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In Which We Unleash the Birthday Suit

6/30/2021

Howdy-do kids and squids! We're gettin' all elbow-deep in the preppin' and the plannin' for our big ol' birthday party, and boy howdy are you all gonna have to hear about it (this week, and also pretty much every week for the next two months) but that's all well and good because this week we've got some real actual details which we kind of didn't last week. But first: beer.

A ridiculous beer with a ridiculous name, no less!

And it's not just any beer! This beer just so happens to be our five hundredth batch and since we like to celebrate silly milestones around here we figured we'd make a (modestly to very) silly beer! This time around we took the recipe for Extra Naked and doubled all the ingredients* and it's called Birthday Suit and it's gonna be in cans on Friday and you should come drink some!

Pictured: the first in several attempts to procure the silliest birthday present for the taproom over the summer.

And speaking of things that relate to birthdays, our birthday party is coming up in just two short** months! And we've got most of the band lineup locked down by now, so we'll get right to gabbin' about tunes!

Blood Built Empire, 2019

We're kickin' things off on Friday (August 27th, which happens to be the actual anniversary date) with two of the heaviest bands in our lineup: Lesser Glow and Blood Built Empire! We toyed with the idea of having a third band on Friday (and we haven't completely ruled it out yet), but we gotta stop the music by 9:30 (per city ordinance or whatever) and it would be kind of ridiculous to have a metal band playing at like five pm on a Friday. But even though we've "only" got two bands booked (which is still twice as many bands as we had at our first anniversary party) we're predicting this night will be pretty intense and we pretty much can't wait!

Weisstronauts, 2019

And moving on to Saturday (August 28th) we're bringin' in a whole buncha bands! The list includes some that are new to us (or at least new to performing at our birthday party), and some old favorites and it's definitely gonna be the widest range of genres over the course of the weekend. We're not totally set on the set order yet, but you'll get to hear some sounds from The Weisstronauts (who are the only band that's played at every one of our birthday parties) and Organ Meats and The Guilloteenagers and Blue Manic and The Electric Heaters and it's gonna be so much fun!

DnA's Evolution, 2019

And then to wrap things up on Sunday (you guessed it - August 29th) we figure that people*** might not be the brightest-eyed or bushiest-tailed so we're mostly bringin' in the soothingest sounds we can in the form of Sunken City and The Weisstronauts (for the second day in a row!) and The Electric Heaters (for the second day in a row!) and also DnA's Evolution for that part of the day where you're all like "hell yeah man, I'm gonna rally!" right before you go home and take a nap for six hours.

And even with so many rad bands in our lineup, we're still gonna do the thing we always do and brew a dang ol' beer for every band! We're jazzed as hell that all these bands signed up to be a part of this weekend that is - frankly - a bit ridiculous, so we figured the best thing we could do is give y'all the proper beverage pairings for all these tunes! But we won't be gettin' into all those details just yet and it's definitely not because we don't yet know what the beers will be.

* Except the water. We didn't really need that much more water.
** As opposed to most of the months last year, which were somehow simultaneously eight years long and eight seconds long.
*** Mostly us, tbh

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In Which We Begin to Party

6/23/2021

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Well hello again! After a peculiar* start to our week, we're right on rockin' and rollin' and that's a good thing because it's once again that that magical time of year when we spend every moment of every day getting amped about and/or shouting about our upcoming birthday party! We actually usually start all the "pre-celebration yelling" much earlier, but it turns out that things are all complicated this year and anyway we've got some fun beer stuff to talk about first so let's get to it!

Not a cocktail, but tastes like a cocktail.

And first up on that ol' list of fun times and/or tasty beers is Critters XIII! Since it's following hot on the heels of its predecessor (the cleverly-named Critters XII), we figured we'd throw a bit of a "curveball" and whoa nelly is this ball curvy. Born from our desire to see what would happen if we dumped a bunch of ginger puree into a brett beer, this beer brings the ginger and a buncha funk and just some general darkness and/or storminess (in that it very much tastes like a Dark 'n Stormy. Trust us, you gotta try this one). Anyway, it's on tap right now and we've got a pretty limited quantity so you should come getcha some!

Revels! Triumph! Adventure! New hop combo!

And if you're in the mood for something a bit less funky, this Friday we're releasing a brand-spankin'-new IPA (on draft and in cans) called Into the Unknown! We put a bunch of our favorite stuff in it, so we know it's good, but you should still probably drink a bunch of it so you know for yourself!

It begins...

Okay! Lastly! Our birthday party! Since the taproom is turning FIVE FRIGGIN' YEARS OLD this year and since last year's party was a little more.... restrained than we would have liked it to be, we figured we'd go as all-out as possible for 2021.

We're still in the process of figuring out what some of that means** but we figured we'd give you a little "teaser" on the stuff we have figured out. Anyway, our last birthday party featured seven bands over the course of a day, and that was completely rad but it was also... kind of a lot? Logistically? So with that in mind, this year we figured we'd take our one day celebration and stretch it out into THREE WHOLE*** DAYS (specifically August 27, 28, and 29) and we've currently got an as-yet-undetermined number of bands (we've already gotten confirmation from a bunch. Maybe eight? Ten? I don't even know anymore) and some cool vendors (both food and otherwise) and we've maybe got a few other tricks up our sleeves**** and anyway keep your eyes peeled for more concrete details because we're gonna be hootin' and hollerin' about this for a little while yet and also it's gonna be fun and you should come!

* At the start of the week, we were accused - via two separate but identical emails from "A Concerned Parent" - of supporting a "dishonest and destructive organization." Turns out this person didn't like our Black Lives Matter flags and wanted to find the most condescending possible way to tell us that. I would say "there's a lot to unpack here," but my head starts to hurt if I think about it for more than three seconds, so there will be no unpacking done today.
** We've also got a few added wrinkles from a planning perspective, like the fact that we don't really have a way to expand our physical space this year (at least not without several other tenants in the building throwing tantrums).
*** I mean, there probably won't be a ton happening early in the day on Friday, so it's not three WHOLE days. We don't expect you to take time off of work for this or anything.
**** We do not have other tricks up our sleeves.

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In Which nOrMaL

6/16/2021

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Howdy, friends! It's been a completely normal week around here, so we figured we'd go right on ahead and push things even further toward "normal" (which, paradoxically, feels pretty dang weird) and anyway here's a bunch of completely normal things that are happening!

One step closer!

First on up, we're bringin' back our old hours! As much as we used to like to grouse about how everything was changing every two weeks back when we were receiving broad, sweeping government mandates all the damn time, we still felt like we'd keep up our "back to normal" momentum and expand our hours back to what they used to be, so as of right now* we're open until 11 Monday thru Saturday!

So Pride, much tank

And speaking of normalcy, we've got Pride tanks back in stock! We had actually tried pretty hard to get them back in stock a bunch earlier (y'know, for the release of our Pride beer or at least for the beginning of June), but it turns out that the massive problems affecting the global shipping industry (among other things) don't just go away as soon as the governor lifts a few covid policies. Who knew? But hey, Pride tanks!

Achievement unlocked: taproom mural becomes can art

Anyway, moving right along to more completely normal things, this Friday we're releasing a new beer in cans! It's a hoppy saison named Lil' Goblin and it features a couple of our favorite** hops (Triple Pearl and Grüngeist) and it's tasty as heck and you should come drink some!

Next week's blog will feature a painful shotgun session of this beverage

And! Lastly but far from leastly (and also completely normal), next Monday (June 21st) is the release of The Great Equalizer! If you ain't "in the know" on this one yet, the podcast Vox & Hops (which focuses on heavy metal and beer, both of which are near and dear to our hearts) is doing a bigass collab where 20+ breweries get paired up with metal bands and we all release beers in the same week (and also there's hot sauce involved? Somehow?) and we got paired up with the new-to-us death metal band Fuming Mouth (who you should absolutely listen to BTW) and (at their suggestion, we might add) we made a badass smoked brown ale and it's gonna be in cans soon and you should come grab some!

* And by "right now" I mean "Monday, which was at least two days ago"
** Truth be told, we have a lot of favorite hops.

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In Which the Barstools Make a Long-Awaited Return

6/8/2021

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Well hey there! Welcome back to our blog! This week we're comin' atcha with some largely-unsurprising news and also some stuff about beer,* so read on and read up!

Woop woop woop woop

Bar seats are back! While we weren't quite comfortable jumping in with both feet back to "the way things used to be" the moment the restrictions got lifted, we felt like it was time to make that next step back toward normalcy (or what passes for normalcy around here). And now the real noodle-scratcher is: did we feel like things Out In The World are actually getting better/safer, or did we just get tired of turning away grumpy boomers who are stubbornly hellbent on sitting at the bar (and only at the bar)? We'll let you draw your own conclusions on that one.

Go on, grab a seat. Spin around. Throw a coaster at your bartender.

Oh! And it's also worth mentioning that, with the return of bar seating, we're partly doing away with our table-service-only situation. We'll still be doing table service in the lower part of the beer garden (i.e. the asphalt) because "people who have been drinking" plus "carrying glassware" plus "stairs" is really not a recipe for success, but if you're inside or on the terrace (i.e. our raised, covered patio) you're welcome to saunter on up to the bar just like old times!

You best gets a steppin', because with this heat, this may very well be the last cask release until the fall

And speaking of things that are just like old times, we're tappin' another cask this Thursday! This time around we're goin' back to our favorite beer to put on cask (Extra Naked, obviously) and we "juiced it up" with some new-to-us hops (Hydra and cashmere) and it's gonna be mighty tasty!

Stupid birds think they're so great, with their feathers and whatever. We'll show them!

And while we're talking about beer, it behooves us forthwith to tell you about the new** beer we have in bottles: Yelling at Birds! For this particular blend, we took our beloved tripel and aged it in a buncha blueberry liqueur barrels that we got from our friends over at Short Path and we daresay it's mighty tasty!

Any day we get to combine our loves of heavy metal and craft beer is a good day

Also! Lastly! We're stoked to announce say that we're a part of the Vox & Hops Brewtal North America collab! For those of you who haven't heard of this project yet, the heavy metal podcast Vox & Hops put together a bigass collab project where a bunch of breweries get paired up with a bunch of metal bands and everybody releases a beer at/around the same time and we got paired up with the new-to-us death metal band Fuming Mouth (who are completely awesome, btw) and they suggested a smoked brown ale (which is pretty friggin' metal tbh) and it's coming out at the end of the month!

* Having news about beer on a brewery's blog is also probably not something you'd want to file under "surprising"
** We would have announced it sooner, but we had no idea when the hell the labels were gonna show up. Turns out the label industry is having some fun issues right now.

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In Which There is a Cask to be Proud About

6/2/2021

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Hi friends, welcome back to this ol' blog! We're pretty dang ol' excited to share with you something that's kinda-sorta new to our taproom (and also kinda-sorta not at all new), and that of course means...

Muffins! Wait wrong blog

Cask! But wait, there's more - this is no ordinary cask. Yes indeedy, we got the ol' cask itch,* but the only caskable beer at the time** was Pride and Pomegranate, so we figured we'd give that fruity lil' number a go on the ol' beer engine! And since it's a fruity beer, we figured it wouldn't make sense to just dump a buncha hops in there (though that probably would have been good), so instead we primed it with a buncha pomegranate juice and added some lactose why not and we're honestly pretty curious to see how this one turns out but I bet it's gonna be tasty, though we'll have to wait until Thursday to find out!

If the regular version is any indication, y'alls in for treat

...aaaand that's pretty much all we done got for this week! It's hopefully unlikely that we'll be dealing with another summer o' constant rule changes, so let's hope for Business As Usual for a while!

* That... that really isn't a good phrase. We're probably not gonna use that one again.
** Casks take a couple weeks to condition once they're filled, hence the delay on this particular cask release (bonus fun fact: when talking about casks "condition" actually just refers to carbonation. So if you say a cask doesn't have enough condition, you're really just saying that it's flat and maybe being a little pretentious about doing so).

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In Which We Unleash the Birthday Suit

In Which We Begin to Party

In Which nOrMaL

In Which the Barstools Make a Long-Awaited Return

In Which There is a Cask to be Proud About

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