Also of note, we will be open from 12-6 on New Year's Day (next Tuesday) and we'll have donuts from Union Square for all your post-party snackin' needs. BUT we will be keeping normal hours on New Year's Eve (Monday) and not be open because it's a bullshit holiday. 

Anyway, with all that outta the way, let's get on with some Year End Endless Rambling!

We started up one of our favorite-ever traditions: Horatio Day! We all got to don our fanciest crowns and hang out and hide from the blistering cold and get nice and roasty toasty with/on a buncha cool barreled and/or cellared beer (from gold-rimmed glasses, no less!) and maybe some cake and dang but a good time was had by all! ​

Oh, and also a new wall showed up in our building, but that's really more relevant to us in...

Of course, that meant a bunch of cleaning and painting and flooring and furniture building and swearing and dealing with contractors and waiting for contractors and wondering why the contractors stopped two thirds of the way through the work they promised to do and in the interest of keeping this positive I'm gonna stop talking about contractors and all the associated baloney that comes with them. Anyway, it gave us something to do (and worry about!) which is good because we clearly didn't have a whole lot else going on. ​

... which was pretty much the Month of the Collaborations (or so we thought), with the release of two Pink Boots beers - Big Boots 2018 and Pink Smoothie - one of which ended up being unintentionally hilarious because Bro Dudes™ refused to order it by name.** ​

We got things kickin' off right by receiving our new double-sized tanks and then - the very next day, as luck would have it - heading down to GrandTen to turn one of our beer recipes (yeast and all) into a whiskey! ​

Anyway, we also started up (and/or continued, depending on how you look at it) yet another new tradition around here with the Bestowing of the Paddle on our brewer Ben who's been working here for a right long time. ​

... when we started up what is hopefully another new tradition: Brewery Kickball! The whole idea started as part of a (possibly alcohol-fueled) tirade from our bartender-turned-lab-assistant Grace but then the whole thing gained momentum and we played a buncha games over the course of the summer (and it was only open to people who work for breweries, which is why we didn't shout about it more) and it ended up being a tonna fun, with people from seventeen or so different breweries showing up (one of whom invited us to attend a moderately ridiculous heavy metal beer fest in the fall)! ​

... when we started out by (unwittingly) doing something that we (now) know is pretty much guaranteed to irritate people: giving away free stuff! In this case it was hot dogs and we're pretty much not ever gonna do that again because it generated a Grumpiness Whirlwind the likes of which is seldom seen outside of the line at the post office in mid-December. ​

Anyway that's neither here nor there because the rest of July was pretty frickin' rad because we had our friends from GrandTen Distilling over to brew at our house (though that beer's still slumberin' away in some barrels) and we had our first-ever Inferno Night with Brato and Liz once again ended up in an arm wrestling competition where she got suckered into competing using her non-dominant hand and we made a beer about a house and also there was hella progress on the buildout front in terms of tiles and a new cold room and the arrival of our new bar and also a staircase to nowhere that confused the heck out of people for a good long while (up to and including now). ​

And you might (but probably won't find out how he earned that nickname (his real name is Darryl) in...

... when all our attentions and energies were focused on gettin' things up for the Big Birthday Bash that we spend most of our summers yammering about because it's pretty much our favorite day of the year. ​

And oh man did we do everything we damn could to overdo it on this day. Last year we had a band? This year we have four. ​​Last year we made a special beer for the band that was playing? This year we made a beer for every. damn. band. plus one for Victor (well, that was for a different event, but it was still on tap at the party) plus one for our pinball guy's daughter just for the hell of it.

... when we brewed up yet another buncha collabs because why not and the first one wasn't really a collab because all we did was "buy ingredients and then use them" which honestly describes the process behind every beer ever. Anyway that was our annual wet hop beer, which this year was The Windy Man (though some folks took to stubbornly pronouncing it as "windy"), but the collabs didn't stop there, no way! ​

... when we actually held The Showdown!

... when we made a beer about a house again, but it was a different house this time, because "beer for houses" is apparently the niche we fill now? Anyway, the beer in question was Hartshorne which we brewed for Bubs's house (remember Bubs? The one with the weird cake? Though now that I think about it, that doesn't narrow things down all that much around here) and to go with it we went to a fundraising event for the Wakefield Historical Society (and/or for this house specifically) where we got to awkwardly stammer about beer to a bunch of strangers! ​

Anyway, this month also brought us the opportunity to do one of our favorite things: brew wedding beers! Friends of the brewery Adelle and Korey got hitched in November and they had us make His 'n' Hers beers for their wedding that are made to be blended at serving in a beertail! And since we're brewing beers for houses and people, we gotta brew a beer for a dog (it had been, like, almost two months since we'd brewed a dog beer) so this time around we focused on Liz's childhood dog Nick and made a sweet-potato-infused golden ale that just so happened to be ready just in time for the most sweet-potato-filled holiday of all: Shitty Wednesday! And since we had a more-or-less seasonally-appropriate beer, we figured we'd just make it a whole thing and introduce you to our sweet new can art and also release a buncha bottles for the first time ever and also write a bunch of Thanksgiving Beer Pairings that we're pretty sure nobody read and we really hope nobody tried (except for the Barreled El Pulpo pairing, that one was legit). ​

And with all that said, looking back we can pretty safely say that we've accomplished our stated goal of "doing more stuff" but it's pretty safe to say we weren't expecting the amount/variety of More that the year brought. Sure, we've got more tanks and we're making more beer and we've got more space (which we're finally, hopefully, mercifully on the cusp of being able to fully use) and we're doing some pretty rad stuff in production that we weren't expecting to be doing by now (like bottles or funk beers) but also we've made a lot more beer (and/or beer-related) friends and worked on a lot of cool collaborative projects with them and it's rad to have as many cool friends (and/or friends who are huge nerds, but in a way that we appreciate) as we do. ​

The taproom will be decked out in Christmas decorations that you're pretty sure we got from Home Depot, possibly that morning. Underneath our tree, you'll find a bunch of presents that appear painstakingly-wrapped from a distance, but which bear a strikingly similar resemblance to the TV remote and the spare air filters for our heater; they'll be placed just so in order to hide the giant wads of tape which actually hold them together (and which, in turn, belie the fact that we don't actually know how to wrap presents. We might even add some gift bags brimming with still-folded tissue paper to complete the "this was wrapped by a dude" visual effect). And yes, they'll have Christmassy nonsense on the To/From tags, but it'll be vague enough that we can guarantee nobody dares open them, and even then we'll probably screw up the To/From placement so it'll say something like "From: You Know Who, To: Santa." 

As an added treat, we might even serve Jared's "Family Recipe" eggnog which is made by the painstaking process of buying eggnog from the store* and pouring it into a glass. And to serve with that special yuletime treat? You guessed it, a Festive Holiday Platter overflowing with all the brightly-colored cookies that were the only thing left at Costco because nobody else wanted them. (And also we'll have beer and candy pairings because that's the sort of thing we like to do around here.)

But when we get to drinks you'll see where our priorities truly lie, because we will be stocked up on the giggle juice. We'll have Biere de Krampus on tap if you want a fast-track to some holiday cheer, and we'll have eight different bottles both for here or to go, thereby ensuring you can be The Most Thoughtful Gift-Giver whilst never having to leave the bar. And what, praytell, will be bringing our bottle count up to eight? You guessed it, Joybringer and it's barrel-aged sibling** Joyrider will be available in bottles starting on Saturday!

And if all that weren't enough, we're offering a discount on all (non-alcohol) merch all dang day! So if you missed your chance to stuff some stockings, come on out and get the goods!

Hello again, one and all - friends and well-wishers and weird Russian internet-crawlers alike! We're here with beers and good cheer, so saddle up your internet stool and put on your "totally doing important work" face in case your boss happens to stroll by!

  While we're on about good things for those of you who have a taste for the finer things in life, this Thursday brings the return of Simpsons Trivia! And we would have asked our host Chris if there was a theme for this month, but we're kind of scared to know whether or not he's thought about it at all yet, so we'll just assume everything is gonna be great!