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In Which DEMO

2/22/2023

Howdy do, peeps and, uh, ...meeps? I guess? I didn't really think that one through. Anyway, the point is that it's another glorious week down here at the ol' beer place and we've got some cool stuff in store so let's not beat around the barley and get right to it!

First things first: SNACKS. You see, we have a new Big Mac themed empanada and it's so good you guys. That is all.

And before we get into the fun stuff I guess we might as well get into another (ugh) Expansion Update. When we last left off, there was some conversation involving building inspectors. When we inquired as to the results of said conversations with building inspectors, the reply we got was "All set demo walls Monday" with no further explanation. Now that's equal parts encouraging and troubling, but it's also more information than we're usually given so we approached Monday with a hopeful spring in our collective step, made all the more hopeful by the fact that yes indeed demo walls Monday. More to the point, they've started taking down the interior walls in the new space! There's even a dumpster outside for all the debris, which either means they'll finish in a timely fashion (so as to not need to keep paying rental fees on said dumpster), or they'll end up needing to switch to the "pile of trash in the corner of the lot" system once they abandon this project halfway through and then return to it in four months. It's anyone's guess which it will be!

See? Dumpster.

And with regard to the obvious question of "when will they take down the walls between the new space and the existing space," we offer the obvious answer of "we have no idea." Listen, there's a reason our first expansion resulted in us creating a holiday whose theme was "let's drink to forget how terrible this all was," (which is coming up soon! But we'll get to that in a bit) and we're nowhere near the point where things started to go sideways last time, so get ready for a (painfully slow) roller coaster!

RIP lobby mural, you were a good art

Anyway, it's about damn time we move on to some fun stuff and the first of those fun things is cask! This time around we're stickin' with trusty ol' Shut Up Kelly because that's what we had available and also because it's friggin' delicious on cask and anyway it gets tapped on Thursday and you should drink some!

And speaking of Thursday, this Thursday is Comedy Night! We've got Left Couch Comedy back in the house (read: side room) with a stacked roster of great local comics and also the power will probably stay on for the entire show this time but also that seems like something we would have said last time if we'd thought of it. Anyway, it's gonna be a buncha fun and a lotta laughs and you should come hang out!

Tickets here: HAHAHAAH

And speaking of good times and friendship and hanging out and beer and all that good stuff, we've got some good times and friendship and hanging out and beer in the works for you on Friday! We'll be hosting our monthly Band Hangouts night, featuring Actor Observer and Inspirit and In Good Nature and Summer Cult and we'll be releasing Fool's Gold, which is our collab with Actor Observer! Fool's Gold is an IPA meant to pair with the band's recent album Songs for the Newly Reclusive and it's packed full of a bunch of local grains and also some of those "cryo hops" that were all the rage a little ways back and also (most importantly) it's tasty as hell and it's available in cans and probably on draft on Friday, so come hang with some bands and drink some tasty beer!

Oh! And! Speaking of "tasty" and "Friday," we're also gonna have Sekali in the house dishin' up some tasty eats on Friday! (seriously, their food is incredible)

And then the hits keep on comin' because on Saturday we're hosting our Roast & Toast Coffee Marketplace! See, we invited some of our coffee friends - specifically Clarena’s Coffee, Speedwell Coffee, and East Alstead Roasting - to come hang out in the taproom and sample/sell some java and now that's exactly what's happening! There's also gonna be a special flight featuring beer and coffee and some cool snacks (waffles! It's really happening!) and Jared will probably accidentally drink so much coffee that he can "hear his eyes" (again) and anyway it sounds like a great way to while away an afternoon, so come hang out and try a variety of brown beverages!

Now that it's written, "brown beverages" doesn't actually sound all that appetizing. But trust us, it's gonna be great!

And then movin' on a bit to next week, we've got a candle making class on Thursday and we're closed to the public for a mug club party on Friday and then on Saturday and Sunday it's Kafka Day! I can't believe we forgot to spend the entire dang month shouting about Kafka Day like we usually do, it's almost like we got so wrapped up in our weird dystopian existential nightmare that we completely forgot to mention our annual holiday celebrating previous dystopian existential nightmares (there's a new one every year! Somehow!) and anyway that holiday is (as you may have guessed by now) Kafka Day and it's next friggin' weekend! All weekend!

Yeah seriously how do we always have something weird and horrible to celebrate this time of year

Anyway you've probably picked up on the theme of the event (celebrating in the face of impending doom, etc), but what I haven't mentioned is that we're releasing six friggin' beers for Kafka Day! We've got a limited amount of 600, our big silly barleywine that we brewed for our six hundredth batch a ways back (draft only), and we've got two new barrel-aged blends (Horatio's Reserve and Fisticuffs) which happen to prominently feature said barleywine (which is why we're low on the unbarreled barleywine) (draft and bottles), and we've got three new wild blends (Critters XIX, High Voltage, and Happenstance) that we're releasing (they'll all be on tap eventually, but High Voltage will be on first) (also they'll all be available in bottles from the get-go) and if you wanna come sample all the cool new beers and hear Jared and/or Liz talk about all the new beers (and probably sample some other beers and also probably hear them get distracted by a handful of weird tangents) then you're in luck because we're doin' a Private Tasting and you're welcome/encouraged to join us!

Get tickets to the private tasting! Right here!

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In Which the Drywall is Inspected

2/15/2023

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Hello! It's time. It's time we talk about tasty beer. It's time we talk about a bunch of weird fun stuff we've got planned for you. It's time we talk about snacks. It's time.

But first! We pretty much have to give you an expansion update since we've been doing that every week. Anyway, after promising that the construction would be done "in two weeks" two weeks ago, our landlords have "talked to a building inspector" which is definitely something that could be mistaken as a proxy for progress if you're really committed to being delusional. Anyway, thus concludes our expansion update.

But moving in to things that are a bit more fun, we've got an extra special cask this week! See, every now and then we need a "stock" beer to use for our wild beers (Critters et. al.) and we usually go for something that's pretty neutral so we can let our wild yeast (which we refer to as Brett, because we're pals) do its thing and/or strut its funky stuff. Anyway, we thought it would be neat to grab a cask of our latest "brett stock" beer (partly but not entirely because we used an interesting and new-to-us grain in it) and also we decided to put in a nigh-irresponsible amount of a new(ish)-to-us hop product (LupoMax, specifically Cascade LupoMax, which is one o' them "cryo hops" all the kids are talkin' about) and anyway now we've got all this Caskade and it's even more one-of-a-kind than our cask beers usually are and anyway it's gettin' tapped on Thursday and you should drink some!

And speaking of tasty new beers, we've got a tasty new beer on tap! This one's a pale ale called Sticky Fingers and it's on tap right now and we named it after a cool new hop we got that's also called Sticky Fingers and it (the hop) is actually the hop hash* from all the pellets processed on the farm in Michigan we buy from (well, one of the farms in Michigan we buy from) and anyway the point is that it's a combination of a dozen or so hop varieties in undefined quantities and that's extremely up our alley so we made a beer about it and now you can/should have some!

Anyway, while we're on about things that are good we feel the need to remind y'all that we've now got a friggin' record store in our taproom and if we're being honest with each other I'm pretty sure that Chris (the dude that runs the record store, not that Chris) is putting records that I personally want** into the displays just to taunt me but anyway the point is that we've got a cool ass record store in house and you should come check it out!

And moving on to fun times, we've got MCU Trivia (and also pies from Seabiscuit) this Thursday and we've got some extra special prizes that are definitely not just crap that Jared bought from the dollar store but anyway the point is that trivia and meat pies are a surprisingly good combination, so you should come hang out with us!

And then on Saturday we start our Weekend O' Fun, starting with Stoner Metal Yoga in the morning and then we transition seamlessly into Girl Scout Cookie and Beer pairing all afternoon/evening which you honestly don't wanna miss because we've put in the legwork to make sure that every cookie/beer pairing is pretty much perfect and also that continues on through Sunday so you've really got no excuse not to come on by, so come on by!

And then if we're looking to the farflung future of next week, it behooves us to mention that we have a Pour Painting class next Tuesday that honestly sounds hella fun and then next Thursday we have our monthly comedy night that probably won't revert to Jokes Delivered by Emergency Lighting (again), but who knows! Comedy night is a mystery to all and anything can happen, especially if nobody tells the building and/or fire department about any of this. Anyway, we should also mention that next Friday we've got a Band Hangouts slash beer release and the beer we're releasin' is an IPA for Actor Observer, who's gonna be at them Band Hangs and anyway that's gonna be hella fun and you should come!

* Hop hash is actually pretty similar in principle to regular hash. Hops are flowering cones of the humulus lupus plant, and all the stuff we're interested in (alpha acids and aromatic oils, in this case) is contained in oil glands full of yellowish waxy liquid. In hops, we call it "lupulin" but if you're a cannabis connoisseur you could make an easy analogy to kief, Anyway, hop hash is all the stuff that gets scraped off the processing machinery at the end of the hop harvest.
** Every god damn week there's a new record I need to talk myself out of buying. How does he even know that I like Kool Keith?

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In Which We Are Bad at Pretending We're Not Annoyed About the Drywall That Went Up

2/8/2023

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Howdy do friendaroos! We've got some fun and/or tasty times in store for all y'all, but first we've got a couple "programming notes" to get through, so buckle up because this week has been a ride and we're takin' y'all with us!

And we might as well start off with an Expansion Update:* in short, there is now a giant stupid wall going across our lobby. Remember how some people used to get irritated about having to walk across our lobby to use the bathroom? Well those people are not in for the best of times, because now you have to go outside (and then, preferably, back inside) in order to relieve yourself, which is really a stunning display of the kind of coordination and/or communication we've come to expect from having work done in this building. The details of how/why this came to be are honestly unimportant (suffice to say, it's related to the assertion - from the people doing the work - that everything can and will be done in two weeks. We're a week past the time that assertion was being made, and the drywall is still only 70% complete), but it's worth mentioning that this will be our reality for longer than you might think is reasonable. If we're in the same place next winter (which we're not ruling out) we'll have to just Kool-Aid-Man through the wall or something so we don't have to do this for more than one winter, but for the time being we pretty much just have to roll with it whether we like it or not (we don't, if that wasn't obvious).

And on an unrelated but also bummer note, the sign on the front of the building (that big 5x5 banner with our logo on it) blew off the building at some point over the weekend. So, uh, if you happen to see our sign floating around somewhere, maybe grab it? That would be super nice of you.

And since we're on a roll here, we might as well say that there will be no cask this week on account of the (short term) every-other-week schedule for casks. Hopefully we'll be back to every week starting next week.

But anyway, you didn't come here to here us gripe about things that are frustrating and/or lament the loss of signage, you came here to hear about all the cool stuff we're doin', so cool stuff we shall!

We WILL have fun this week dammit

And starting on Wednesday (which is to say, tonight) we've got our regularly scheduled fiddle jam session! For those of you who might be new around here, the name kinda says it all - there's gonna be a bunch of people with fiddles or fiddle-adjacent instruments hangin' out and jammin' on some olde-timey tunes in our taproom, and you're welcome to join in! Or just hang out and listen in! It's honestly a pretty fun time even from a listener's standpoint, and I'm not just saying that because they played that song from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

And then on Thursday we've got Chris in the house with more Simpsons Trivia! He ran out of seasons to use in his "one season per month" rotation, so the theme this month is "The Season of Love" which might (but probably won't) feature lots of questions from that one clip episode that may or may not have the same name (we do not know episode names). Anyway, it's gonna be a buncha fun and there's cool prizes as always and you should come out!

And then we're relatively light on events through the weekend (other than our usual Sunday sushi class), but we've got Nagomi Bento comin' by on Friday and something something support your local food popup because they make lots of delicious stuff, so come have snacks and drink beer!

Anyway, moving on to early next week, we've got Sip & Script in the house with a calligraphy class on Monday and then we're hosting an MCU trivia night on Thursday (and Seabiscuit will be here slingin' pies) that definitely won't involve a bunch of nerds (which could include you!) schooling Matt on Marvel trivia and anyway the point is that we've also got fun times lined up for future times, so you should probably clear your calendar and grab a stool!

* Subtitle: more proof of why we try not to tell people about our expansions until they're done

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In Which Some Drywall Goes Up

2/1/2023

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Well hey there! We're back at it with more fun times and good beer and tasty eats and also some "news" that you've "probably already heard about" (it's about our upcoming/ongoing taproom expansion) but we'll get to that bit after all the stuff in the here and/or now, so read up and check out all the cool stuff we're doin' this week!

And first on the list of cool and/or tasty stuff is cask! This time around we took a pin of Shut Up Kelly! and we goosed it with some oak chips that we'd been soaking in some maple liqueur and that's gonna bring some toasty oaky goodness along with the maple sweetness and it's gonna be tasty as hell (and also on tap Thursday) so come getcha some!

And speaking of Thursday, that's the day that Light of Day Records starts their residency in our taproom! You can think of it like a "permanent popup" - they've got a shelf o' records in our main taproom (which has displaced one of the pinball machines, at least for now) and you'll be able to peruse at your leisure and pick up some records whenever the taproom is open!

And to "sweeten the deal" on this, the day that LOD is opening up shop in our taproom, they're gonna be hangin' in the taproom and/or collabbin' on this month's Audio Triviality (which is on Thursday, natch) and the theme is "Music of the 1960s" which is... suspiciously straightforward for this trivia night, so we'll see what happens!

Oh! And! Also! We apparently wanted to just completely load up our calendar for Thursday so we're also havin' Birria Gordita Street Tacos in the house with their tasty-ass tacos (and hopefully more of that birria ramen, that stuff is so good), so really there's no reason not to come out on Thursday!

And speaking of food, we've got new-to-us Tasty BBQ comin' by on Friday with some, uh, Tasty BBQ and then Sekali is swingin' by with some Malaysian street food on Saturday and of course we've got our regularly-scheduled sushi class on Sunday and it's gonna be a weekend full of tasty times!

And then looking into the slightly farther future, next Tuesday we have InebriArt comin' by for a beer mug painting class, and then our recurring free-to-join Fiddle Jam Session is next Wednesday (in short: grab an instrument and come on by!), followed by Simpsons Trivia next Thursday (the theme is "Season of Love" which is probably more accurately described as "season of heartbreak" given how that show handles romance subplots) and anyway we've got a buncha cool stuff happening so you should come hang out!

And speaking of cool stuff, as you may have heard recently (and/or seen from the partial wall that's been up in our lobby for the past week), we're working on expanding the taproom! We usually try to keep things like this "close to the vest" because (among other things) the timelines we're working with are... uncertain, and usually frustratingly long. For instance: when we first met with our landlords about this, they told us that they'd have their buildout completed and have a lease drafted within 2-3 months. That conversation was in June 2021, and we still don't have a lease on the space (there's been a fair bit done on the buildout, but it's fairly telling that we've had the studs up for that wall in the lobby for over a week and no sign of activity since they went up). Anyway, we'll try and lay out the full skinny here in handy-dandy (read: easy to write) Q&A format.

So what's the deal with this expansion, anyway?
This all started because our landlords said they were going to turn the now-former Crossfit space in the building into a "function room" for The Village, which meant we'd be losing access to the lobby bathrooms, so they asked if we wanted to take over the empty unit next to ours (which would have bathrooms installed in it). Unsurprisingly, we were very keen on the idea of not making people cross our weird creepy lobby, plus we'd already begun ramping up music-related events and stuff in the taproom, so we figured we'd take on some extra space so we could fit in a small stage at some point.

What's the taproom going to look like when buildout is done?
The main/original taproom will be staying the same, but we'll be knocking down pretty much the rest of the walls (including the walls between our current space and new space, plus at least most of the wall between our current side rooms). In the end, that should create a space that's roughly twice the size of our original/main taproom.

Any other big plans for the expansion?
Other than bathrooms and eventually a stage? We've got some things on our wishlist (and yes, air conditioning is at the top of that list), but those are limited by boring practicalities like "will we be able to afford it" or "can we put an AC unit on the roof without the roof collapsing" so we can't make any promises yet.

What's your timeline?
If you ask Liz or Jared this in person, you're likely to be met with a heavy sigh, followed by an answer that can best be summed up as "we don't know." We'd love to know the timeline, but there are a lot of interdependent moving pieces, and most of them are out of our hands from a time standpoint. Here's a rough list of the steps that still need to be completed: our landlords need to finish the buildout they agreed to do (which, as we discussed, isn't exactly flying along), we need to sign a lease on the new space, then acquire funding for our own buildout (turns out you need money to do things. Who knew?), then complete said buildout (which is to some extent dependent on the timelines of the contractors we'll be hiring), then we can start applying for permits (which need to go through federal, state, and local levels because we're an alcohol manufacturer) and only once that's complete can we start really planning to use the space. And that's assuming things go smoothly (which they won't). So in short, we don't know, but we're trying our damnedest to make this happen.

But what about the creepy walk to the bathroom?
If you're a fan of the weird/confusing trek out to our lobby bathrooms, then we have some exciting news for you: it's about to get weirder! For you see, while buildout is happening (which, as we mentioned, is on a "permanently unknown" timeline) we'll hit a point where the walk to the lobby bathrooms becomes even more weird/confusing/sketchy. More to the point, we need a fire exit door through what will be our new west wall (i.e. the one that's currently under construction), and that door will be a little ways down that weird hallway* through the middle of the building. All in all, this means you'll need to take a detour through the unfinished space and then back up the weird hallway full of junk (or step outside for a minute) in order to visit the loo. It's gonna be an adventure!

* Affectionately known as the "murder hallway" by our staff.

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In Which DEMO

In Which the Drywall is Inspected

In Which We Are Bad at Pretending We're Not Annoyed About the Drywall That Went Up

In Which Some Drywall Goes Up

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