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In Which We Observe... Summerween

6/23/2020

Howdy do, friendaroos! Thanks to everybody who came out for our "grand re-opening" - it was a great weekend! A good time was had by all, and we managed to scrape by with minimal sass from the people* who seem to think that our contact tracing program (i.e. us writing down your name on a piece of paper and then eventually throwing that piece of paper away) puts us at the center of some sort of Shady Conspiracy.** But anyway, we're glad you like drinking in our parking lot, because that's... that's pretty much the deal for the next couple months. So enjoy!

And speaking of enjoy, this newfound reopening nonsense means we're slowly-but-surely bringin' back all the old favorites on draft and this week that means Henriettta! Yes indeedy, that bad mamma-jamma is set to go into kegs and on tap on Wednesday which is probably*** today! Or maybe it's the past!

Also of note, this here's a canning week for us, but we got bumped from our usual Friday time slot to Sunday for some reason (it's Tim's fault. Or maybe Tom's fault. But definitely not Tim-Tom's fault), which means we'll be releasin' our new can beer pretty much the minute it's available!

And speaking of new beer in cans, we're gonna have a new beer in cans! And if I were to ask you "what is the most Bone Up thing you can do when naming a beer," there's a chance you'd guess that it's a) named after a fake holiday, which it is 2) very candy-centric and 3) from a TV show that aired eight years ago and also 4) actually would have happened several days ago if it were a real holiday, which it isn't. Anyway, the point is that we're about to release Summerween! We got us a whole buncha watermelon blossom honey (whose tasting notes, as provided by the apiary, simply read "pink") and we tossed it into a lightly hoppy lil' grisette and it's coming out on Sunday and you should drink some!

* It was mostly people on Facebook. Of course it's people on Facebook.
** Seems like it would be a pretty shitty conspiracy if it centers around knowing your phone number and whether or not you went to a place that serves beer.
*** You might not be able to tell from reading it, but we do actually write this blog in advance and, like, put thought into it 'n shit.

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In Which We Splash Into a Beer Garden!

6/17/2020

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Hello friends! We know that many of y'all out there in Teevee Land have been just dreamin' of the day when you can "slug back a cold one" out in the comfort of our "parking lot"* and we thought it would take some kind of a minor miracle to turn that lot into a "beer garden" (as opposed to, say, an "unprompted lake") but we ended up getting just the opposite of a minor miracle** and somehow we got us a "beer garden" anyway! And since we had like three days' notice to prepare,*** we can certainly say that we definitely didn't construct this "beer garden" out of garbage and scrap wood, and anyway you can hardly tell because we "spruced up" the place with a bunch of stickers and string lights and hastily-spraypainted logos in a move that's totally not at all reminiscent of your high school bedroom.

Anyway, all sass aside, we think our lil' ol' piece o' paradise looks just dandy and we're straight chuffed to have you come hang out and drink beers with us again and that's good because you can do just that! Today! Yes indeedy, we've set up our "socially distant" tables and rolled out a giant chalkboard o' rules for people to pretend to read and we've got a buncha plastic cups for you to drink out of in case you had any last shred of hope that this would be a "return to normalcy"**** and you should come drink some beers with us!

And in case you're the Cautious Type when it comes to infectious disease (and we do very much support those of you that are being Extra Careful, whether by personal choice or personal circumstance), it does behoove us to mention that we'll still be doing all the to-go-oriented stuff that we've been doing since this whole pandemic business started - home delivery, curbside pickup, produce boxes (if we get enough orders to meet the distributor's minimum) - all that fun stuff is still a go until the Powers That Be make us stop.

But enough prattlin'. We're gonna go fulfill a longstanding goal and neck an entire can of Extra Naked on our patio while our dogs become more and more panicked due to our dipshit neighbors setting off fireworks for like ten hours per day. Come join us!

* And if we didn't already know that, we would have figured it out pretty quickly from the number of you who took advantage of Quarantine Rules and decided to just straight-up start drinking beers the second you walk out the door.
** Which is to say that the opposite of a minor miracle is a major goddamned disaster (or several, depending on how you look at it).
*** Though judging from the number of people who have already showed up out of the blue and angrily demanded to be able to drink in our lot, y'all must think we had, like, an "inside scoop" that gave us this news before you got it (spoiler alert: nobody tells us anything either). Or maybe people just thought we had a ready-made beer garden that we just weren't using? Unclear.
**** It's worth mentioning that we're doing all this stuff because of new state-mandated rules - we're not just, like, making shit up because we like enforcing weird rules on relative strangers. That being said, we do agree with said rules, they just ain't our brainchildren.

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In Which We Continue With Our "Poorly Informed Phase II Updates"

6/9/2020

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Howdy, friends! We've got slightly-more-than-zero news about that whole thing people have been talkin' about these days (by which we mean Phase Two Of Reopening and not, like, the pandemic in general) but first we got some upcoming beers to shout about, so let's do that thing I just said!

First on up on the ol' docket is the next in line in the, uh, line of double IPAs we've been doin' as of late, and this one goes by the name of Walkin' Beer! This here beer is made with tangerine puree and a mighty generous handful of fruity-citrussy hops and it would almost definitely be the perfect accompaniment to some amblin' around (if you were legally allowed to drink in public, of course). Anyway, it's goin' into cans on Friday and you should come get some!

Speaking of beers we're releasing on Friday, we're also releasing another pale ale and this one is called Picnic Time! We've noticed a lot of people these days have been reimagining what does and doesn't constitute a picnic - generally taking it from "planned outing" to "flimsy excuse to drink outside" - and we're all for it, so we made a beer for picnic times!

But bringin' things a bit back to the present, we mentioned last week that there were two new Critters beers incoming and then we kind of completely forgot to follow up on that* but anyway they're available right now!

Anyway. It's time to get down to the brass tacks of this whole hullabaloo, which should be interesting because we're operating on information that is, shall we say, spotty at best. But that's never stopped us before, so let's get to it with another Poorly-Informed Phase Two Update!

So the long story short version is that we've kinda-sorta-probably gotten the go-ahead to serve beer outdoors (the official Everett ruling happens on Thursday night), but once we are serving outside there are a whole bunch of (state mandated) rules that you'll need to follow (and even more rules that we'll need to follow), which is going to take a whole bunch of getting used to on all sides of this ol' equation.

Also of note, we did file an application with the city to allow us to expand our outdoor space (which would be nice, because otherwise we'll top out our capacity at four people), and they told us to expect an answer "within 24-48 hours," but also they told us that six days ago, so we'll see. In the meantime, we're doing everything we can to scramble together the best possible beer garden we can, from scratch, on virtually no notice, so keep them eyes peeled for updates!

As for what changes you can expect, the new rules seem to be geared towards closely replicating the experience of drinking at home, only done from the comfort and safety of our parking lot. We can't allow standing room or self-seating, which means you'll need to check in at a host stand (or similar) upon arrival (which will somehow make it even more confusing for people to find the correct entrance), and you'll also need to sign in with at least one name and telephone number per group for contact tracing purposes, and also you can't be in a group larger than six. Once you're seated, we're required to do everything we can to make sure people don't "congregate," which basically means you aren't allowed to get up from your table (people with small children may want to be particularly aware of this rule) - there's no ordering at the bar (we'll have table service) and no games (unless you bring your own) and we're not allowed to play background music (please do not provide your own).

So in other words, if you got a bunch of scientists and asked them to recreate the experience of "fun" - except under carefully-controlled, repeatable laboratory conditions** - this is probably pretty close to what they'd come up with.

And we do realize that it might sound like we're being overly-negative here (especially since we tend to focus on the bright side around these parts), but it's worth stressing that a) all of the rules we cited are factual and unexaggerated, and 2) it really feels like we're being told that we need to police our customers, which isn't fair to us or to you. But with all that being said, our biggest priority is that we want everybody to be happy and we want even more for everybody to be safe, so we're gonna do the best we can to find the middle of that Venn diagram and we're gonna figure out a way to make this all work and we're gonna drink some beer in that parking lot and we're gonna like it, dagnabbit.

Oh! And! To complete the "drinking at home" experience, it behooves us to mention that our draft list is going to be a bit more... limited than it used to be (at least for now), which means a number of things will only be available as can pours. See, since we're a very small brewery, we *only* need to plan our production 4-6 weeks out, and we've got a little wiggle room within those plans. Combine that with the fact that we had four days of definitive*** notice about being able to open, and that means a lot of our beer is in cans rather than kegs (and we're assuming a lot of people will still prefer the to-go model, so it might take us a bit to figure out how to balance the two).

* Which is, fortunately or otherwise, extremely on-brand for us.
** Which is to say, conditions that suck most of the joy out of having fun.
*** Sure, this isn't completely out of the blue, but we can't really form concrete plans based on something that kinda sorta might happen (and which might un-happen at any time).

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In Which Some Critters Reemerge

6/2/2020

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Hello! Hi! How are you? We're just... dandy around here and we figure that's reason enough to celebrate with somethin' fancy, and that's just a goshdarn lucky coincidence because we've got fancy treats on the brain!

But wait! Before we get to all that, we gotta tell you all about the sweet merch that we got to go with that tasty beer what we released last week! Long story short, we liked the can artwork for this year's Pride beer enough that we wanted it on a shirt and then we realized that we're the ones who decide what goes on our shirts, so we made some! We've got tanks and t-shirts and a portion (10%) of the proceeds is goin' to LGBTQ organizations and you should come get one! Or several!

Anyway. Back to beer. First on up, we've got the last - absolute* last - of our stash of Skeleton Key (which, if you're new in town, is our tequila-barrel-aged double Key Lime) in bottles and up for grabs! So if you're a fan or if it strikes your fancy, come on out and get while there's still gettin' to be got, 'cuz this beer takes eight months (and a tequila barrel) to make, so it ain't makin' a comeback anytime soon!

But we ain't just got the (re) return of some delicious old favorites, we've also got new stuff! More to the point, we've been keepin' busy scurryin' around in the ol' Barrel Hold and we discovered a whole buncha funky stuff that's ripe for the plucking and in more concrete terms that means new Critters beers!

First out the gate (this week, barring any Equipment Issues) is the creatively-titled Critters VII! This one started out as a Bière de Miel before its protracted dance with Brett and oak and also we added a bunch of bergamot puree because we thought it would be fun and dang but this is a tart 'n tasty treat! There's a pinch of honey and a punch of citrus and a strong suggestion of funk and honestly it's kinda what we always hope for when we see "sour" used as a style descriptor** and we hope you like it!

Next on up (next week? Probably?) is, shockingly, Critters VIII! This one's a sour brown that's been patiently resting in its barrel for nigh-on 600 days with naught but a bit of plum puree to snack on, but it's finally ready and resplendent in all its funky, tart, brown glory!

And as a bit of a "wrap up" on them ol' Critters beers, we feel like it bears repeating that the Critters series tends to be pretty "small batch," which is saying something coming from a brewery whose brewhouse is smaller than a lot of other breweries' pilot systems. Anyway, we're not tryin' to get all "scarcity marketing" on you or whatever, but we also don't want you to be bummed if/when we run out, so consider yourselves duly warned and so on.

Lastly, we feel like we should address a question that we've been getting quite frequently as of late, namely: what's the deal with reopening? And boy, do we have an unsatisfying answer for you!

Long story short, the deal is that we have no idea what the deal is because nobody will give us a straight answer about anything. Will we be allowed to serve beer outdoors next week? We don't know, nobody will tell us. Will we be able to expand our outdoor space once we do reopen? We don't know, nobody will tell us. What will taproom service look like? You get the idea. But! We can tell you what we do know, so we're at least on the same footing, vague-knowlede-wise, so here it is in handy-dandy bullet-point format!

Taprooms are included in Phase II of reopening
Phase II (or possibly just the first, uh, phase of Phase II) only includes outdoor seating. So no indoor seating and no standing-room.
We don't know if we'll be able to increase our outdoor space, but we're doing everything we can to make that happen.
Our number one concern is making sure that customers and staff are safe, which means we'll be going into this slowly and carefully. Probably frustratingly so. But there's no set standard for what we're doing, so it seems foolish at best to just throw a couple tables outside and let things sort themselves out.
Our sculptor said there were "structural and legal problems" with our idea for a marble sculpture of Horatio shooting beer out of his eye sockets, so we're no longer expecting to have that as the centerpiece for our outdoor space once we reopen.

* We're at least, like, forty percent sure about this
** Which doesn't bode well for how it will go over with the sour-seekers, but that's neither here nor there

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In Which We Observe... Summerween

In Which We Splash Into a Beer Garden!

In Which We Continue With Our "Poorly Informed Phase II Updates"

In Which Some Critters Reemerge

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