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In Which We Give What We Have, and What We Have is Thanksgiving Beer Pairings

11/25/2020

Oh hi! How are you? I hope you're well. And also I hope you're ready for the long-awaited (by us) return of our Thanksgiving Beer Pairings, because that's what's comin' atcha! But first, we gotta getcha hip with the haps on new beers and fun event(s)!

First up in terms of new releases is Splorge! We made Splorge because we were able to get our hands back on one of our favorite hops - namely Belma - only we couldn't name the beer Belma (because we already used that name, which we probably shouldn't have done the first time because it's a trademarked term, so we definitely can't do it now), so we went with Splorge! And it's worth noting that this beer name is definitely not us making fun of one of our new brewers for misremembering the name of one of the steps in the brewing process.* Nope. That's definitely not the kind of thing we'd do. Anyway, Splorge is out today and it is tasty!

And. AND. The beer you** have all been waiting for: Pretend It's Summer! Thassright, since it sucks outside now we figured we'd brew a beery throwback to the halcyon days of, um, drinking beers with summery flavors and pretending that it doesn't suck outside! And for those of you who don't know, Pretend It's Summer is a delicious lil' double IPA that we brewed with pineapple and an extra heapin' helpin' or two of galena and if you have several of them it may well seem like a good idea to bust out the lawn chairs and pretend it's summer! Or you can do what some of us did and bundle up and drink it in the park while mumbling angrily off into the middle distance. You do you! Anyway, it's out today and you should drink some!

Also! Speaking of it being terrible outside, we're gettin' back in the "groove" of doin' some of those virtual events that everyone got all excited about back in spring and then promptly forgot about as soon as it got warm out! Anyway, we're doin' up a Virtual Beer Dinner with our pals at Brato and the food theme is "comfort food" so obviously we paired that food with the fanciest beers we have on the menu!*** Anyway it's on December 4th and we're gonna hang out and drink beers on The Internet and at the very least Liz and Jared will be there and maybe some of our production crew will hang out if we can bribe them with beer and macaroni and honestly it's gonna be a lot more fun than it sounds on paper ("drinking in front of your computer" may have lost its luster a ways back for most of us) and we're taking preorders now and you should come!

Oh! And! We mentioned last week that we "probably" had a way to order beer delivery online, which turned out to be incorrect, but now we do! It's a modestly-janky system because we're using our webstore for something it wasn't made to do, but it'll get somebody (probably Jared) to show up at your door with beer, so we'll call it a win! Anyway, blah blah blah support your local struggling small businesses this weirdass holiday season, you know the deal.

Anyway. We're pleased to announce that this year we're bringing back - for the fourth time - our annual-ish Thanksgiving Beer Pairings!**** (Previous years can be found here, here, and here. We missed 2017, which is why it's "annual-ish"). And it's worth at least mentioning that we did take into consideration the fact that Thanksgiving is gonna be different for a lot of us this year, but we wanted to avoid the pitfall of making a bunch of #relatable "virtual dinner" wisecracks that are really just low-hanging fruit ("Ha ha! Uncle Ed doesn't know that he's muted! So zany! Older people sometimes struggle to adapt to new technology and that's humorous to me!") kinda like how ten years ago every show on TV felt compelled to make at least one episode where all the characters get social media accounts (or addicted to MMORPGs, or... you get the idea) and then Hijinx Ensue until the next episode when they never mention it again.

Anyway, the point is that this isn't quite "Thanksgiving Beer Pairings: Zoom Edition" but also it would be weird to completely ignore all the crazy nonsense that's going on out there, so anyway... enjoy!

Extra Naked
pairs well with... wishing you hadn't eaten so much the previous day
and if you don't have any Extra Naked, we suggest... shame eating

Key Lime
pairs well with... just one more piece of pie
and if you don't have any Key Lime, we suggest... having two more pieces of pie

Wasted Life
pairs well with... a nap on the couch
and if you don't have any Wasted Life, we suggest... taking a nap anyway, albeit a less satisfying one

Shut Up Kelly!
pairs well with... ooOOOooh! Somebody brought fudge?!
and if you don't have any Shut Up Kelly, we suggest... trying to convince your elderly aunt to do shots of Allen's Coffee Brandy with you

Sabrobro
pairs well with... going on a long rambling tangent about all the ways you can cook turkey, a la Bubba from Forrest Gump
And if you don't have any Sabrobro, we suggest... talking in a fake southern accent, but laying it on so thick that nobody can tell you're not saying real words. We go heppin wif de bane pone; bwa-nonna houndaw.

Splorge
pairs well with... NOT making a 200 mile drive each way on the worst traffic day(s) of the year for once.
And if you don't have any Splorge, we suggest... making that same drive only to get pie from that one place near your relatives' house, but not stopping in to say hello to the fam.

Triple Pearl
pairs well with... battering food in gravy before you deep fry it.
And if you don't have any Triple Pearl, we suggest... using stuffing as the breading on this fried-gravy monstrosity. Man, screw turduckens - I want stuffing/gravy turkey tenders!

Versterven
pairs well with... playing outside with the younger relatives to help tire them out a bit before dinner.
And if you don't have any Versterven, we suggest... giving all the kids Five Hour Energy (just some little sips, though. Come on, they're kids) and then convincing them to stage a coup and storm the dessert table before dinner even starts.

Pretend It's Summer
pairs well with... drinking out of a hollowed-out pineapple (or a coconut, if that's more your speed).
And if you don't have any Pretend It's Summer, we suggest... repeatedly insisting that you thought this Thanksgiving was going to be "luau-themed" which is why you showed up in nothing but a grass skirt.

Mild Child
pairs well with... sending a body double instead of attending Thanksgiving in person.
And if you don't have any Mild Child, we suggest... sending a terrible body double who looks nothing like you and who manages to pronounce your name wrong (and, somehow, differently) every time they say it.

Ginger Spectacular
pairs well with... trying to get out of any and all discussions about politics
and if you don't have any Ginger Spectacular, we suggest... pointing into the middle distance and yelling "what's that!?" and then running away, giggling

El Pulpo
pairs well with... constructing increasingly-elaborate forts with your youngest relatives
And if you don't have any El Pulpo, we suggest... acting so erratically at the dinner table that you get banished to the kids' playroom to go watch Dumbo like six times in a row because that's somehow the only movie they have. Again.

Soiree
pairs well with... dressing the dog up in a cute costume.
And if you don't have any Soiree, we suggest... dressing the dog up in people clothes and trying to sneak it into the bar with you. If anyone asks questions, just say "oh that's just Terry" without further elaboration.

Joyrider
pairs well with... compressing, shaping, and re-baking the stuffing to use as hard taco shells
And if you don't have any Joyrider, we suggest... pointing out each dish individually and making the argument that it "technically qualifies as a taco." Really fight to make your point. Make a chart if you have to.

Ginger Disco
pairs well with... serving people "roulette brownies" where a small percentage of random brownies are completely full of habanero powder.
And if you don't have any Ginger Disco, we suggest... same thing, but throw a couple THC brownies in there too.

Joybringer
pairs well with... making up songs about the foods you're about to eat while you fill your plate
And if you don't have any Joybringer, we suggest... putting on a puppet show wherein you have the turkey carcass stage a Gallagher-style performance and messily smash the giblets with a potato

Melvin the Mammoth (Goes to Kentucky)
pairs well with... smoking weed in the garage after dinner
And if you don't have any Melvin Goes to Kentucky, we suggest... smoking weed in the garage before dinner

Melvin the Mammoth (Goes to Jamaica)
pairs well with... making turkey-themed arts and crafts
And if you don't have any Melvin Goes to Jamaica, we suggest... showing up to dinner in full-on Puritan garb (bonus points if you try to stay in character)

Blood of Krampus
pairs well with... speaking in rhyme for the entire day
And if you don't have any Blood of Krampus, we suggest... speaking in riddles for the entire day

Barrel-aged El Pulpo
pairs well with... happily shouting
And if you don't have any Barrel-aged El Pulpo, we suggest... angrily shouting

Rebello Fellow
pairs well with... trying to cram foods into other foods, but getting all "think like an engineer" about it; like making balls of stuffing filled with turkey, then sealing the cracks using the adhesive power of mashed potatoes - just dip 'em in gravy and you're ready to huck 'em at your siblings!
And if you don't have any Rebello Fellow, we suggest... refusing to drink anything that doesn't match the color of the food you're currently eating. A bite of cranberry sauce gets a sip of red wine. A bite of green beans gets a shot of absinthe. Mashed potatoes only pair with Bailey's. Come to think of it, most Thanksgiving foods are beige; that's gonna mean a lot of Bailey's.

Fancy Pants
pairs well with... putting your own spin on cranberry sauce by making something else that doesn't taste like garbage
And if you don't have any Fancy Pants, we suggest... making "homemade cranberry sauce" but it's just jello (and the "cranberry chunks" are gummy bears)

Funky Life
pairs well with... going a little wild on the hors d'oeuvres as a treat. You earned it!
And if you don't have any Funky Life, we suggest... reconfiguring the entire menu so that every item starts with "bacon-wrapped." And I do mean EVERY item. Make a bacon envelope so you can have bacon-wrapped cranberry sauce.

Kegasus
pairs well with... having a sassy Zoom background and pointedly commenting on it every five minutes. Like maybe a picture of a turkey with the words "It's Gobble Time, Bitches" over it, and then you just try to make that your catchphrase for the day.
And if you don't have any Kegasus, we suggest... having your background be that cartoon that gave a bunch of kids seizures back in the 80s.

* Half of the brewer-specific lingo is in German because people didn't feel the need to translate and the other half is hilariously-outdated English that actually makes less sense than the German. There's also some stuff that is - somehow - a mix of the two; and also a lot of the names for parts we use are actually just brand names because nobody felt like using the actual terms for those things (which is way more common in everyday life than you might think it is). And no, the brand names used don't necessarily have a strong relation to what the company actually does. For instance, sample valves are referred to as "Perlicks," but Perlick (the company) mostly makes refrigerators.
** Assuming that you are Craig. Hi Craig!
*** If this seems like a non-sequitur then you are clearly not familiar with Brato's approach to food.
****It's our longstanding goal for this series that somebody tries at least one of our pairings (preferably not one of the ones that's outright illegal) but it's really up to you to decide how much you want to alienate your family during the holidays, and either way we hope you enjoy!

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In Which We Release, Like, ALL the Bottles

11/18/2020

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Well hello there! After we went one whole excruciating week without a single beer release, we return to you with, like, the most beer releases!

But before we get to all that, we've got a bit of a "housekeeping" note to cover first. As you may have noticed, it's moderately terrible outside much of the time these days, and the heat lamps that we have out in the beer garden don't always do a bang-up job of providing either heat or illumination (unless you're right up next to them, in which case they're a nice toasty oasis in a sea of bleak dampness) and anyway the point is that it is now less-desirable to drink outside. But! Did you know we offer free beer delivery within ten(ish) miles of the brewery? You probably do, because we've told you a whole bunch of times, but we figured we'd remind you anydangways! And also, we're tryin' a "new thing" where we're strongly encouraging people to schedule deliveries beforehand (mostly because we only have one delivery driver and it turns out that this causes complications when somebody orders beer for delivery and he's on the other side of the state) and also I think it's available online? Anyway. The point is that the outside world is cold and full of diseases so you should probably have us bring you beer!

And speaking of it being cold out, we put a bit of a "twist" on an old-favorite holiday beer of ours and now it's available in bottles and you can have some! The beer is called Blood of Krampus and it's one of our more ambitious barrel-aged blends, as it's composed of at least four different beers (possibly as many as seven, depending on how you count) and it's definitely not just a bunch of odds and ends that we were trying to find a home for and any way you slice it it's dark and smooth and a touch oaky and mega tasty and it's out right now and you should try it!

And speaking of barrel-aged blends that are available right now, we've got another new beer that was aged, only not in a barrel! Long story short, we had a wild fermentation beer that we had been aging in what we lovingly refer to as a "plastic foudre*" and we may have kinda sorta forgotten about that beer for a little while** and then we did a bunch of taste tests to figure out what to blend it with (most of our wild beers are blended, if you didn't know) but ultimately we decided that it needed to be blended with itself and then we bottled most/all of it and now it's here! It's called Funky Life and you should drink some!

And while we were ridin' that ol' blending train, we realized that with Lazy Pants in house*** we could recreate an old favorite of ours, so we brought back Fancy Pants and it's just as good as we remember! It's got all the bright acidity of Lazy Pants, but the vanillin from the oak really brings out the chocolatey notes and oh man it's so good!

Oh! Also! Speaking of blasts from the past, we also bottled up some blasts from the past! More specifically, we've got bottles of Melvin Goes To Kentucky and Melvin Goes To Jamaica back in stock and ready to rock!

And Soiree! We have that too! Remember, that beer we thought we were out of (twice) but it turns out we're kinda just bad at counting? We have five cases left! And this is really actually the last time we'll have any! Probably!

But anyway, enough about beer releases. Let's get to the beer releases! More to the point, we've got some "speculative future releases" on the horizon. Well, they're real actual beer that's been brewed and is ready to go, but the speculative part comes from us not knowing when (or if) our cans will show up. If we're very lucky, our shiny new can shipment will get here before Friday (some of them supposedly shipped already) and we'll be able to have cans ready to fill first thing in the A M on Friday!

If we're medium lucky, our cans will get here on Friday and we'll basically bring them straight from the truck to the canning line, only it'll have to be via some kind of bullshit circuitous bucket brigade Rube Goldberg nonsense because we sort of don't have a way to get cans inside? And if we're not lucky enough for that delightful scenario, we'll be getting cans on ? and filling them on ?? so we'll see! Anyway here are the new-to-us beers we'll be canning ASAP.

First on up is Mild Child! We had us a hankerin' for a good old-fashioned brown ale and we made one! And, uh, that's about it. There's not a huge amount to say about brown ales except that they are brown (which should be implied by the style name, but you can't always expect beer terminology to be straightforward because lots of it was coined by drunk people) and also they're delicious and we're really looking forward to drinking this beer.

Next on the docket is Triple Pearl! This here's a single hop pale ale made with - you guessed it - Triple Pearl! This here's a Michigan-grown variety that's new to us and the tasting notes for this variety included "orange peel" so we thought it would be fun to throw some actual orange peel in there! And, if you were wondering, Triple Pearl is (to the best of our knowledge) entirely unrelated to the German hop variety Perle, which really just adds credence to my whole "beer terminology makes no damned sense" point from before. Anyway, Triple Pearl (the beer) will be in cans soon and you should drink some!

Oh! Also! You may have noticed that we've been poppin' up at way more beer and/or liquor stores these days and that's all thanks to the efforts of Maddy and Katy! You may recognize them from the taproom and/or beer garden, but they've taken to schleppin' some suds around the local area so if we run out of something then you should blame them.

But seriously though, we're tryin' to "step up" the ol' "distro game" so if there's a store you wanna see us at, let us know (our current list is here)! Or, better yet, tell the store you want them to buy our beer (and also maybe tell us? We're new at this)!

* Honestly, the best part about using this term is that in order to get the joke you kinda have to take beer seriously enough that you'll probably just be annoyed with us for saying it in the first place.

** It was in that tank for 555 days, which is a smidge longer than our usual six months.
*** We realized this when we still had Lazy Pants. RIP Lazy Pants. Again.

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Hi Ho, to the Barrel Room We Go!

11/11/2020

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Howdy friends! It's a bit of a "slow news week" around these here parts, which makes us... suspicious.* But there's no seemingly-arbitrary new rules from The State (that we know of, anyway) and our hands are maybe just a wee bit tied on new beer releases for the moment (turns out there's a can shortage? News to us. If only every beer news outlet in the entire goddamn world had sent us five depressing emails a day for the past five months, with doom-and-gloom news about can supply, then maybe we still would have been unable to prepare, only sadder this time), but anyway them's the breaks and we plays the hands we's dealt!

Anyway, it is with a normal amount of glee and/or other emotions that we announce to you that we've got Joyrider and Ginger Disco back in bottles! Didn't notice they were even gone? That's cool too! Either way, they're back and they're tasty as ever!

And speaking of bottles and/or barrel-aged beer, we've been taking the relative downtime to dream up all sorts of new concoctions from the ol' barrel hold! We're still waitin' on a couple odds and/or ends, but within the next week or so we're lookin' to bring back an old favorite (which we mentioned last week) and also a new barrel blend (which may well include guest appearances from some other old favorites) and also a new funky beer (with one or two more not much farther down the line) and the impending rerelease of barrel-aged El Pulpo (whose timeline is still a smidge uncertain, but it will be soon) and dang but we love barrel season!

* Of what, I'm not sure.

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My Goodness, is it Pulpo Time Already?

11/4/2020

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Oh hi there! We got some good times and/or tasty beers and/or some logistical mumbo-jumbo comin' on atcha, so read on and read up, dear reader!

First on up is a beer we brewed in collaboration with Lesser Glow to celebrate the release of their new(est) album: Nullity! The album is rife with symbolism and imagery from nature, so we collectively decided to name our beer after the song Versterven which is, of course, about dying of thirst in the desert. And so, with that theme in mind, we brewed up a bone-dry grisette and dry hopped it with a combination of Southern Star and Mt. Rainier and it'll slake the thirst that grows within you or whatever and anyway it's coming out in cans on Friday and you should drink some!

And while we're talking about beers that come out on Friday, we're stoked to announce that we're bringin' back an old favorite - only in a new-to-us package - which is to say that (as long as we don't have any weird nonsense happen with our canning line. Again) we're gonna have El Pulpo in cans! On Friday! Thassright, we're bringin' back our perennial-favorite vaguely-winter-themed chocolate orange stout and soon you'll get to drink some!

And while we're on about bringin' back blasts from the past, we thought we'd give you a little "teaser" about an upcoming bottle-only rerelease that's sure to please any of you who were really hoping we'd bring back that one specific beer that we had on tap for like two weeks back in 2018. Anyway the point is that in the near future we're bringin' back Fancy Pants! Yes indeedy, Lazy Pants's fancier cousin is makin' another appearance and we're definitely not just waiting on the labels that we forgot to order but anyway keep them eyes peeled!

Moving on to some of the more "nitty gritty" kinds of things, it's worth mentioning that we've made some tweaks to our hours. First and/or foremost, we're now closing at 9PM every night, due to the gubernatorial order that we need to be closed (and, it's strongly implied, free of customers) by at 9:30 PM every night, since we all know that covid only comes out at night.

But honestly, that's all part of a larger issue which is (essentially) one of how we plan to move forward now that it sucks* outside. And judging by the number of people who have (already) called to express their confusion and/or frustration about whether or not we'll be serving drinks inside of our small, poorly-ventilated space when the weather becomes less favorable, we feel it's necessary to lay out our (tentative, as always) plans for the coming months.

In short: we're not offering indoor service, and it's pretty unlikely that we'll start. Back when we had the luxury of being able to adopt a "wait and see" attitude, we decided that indoor service here only made sense if there was a proven way to do so safely, and if our staff was comfortable with such a system, and if overall covid rates remained manageable. Given that none of those criteria are met (and indeed, we feel less confident on all three points than we did a few weeks/months ago), we feel it wouldn't be responsible to open for indoor service.

If we're being totally honest, this (to us) is the only logical course of action, and the fact that it isn't more commonplace (yet, anyway) is... concerning. I don't wanna get all "inside baseball" on you because we like to keep things positive on this here blog, but also we pride ourselves on being transparent** and we're pretty worried about the whole "indoor public spaces" situation right now. We're no scientists (at least, we're not this type of scientists) and we certainly don't want to tell people how to live, but when we see a strong correlation between "people gathering indoors" and "people contracting covid," we really can't - in good conscience - pretend like everything is fine and invite people to gather inside our space. We understand that we, as a business, can't ignore the fact that we need to make money in order to survive, but we also can't ignore the fact that we help set the tone for how people view the current situation. I'm not saying that people look to us for tips on how to run their lives (and god help you if you are), but there are absolutely people who say/think things like "bars/restaurants are open indoors, so it must be safe" and we can't encourage that line of thinking. It sucks, and we'll definitely make a bunch of people grumpy, but we gotta do what's safe.

Anyway. Enough with the sad times (for now) and moving on to what we're gonna do to keep on keepin' on! And one of our first thoughts was to consider the possibility of starting to do UPS shipping for beer, which we're apparently allowed to do if it's within state lines.

...and when we put the question to The Internet Hive Mind to see if there was enough interest to make it worth our while to ship beer, our main takeaway was that people seemed surprised that we do (free) residential delivery within 10 miles or so of the brewery. We may have stopped shouting about it for a while (since we had a beer garden to holler about), but we never stopped delivering! If you live within our radius, give us a call at (781) 691-9092 to schedule a delivery (we're switching to mainly deliveries on Wednesdays and Fridays, but could probably make same day delivery work if you call early enough in the day!) and get yourself some beer!

* Admittedly, it still only sucks outside SOMEtimes, and we're gonna cling to those last bits of nice weather like you wouldn't believe.
** Like that time we openly admitted to having hosted a covid-positive customer and it made the damn news. It wouldn't have made such a splash if we had just claimed to be "closed for deep cleaning" with no further explanation, but we don't think that's fair to you.

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In Which We Give What We Have, and What We Have is Thanksgiving Beer Pairings

In Which We Release, Like, ALL the Bottles

Hi Ho, to the Barrel Room We Go!

My Goodness, is it Pulpo Time Already?

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