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In Which the Plague Doctor (Merch) Comes to Town

7/29/2020

Well hello again! We're back in action with all those rad new beers for cool people that we mentioned last week and more stuff about/for our "non-party birthday party" and also more new beer? Anyway, read on to get hip to the haps!

First on up is a lil' number that we call Critters IX! This lil' beauty follows nicely with the guiding principle of our Funk Program ("let's dump a bunch of stuff in a barrel and see what happens") and this time around we took some Key Lime and a buncha apricot puree and some Brett (natch) and just seven short* months later we've got this beer and now you can drink some!

It's lighter on the funk than some of the previous beers in the series (and it's definitely less funky than Critters X, but that's a different story for a future time), but that really lets all the component parts shine through and we daresay it's darn good!

And! During these most festive of times,** we're gettin' as primped and prepped as we can for our upcoming birthday and it wouldn't be a birthday without a whole raft of sweet merch! We've got a sweet-as-hell and totally-not-at-all-topical anniversary logo and we slapped it on some stickers and some shirts and - given Current Circumstances - we're puttin' it all up for grabs right now instead of makin' y'all wait another month! Check it out!

* Yes, "short." It definitely doesn't feel like January was a decade ago.
** These times are hardly "festive," and they might not even be "most."

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Blood, Guts, and Fools

7/22/2020

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Howdy and hello! As you may remember from last week, when we gave you a totally-not-circuitous rundown of why we're still brewin' up band beers sans festivities, we're brewin' up a buncha band beers and to hell* with the party! Anyway, the point is that we're a smidge "ahead of the game" when it comes to havin' celebratory beers, and we ain't exactly the type to hold out just to be ceremonious, so that means we got band beers comin' atcha! We've got three beers slated to go into cans on Monday, but first...

Going on draft sometime soon (possibly tomorrow? And then in cans on Monday as we discussed) we've got Fool's Paradise! We took everything we liked about the previous years' Sunken City beers and "amped it up" just a skosh and also "dry hopped it more" with some kind of "weird, unknown hop product"** and now we all get to drink it!

Next up on the docket, as a can-only release, is Organ Meats which is - of course - a smoked beer, "because nothing says 'Organ Meats' quite like a smoked beer" (that... that one probably won't win Slogan Of The Year down at the National Slogan Awards***). Anyway, we felt like a smoked wheat beer would be the perfect pairing for the sounds of Organ Meats "because once you get past the initial shock, you'll be hooked!" (okay fine, we'll stop with the terrible slogans). In all seriousness, we've got a perpetual soft spot for smoked beer, and we're stoked to share this beer with you!

And then, lastly but far from leastly, we've got the triumphant return of Blood Built! We've been havin' these cats up on stage at our birthday since we knew they were a band (which might also be the entire time they've been a band) and we've brewed more-or-less the same dry stout for them every year because it's so good! And for reference, I say "more-or-less the same" because it is the same recipe, but a lot of the ingredients get swapped out for the same thing but from a different manufacturer (which can actually make a medium-to-big difference in brewing), which means that a) we get to see some interesting, subtle variations from year to year, and 2) this means that twits**** get to be all "I really think the original vintage was the best" and there's nothing we can do to refute it.

* By which of course we mean that we dearly miss gettin' to hang out and drink tasty beer and listen to awesome music with y'all on our birthday, but Things Are Just Like That Now, and we gotta roll with it.
** Centennial hop hash, to be precise
*** Motto: "We Have Slogans!"
**** BEN.

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In Which We Anticipate An Anniversary

7/15/2020

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Howdy, friends! Hope you're enjoying this year's Thunderstorm Season* as we skittishly prepare to grab our umbrellas** and dash inside every time there's so much as a cloud overhead. But anyway that ain't gon' stop us, no way no how, so we're keepin' on keepin' on and we've even got some new beer on the horizon and also some fun stuff that is in no way a depressing reminder of how completely batshit this year has been.

Anyway. You were promised new beer, so new beer you shall have! And in true Bone Up fashion, we've jumped at the opportunity to jump on not one, but two jokes that nobody but our brewers will get.

First off, some of you out in Teevee Land might be familiar with what we generally dub "misfit beers" (we used to call them "smoothie beers," but that was before milkshake IPAs became a thing), but for the Official Record I shall elaborate upon the concept thusly: when we repack hops*** we tend to end up with some oddball amounts left over, so we pack up those odds 'n ends and throw 'em all into a big bag (along with any hops whose labels have frozen off, and so on), and then when that bag fills up we dump everything into one beer!

The end result is something that's delicious, but also entirely unrepeatable because we don't actually know**** what we put into it. And this time around it just so happened that we were approaching our four-hundred-and-fourth batch, so we present you with 404 - Recipe Not Found! And since we're "allowed to serve draft beer again," this sucker's draft (and Crowler) only, which (given our luck) is definitely not a sign that we'll need to re-pivot to the four-pack-only model of several weeks ago!

And! Moving on from that totally-uncharacteristically-long description of what amounts to a pretty normal pale ale, we also promised fun times!

And, well, as many of y'all are aware, this is the time of year when we'd be spending most of our time shouting about our birthday party and how fun our birthday party will be and so on.

But since we're in These Trying Times where we can't allow large groups or mingling or shouting or the communal beef trough that has become a staple of our celebrations, which means we've had to get creative. And I ain't gonna lie - it's been quite the noodle scratcher to figure out how to throw a party without throwing a party.

There was a time when our "idea board" for this year's celebration simply had the word "probably" written on it, and we've decided to take that idea and run with it! Since we'd usually gather a bunch of cool bands and put on a fun show, and also we'd brew a beer to pair with the music from each band, we figured we'd brew up all them damn beers anyway and call up all them bands that woulda been onstage and see if they'd be down to contribute to a "mix tape"***** of songs to go along with that ol' mix pack of beers, and anyway that's the first step of our Simulated Party Experience!

We've got tracks from The Weisstronauts and Sunken City and DNA's Evolution and Blood Built Empire and Benthic Realm and Organ Meats and the new-to-our-party Guilloteenagers and there's gonna be a professional-esque CD with one o' them booklets and everything and there's a mix pack to go along with it (six cans and a bottle, since we had very little luck finding 7-pack holders) and it's gonna be a (simulated) party! (Bonus points to you if you listen to said mix tape while drunk in a parking lot, in order to further the illusion.)

Anyway. We'll have some more by way of "actual details" shortly, but rest assured that we've got as many as several more ideas up our collective sleeve,****** but we'll just have to ramble about that next time!

* Did... did we always have a Thunderstorm Season? Or are we just more aware of it now that nobody's allowed to go inside?
** Just to be clear: I'm talking about the ones from the tables, so that we don't have to add "beer garden lightning damage" to the list of weird shit that has happened this year.
*** If you were wondering, it's inconvenient/expensive to order sizes that are convenient for us, so we buy in bulk and repack.
**** And of course these are the beers that people always ask us to make again. As if we could repeat the magic of using two pounds of hops labeled (in scrawled sharpie) "probably CTZ?"
***** We did consider putting out an actual cassette, if you were wondering.
****** Not true.

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In Which We Have Some Beers

7/8/2020

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Hello again! We've got beer! And some other stuff! Check it out!

First on up, we should probably mention that we've (briefly) restarted tappin' casks on Thursdays! Long story short, we had a couple still-good casks kickin' around, so we've been tappin' one a week until we run out, and this is the last week and it's one we're pretty durn excited about and that means Boneheads!

And speaking of old favorites, this week marks the arguably-triumphant return of Out of Bounds on tap! We usually brew this beer throughout the summer for our friends at Thomson Country Club but this year their golf course got shut down, like, two days after we kegged off the first batch so we drank all of it, like, two days before their course opened back up but now they're runnin' again and that means we (and they) have this citrus 'n pine nod to the classic west-coast style and it's probably getting tapped on Thursday and you should come drink some!

And while we're on the topic of new beers, we've got a new IPA comin' out in cans on Friday! We've been diggin' the mashup of "hops that taste like fruits, combined with the fruits they taste like" so this time we took berry-fruity Mass-grown Rakau and also some strawberries and - as is our style - we went and named this ol' beer after a borderline-throwaway line from a book that none of us* has read since high school and soon you'll get to have some Doubleplusgood!

Lastly, on Sunday, we've got us another crawfish boil! We'd originally scheduled this as another "to-go only" shindig, but now that we aren't to-go only, we figured we'd just roll with it! There's likely to be some logistical trickery due to our limited seating (and our No Reservations policy), but they've got an online ordering system that should eliminate the need for a line and I'm pretty sure they're still offering boiled crawfishes to go (and there are several rather nice parks a quick walk from the brewery, should you be in a picnic sorta mood) and anyway you should come on out (and possibly stake out a table early) for some delicious fishes!

* And by "none of us," I'm including all of you, dear readers. Particularly those of you that are high school teachers.

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In Which We Provide Some Patriotic (?) Beer Pairings For Your Holiday Weekend

7/1/2020

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Hello, friends! How are you? We're just dandy, thanks for asking. We're still kickin' along and rockin' out in our lil' ol' beer garden, and... that's pretty much it for right now. We can't really load up on events like we used to, so we're at a bit of a loss for much of anything "newsworthy" (except for the umbrellas! We have more umbrellas now! There's now shade where there once was sun!).

But anyway, that ain't gonna stop us from writing damn-near a thousand words about beer and beer-adjacent activities! That just ain't our way!

So. In light of the upcoming holiday, though the celebrations may be a bit more sparse (unless you're the "set off fireworks all night and scare the crap out of my dog" type, in which case things are in full swing), we figured we'd write up a buncha beer pairings for all your cookouts and virtual events and general outdoor shenanigans,* so here's your Patriotic Pairings for the year!

Extra Naked pairs well with... hot dogs
and if you don't have any Extra Naked, we suggest... trying to invent new methods of cooking by lighting grill implements on fire. FireTongs!

Key Lime pairs well with... mojitos
and if you don't have any Key Lime, we suggest... pulling a Jay Gatsby and silently staring off into the distance for the entire barbecue.

Wasted Life pairs well with... potato salad
and if you don't have any Wasted Life, we suggest... realizing that you can use "sorry, I've got another Zoom meeting I have to go to" as an excuse to leave any "virtual celebrations" you might have to attend.

Shut Up Kelly! pairs well with... s'mores
and if you don't have any Shut Up Kelly!, we suggest... insistently referring to ketchup as "aioli" and getting really confused when anybody corrects you on it.

Summerween pairs well with... cheeseburgers
and if you don't have any Summerween, we suggest... slapping anybody who starts playing Jimmy Buffet.

Ginger Spectacular pairs well with... showing up with a shrimp ring and refusing to share it
and if you don't have any Ginger Spectacular, we suggest... trying to gather everybody around to tell ghost stories at three in the afternoon.

Unidog pairs well with... eating that wedge of store-brand brie that's been sitting in the sun all afternoon
and if you don't have any Unidog, we suggest... taking some time to go comfort the dog because fireworks are scary. We've found hot dogs to be a good consolation for the existential terror they go through on this holiday.

Picnic Time pairs well with... grilled wings
and if you don't have any Picnic Time, we suggest... going up on the roof to play Water Balloon Sniper.

Walkin' Beer pairs well with... ill-advised homemade fireworks displays
and if you don't have any Walkin' Beer, we suggest... for legal reasons we cannot suggest that you play Roman Candle Freeze Tag.

Henrietta pairs well with... yelling at birds
and if you don't have any Henrietta, we suggest... trying very hard to convince everybody around you that birds aren't real.

Worshipper pairs well with... churros
and if you don't have any Worshipper, we suggest... trying to finally achieve that goal of eating an entire watermelon in one sitting. You got this. We believe in you.

Chimera pairs well with... devilled eggs
and if you don't have any Chimera, we suggest... scotch eggs.

Oh! And! We got so excited about those there pairings that we almost forgot about this week's beer release! Cartwheels is a hoppy-ish session-ish amber-ish treat that'll be on draft for the weekend. And after months of can pours, there's nothing better than fresh draft beer, is there?

*Here's our shameless plug to remind you we offer home delivery daily until 7pm!

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In Which the Plague Doctor (Merch) Comes to Town

Blood, Guts, and Fools

In Which We Anticipate An Anniversary

In Which We Have Some Beers

In Which We Provide Some Patriotic (?) Beer Pairings For Your Holiday Weekend

BUBco Blog

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