apparently can't read (finally! The secret behind changing Lazy Pants to Comfy Pants has been revealed: Jared is a bonehead).
Then, our brewer Justin abruptly announced that he was moving to Florida (which was a bummer for us but he seems happy down there so we'll call it an overall win).
But! This was also the month that we got our first-ever invite to Decibel Fest and we got to bring back our Beer and Girl Scout Cookie Pairings and we got to do a beer and burger pairing at a draft account and also this was the month that we started adding more trivia nights to the calendar (we did so much trivia this year you guys)!
And just in case we thought everything was gonna be sunshine and roses, we closed out the month by tapping a cask devoted to the recently-closed Modern Homebrew Emporium (which we had frequented as homebrewers, and also as a brewery whenever Jared forgot to order something that we needed). All in all it was a topsy-turvy month, but things seemed to be on the right course, which certainly set the stage for...
March when we started the month off with a bang by celebrating Kafka Day, which is also pretty much an excuse to tap a bunch of cool barrel-aged beers, for reasons that are entirely unrelated to Horatio Day (the true origin story is, true to the name, convoluted and potentially kind of boring, but it's mostly a "things are terrible, let's drink" kind of vibe) and then that was followed pretty quickly by Mass Beer Week which almost definitely was a thing or perhaps series of things that happened.
Moving on, we also met with the band planned out our collab beer for Decibel Fest (we worked with The Red Chord and made a red ale called Fixation on Red Ale that's gonna be a recurring part of our seasonal catalogue) and we ran out of Extra Naked in the taproom for possibly the first time ever due to a production issue that doesn't bear further elaboration* at the moment.
We rebounded from that pretty quickly and then released all the beers all at once including the rerelease Boneheads, which we brewed in collaboration with our screenprinter (Heads Up Screenprinting, motto: "we print shirts and stuff"), and it's notable that I say "rerelease" because the original brew was scheduled to be released at a party to celebrate their first year in business... in late March 2020.
But! We managed to throw a hoedown this year and speaking of hoedowns we also hosted our first ever Band Hangouts and we released a different beer for that, namely barrel-aged No Light Ever on account of how Glacier was one of the bands at said hangouts (in addition to Lesser Glow and Sea, it was a pretty heavy day) and we also announced a different band collab beer, but that's gonna have to wait until we release it in...
*Whenever we say stuff like that, it usually means that somebody screwed something up, but we don't want to throw them under the bus (in other words, it's one of the rare cases when it wasn't Jared's fault)
April when we brought our old pal Wasted Life back for a visit and also we got some sweet new ceramic coasters and we released Scatterbräu, our collab with brutal death metal legends Scattered Remnants (who are honestly just the nicest people)!
We got maybe a little too excited about opening up the beer garden and we started our biweekly Barks & Brews charity events and also we brought ol' Henrietta out of hibernation and hosted our first ever comedy show and a coffee marketplace popup and also we had hell of trivia nights once again and we ended the month with more band hangouts which were accompanied by another barrel-aged beer release (namely Man Overboard, our collab with North Star the Wanderer) and this one was a first for us because we had the band come in and help out with our blending session (which was a lot of fun and surprisingly productive, especially given how... animated some of the band members got about halfway through said blending session)!
Also we were hosting sushi classes twice per week all month and also before that but I forgot to mention that until just now and anyway the point is that things felt pretty jam-packed but it turns out we were only gearing up and that gearing kept going up in...
May when we continued our apparent trend of starting alternating months with a big event and this one was a three-day "nerd-themed" series of events called Dungeons & Drinks!
We also had our first Surf Guitar Happy Hour of the season (featuring the delightful Matt Heaton) and accompanied it with some ice cream and also this was the month that Horatio's Reserve got released!
While it wasn't something that we released/sold, it was the end product of a collab we did with GrandTen Distilling four years ago where we basically did a recipe swap with them and they made a whiskey out of one of our beer recipes (the beer we made from their whiskey recipe went on to start our line of Critters beers, so it's one we remember quite fondly) and there wasn't much of it to go around (partly because we bought like 10% of the batch for ourselves) but it was completely tasty!
And speaking of doing stuff with friends from Outside The Brewery we also did our first beer dinner in years over at State Park!
On top of all that, we shipped our first ever pallet of beer to an out-of-state wholesaler (it was for Decibel Fest, but the wholesaler wanted a whole pallet, so we just went with it) and also we kept on having tons of trivia nights and band hangouts and more live music started peppering the schedule and there was also a bunch of other cool stuff that we did and also we decided to "buck the trend" that we'd set for ourselves in years past which means that this year we actually planned ahead for our anniversary beers which was probably a good thing because we ended up making seventeen damn beers for that party, but we only started brewing those in May, they wouldn't get released until...
June when we honestly had the most bonkers month.
In addition to all the stuff that's pretty much become commonplace by this point (lots of trivia nights, Surf Guitar Happy Hour, Band Hangouts...) we hosted a spring art bazaar and yoga (frequently themed yoga) started popping up in the calendar!
We also schlepped out to Philly for that fest I've mentioned several times already (it's a good fest) and we did another beer dinner (this time with Cunard, who made the best damn potato we've ever had. We still think about it) and also we hosted a dang air guitar competition!
See, we've got some friends that are very into competitive air guitar (as one does) and somehow yada yada yada we hosted the New England regional championships in our parking lot and it was completely a ton of fun and we hope we get to host it again.
Oh, and at some point in June Matt Heaton decided that his Surf Guitar Happy Hour sessions would be better with a live drawing component so that also started being a thing and also we kept brewing band beers all month and oh crap we did so much dang stuff this month that I didn't even mention beer yet but that's gonna have to wait until...
July when the anniversary beers start coming out in full force, like Stick the Landing and Float Along and Don't Go and Nameless Wave and Seven X's and that's barely scratching the surface of the anniversary beers which means we had time for other fun things like having Key Lime make a comeback and also we brewed/kegged 600 (our 600th batch), then implied it would be on tap in a week or so (it was not on tap in a week or so. It's still not on tap. We're giving it time to mature before it hits center stage)
Plus we did a collab with the band Aversed (who ended up playing a wedding/show in the beer garden in the fall, as an indirect result of said collab) and my point is that it was a beery month but that's hardly all we did!
We also hosted a hot sauce fest and a Paint Your Pet workshop and also threw a surf rock daytime show that was hella fun and also we had what I think was our first-ever ticketed live event in the beer garden (it was a comedy show) and we're really just pickin' up steam for...
August when we unveiled the sweet anniversary swag and also released three anniversary beers in one week and over the course of the month (mostly the first half of the month honestly) we released all the barrel blends for the anniversary including Mirage Daze and Baby Monster and WttBF and Dark Humor and Rumble and Critters XVIII and that really explains why we were a little light on new Shitty Wednesday and/or Horatio Day beers this year (because we released them all in August and we only have so much space in the cold room).
And amidst all that brewing and blending and beer releasing, we managed to squeak in just one more beer for the anniversary (Ad Nauseam, brewed for Stryga, who signed on at the last minute because another band had to bow out) and also we hosted a dog pool party at one point, but the main event for the month, that we spend all damn summer preparing for and getting excited about, was The Anniversary!
And that was was (of course) hella fun - we had four days of live music and good food and there was live screenprinting and hot sauce and Light of Day did a record store popup (which I think was their first event with us) - and honestly we're continually surprised at just how much stuff we're able to cram into one weekend (assuming a broad definition of the word "weekend") but more than anything it's just damn heartwarming to see all the friends we've made over the years and just enjoy some tasty beer and food and listen to some good tunes and hang out for a couple days and anyway we say this all the time but it's pretty much our favorite time of year and we're just mega stoked that y'all come out for it and anyway now that it's over we gotta move forward to...
September when we started off the month releasing Sip Time, the first of *five* wedding beers we made over the course of the month (also the groom of that couple was the main guy running sound at the anniversary party, which was one friggin' week before his wedding) and also at some point in the past we had sent a cask overseas to the GBBF but nobody told us when it got tapped so we forgot to make a big deal about it.
Anyway September was also the month that we brought sushi classes back (our indoor space gets... warm in the summer, and it's probably not a great idea to prepare sushi outside) and we hosted a pretty rad harvest market with a buncha cool local vendors and then we thought it would be cool to do a beer and CD deal in conjunction with the band Worshipper and we had our first-ever terrarium workshop (which I maintain is a lot more fun than it sounds) and then capped off the month with a show that we called Octoberfuzz (which should definitely have been spelled Oktoberfuzz, but we'll fix that next time) and we threw said show in conjunction with the rad folks from Somergloom (who organize the fest of the same name) and hopefully we'll be doin' more stuff with them in the future because that was a great show and speaking of shows, we've got a surprising amount more live music in...
October when we started off the month with Dylan and Caroline's wedding afterparty which, in addition to featuring two of the five wedding beers we'd brewed the previous month (Hench 4 Life and Pobody's Nerfect, to be precise), also had a live performance from Aversed (who I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, and who met the happy couple at Band Hangouts at the brewery)!
We also hosted an album release party for The Electric Heaters and a little later there was a completely normal Shrek Disco in the beer garden then a show with our pals from DnA's Evolution and new-to-the-brewery The Endorphins (also held in the beer garden), but the music-related fun times didn't slow down at all...
... because there was also the release of our collab with the band Pathogenic and also an outdoor market that we called the Ghastly Gala (which had even more dang live music) and somehow we still managed to fit in our annual Halloween Dog Costume Contest plus our beer and candy pairing that we do pretty much every year and dang but that's a hell of a lot of stuff for one month, let's see if things slow down in...
November when the month started (as in, literally started, at midnight on the 1st) with signups for Mug Club! And we'd planned to have these be preorders for a mug club starting in December, but the mugs sold out in like nine hours so we figured we'd just start things a little early because y'all were clearly stoked about it!
And then the fun times just kept rollin' with a vinyl release party for Rah Zen's "Upon the Apex," which we threw in conjunction with our pals from Light of Day Records which was followed by our Music Marketplace featuring SJC Drums and Source Audio and (you guessed it!) Light of Day Records and also El Colombiano Coffee why not and that was also hella fun! And on the beer front we brought back our old friends Honey 'n Hops and also Biere de Krampus (and, briefly, its barrel-aged cousin Blood of Krampus)!
And speaking of new beers we also released El Pulpo on the appropriately-named Pulpo Day, which meant we got to go completely hog-wild on different vintages/variants of El Pulpo for three days straight (which was both a good thing and a bad thing, as you might imagine) and then while we're talkin' traditions we also put out our much-anticipated (by Jared) annual Thanksgiving Beer Pairings!
And since the month was sorely lacking in music stuff compared to other months, we hosted a (hopefully soon-to-be recurring) night of Fiddle Times! I'd explain what that is, but it's honestly funnier if I don't and anyway we need to keep moving on to...
December when we kicked off the month by going to Decibel Fest! Again! Sure it was a different one this time (Denver instead of Philly) but it was still fun times full of friendship and beer and we got teamed up with Of Feather and Bone (mostly because the beer liaison for the fest wanted us to name the beer "Of Feather and Bone Up," which we didn't do) and they're hella rad people (to say nothing of their music, which rips) and we got to brew a nice 'n light pineapple/lime grisette to bring to a death metal fest and anyway it was fun as hell!
And speaking of band collabs, we did a collab with Indian Handcrafts (a pale ale called Empress in Decline, named after their latest album) and at some point Liz and Jared got to go to Canada for that beer's release party (it wasn't being sold in Canada, they just wanted to go)!
And! We also collabed with the folk metal band Wilderun on a Belgian golden strong that was brewed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of their first album and for that release party they came here and played an acoustic set of the songs from the first album! We honestly didn't entirely know what to expect because we've never really hosted an entire band inside before, but it turns out that the type of folk music they were playing is very well suited to a small bar with lots of small rooms (and the fact that it was snowing outside definitely added to the vibe) and anyway it was lots of fun!
But other than all that stuff, December was mostly just preparing for Horatio Day, which leads us to...
the future. But we can't really recap that, so we'll take a second to look back at the year from a birds' eye view before we go about our merry way. It was definitely an interesting year - we started out with Covid Winter Part Two and then managed to settle in to something that almost felt normal for the first time in years. And though there were certainly a fair number of tribulations to be had all around this year, we managed to keep puttin' one foot in front of the other and in that process we managed to do a fair amount of growing - most years have felt like the theme of the year (for us, anyway) has been "More," but this is when we really took it to heart - we really doubled down on in-person events like marketplaces and workshops and live music and trivia (so much trivia) and there were a couple duds and a lot of successes, but we've really started figuring out what people do and don't want to do, which means we get to do even more next year! Plus we got to do way more band collabs this year than we ever have in the past, and also this was (finally) The Year Of Extra Naked! We brewed more of that beer than we have in any of the years past (and we ran out of it a few times as a consequence), and we like to think that people are finally coming around to the fact that it's the best beer we make (a fact we've known for years).
the future. But we can't really recap that, so we'll take a second to look back at the year from a birds' eye view before we go about our merry way. It was definitely an interesting year - we started out with Covid Winter Part Two and then managed to settle in to something that almost felt normal for the first time in years. And though there were certainly a fair number of tribulations to be had all around this year, we managed to keep puttin' one foot in front of the other and in that process we managed to do a fair amount of growing - most years have felt like the theme of the year (for us, anyway) has been "More," but this is when we really took it to heart - we really doubled down on in-person events like marketplaces and workshops and live music and trivia (so much trivia) and there were a couple duds and a lot of successes, but we've really started figuring out what people do and don't want to do, which means we get to do even more next year! Plus we got to do way more band collabs this year than we ever have in the past, and also this was (finally) The Year Of Extra Naked! We brewed more of that beer than we have in any of the years past (and we ran out of it a few times as a consequence), and we like to think that people are finally coming around to the fact that it's the best beer we make (a fact we've known for years).
And, of course, as we say every year, you all are the reason we're able to keep doing all this cool stuff we're doing. Whether you're a die-hard Mug Club member or you just swing by every now and then to play some pinball or anywhere in between, we are completely grateful that you like coming to our weird little brewery. It's been a hell of a ride these last six or so years, and we've made a lot of friends with a ton of cool people we wouldn't have otherwise been able to meet, and we're super stoked about everything that's allowed us to do - shows and marketplaces and band collabs and even relatively small stuff like our dog-themed events couldn't happen without all the people we've met along the way and we can't wait to keep doin' more cool stuff with you and for you!
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