Oh! And! Lastly! We've declared our winner(s) for November's coloring contest! Adequate work, everybody! 

Oh! Also! Since we're re-releasing both of our bottled Krampus beers we thought this would be a fitting time to release our vaguely-XMas-themed merch: Krampus shirts! They're rad as heck and they're available right now! ​

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Quadless Leg Monster
pairs well with... saying "you know, in England they refer to this as 'pudding'" every time a new dish gets passed into your hands
And if you don't have any Quadless Leg Monster, we suggest... dipping your turkey in pudding 

The Gargoyle 
pairs well with... trying to convince people that turkey and peanut butter really do go well together (which they do)
and if you don't have any The Gargoyle, we suggest... making peanut butter gravy and then fleeing the scene before anyone tastes the abomination you have wrought upon this world

Organ Meats 
pairs well with... trying to "spice things up" by making your (in)famous ghost pepper sweet potatoes
and if you don't have any Organ Meats, we suggest... removing an item of clothing every time somebody complains about needing to wear a mask when out in public (and/or other covid-related precautions as you see fit)

The Sachem's Ale 
pairs well with... seeing how much weird/junk food you can cram into a casserole dish while still being able to convince people it's a "family tradition" (lookin at you, cream-of-mushroom-soup-green-bean-fried-onion casserole)
and if you don't have any The Sachem's Ale, we suggest... making a bunch of those savory Jell-O dishes from the 70s and serving them with a straight face

Yelling at Birds 
pairs well with... finding your most tinfoil-hat relative and getting them all wound up about whatever conspiracy theory they're shouting about this month
and if you don't have any Yelling at Birds, we suggest... subtly trying to convince your tinfoil-hat relative(s) that you're one of the Lizard People or whatever

Barrel-aged Biere de Krampus 
pairs well with... making a raspberry pie with an Oreo crust
and if you don't have any Barrel-aged Biere de Krampus, we suggest... crushing a bunch of Oreos and making Double Stuff Stuffing

Squash Everything 
pairs well with... making deep-fried versions of everything. Go all "Midwestern state fair" on your Thanksgiving
and if you don't have any Squash Everything, we suggest... gravy cocktails!

Emerald Spire 
pairs well with... pretending to be interested in watching The Game in order to get out of making small talk
and if you don't have any Emerald Spire, we suggest... getting out of small talk AND sports talk by cornering people into an exhaustive explanation of the recent drama on Spackle TikTok* (repeat as necessary until people are afraid to even make eye contact with you)

Menagerie 
pairs well with... making bacon-chocolate fudge
and if you don't have any Menagerie, we suggest... using pâté as frosting on a bunch of cupcakes

Green Smoothie 
pairs well with... deep-fried mashed potato balls
and if you don't have any Green Smoothie, we suggest... making a "deconstructed" Thanksgiving menu where you just replace all the traditional Thanksgiving foods with things that people actually want to eat** (fried chicken instead of turkey, sweet potato fries instead of candied yams, maybe come up with some kind of convoluted explanation for how pizza is "really a stand-in for stuffing and gravy," et cetera). 

Awkward Conversation
pairs well with... going all Winnie The Pooh on the cranberry sauce and eating it directly out of the can with your bare hand
and if you don't have any Awkward Conversation, we suggest... dressing like Winnie The Pooh

Critters IX 
pairs well with... Bulgarian feta. It has nothing to do with the holiday, but it's a really tasty pairing. 
and if you don't have any Critters IX, we suggest... going back to bed. 

Ginger Occasion 
pairs well with... biting your tongue when somebody asks "so when will you be having kids?"
and if you don't have any Ginger Occasion, we suggest... responding to all uncomfortable questions by saying "you know, that's a funny story" and then telling a very long story that goes nowhere (bonus points if, when people try to get you back on topic and/or change the subject, you say "oh hold on, I'm getting there" and then launch into a completely different pointless story)

Rakau 
pairs well with... volunteering to make the last-minute grocery store run to get out of helping around the house 
and if you don't have any Rakau, we suggest... getting the shopping list *ever* so slightly wrong so you have/get to go to the store repeatedly

Critters XIV 
pairs well with... insistently using the word "damp" in lieu of "moist" when talking about food
and if you don't have any Critters XIV, we suggest... trying to get out of IRL Turkey Day by constructing and sending a "Digital Avatar" that's really just an old iPhone taped to a skateboard

The Horned Beast 
pairs well with... trying to carve the turkey with a katana
and if you don't have any The Horned Beast, we suggest... trying to start a hoedown at the dinner table by playing the jug (empty wine bottle) and the spoons (ideally still covered in side-dishes) and insistently trying to convince others to join in and play your "spare fiddle" (you can leave this part out if you only brought one fiddle this year)

* Yes, this is a real thing. Or at least that's what we're told - we learned about it from reading Garbage Day like normal people.
** Some of you are probably saying "you're crazy! I love Thanksgiving food!" And yeah, sure, but if that's really the case then why do you only eat it once per year?

And since we've gotten into the habit of taking our fake holidays and stretching them into several-day affairs, the Pulpo Day festivities continue into Saturday! It's pretty much the same deal on Saturday what with all the cool cellared beers available on tap and/or in bottles, only we'll also have food (courtesy of the Nada Cart)! 

And since it's apparently not enough for us to have a days-long fake holiday this weekend, we've also got some largely-unrelated events happening! ​

But since we *are* rambling on a bit about Future Times, it behooves us to bring up our upcoming Funksgiving beer dinner next Friday with Brato! We'll be doing an in-person dinner with an a la carte-style Thanksgiving-themed food menu and a paired flight (which - you guessed it - is based off of our Thanksgiving Mixed Pack), or if you wanna have your pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner at home you can preorder the food as a meal kit which comes with the same beers, only in can/bottle form this time!


Check out this awesome menu for the taproom pop up:

BEER FLIGHT
Awkward Conversation - cranberry orange grisette
The Horned Beast - hazy IPA
Squash Everything - Belgian golden strong ale brewed with butternut squash and aged in apple brandy barrels
El Pulpo - chocolate orange imperial stout

POP UP MENU $17 per plate
Beer brined roast turkey porchetta (white and dark meat)

Choice of three of five sides:
Pumpkin and cider donut stuffing
White truffle, mushroom, and green bean casserole w/fried garlic chips
Apple and cheddar mac 'n cheese
Smoked carrots with browned butter and sage
Miso butter cornbread

And if we're peerin' even farther into the future we'll see a sneak peek of all those barrel-aged beer releases I talked about! We've got a whole pile of cool beer releases (including the return of some old favorites) scheduled for the day that everyone loves to hate: Shitty Wednesday! Many peoples' Thanksgiving plans involve sitting in traffic for hours on end on this particular Wednesday (which is often followed by the totally-not-uncomfortable experience of going to a bar in your hometown and seeing a bunch of people you went to high school with, only to be immediately reminded of why you didn't keep in touch in the first place) so we figured we'd give y'all a little something to brighten your day and that means bottles! I'll save the full release schedule for next time, since this is pretty much the world's longest teaser, so keep them eyes peeled! 

* JUSTIN. ​

For all the very adorable entries, check out the featured story on Instagram that we made!

And that's about it for the current week but if you want to read about all the stuff we got goin' on next then oh dang oh man we gotta catch our collective breath a bit because

-On Thursday (October 28) (also known as "not this Thursday") we're startin' up our beer and candy pairing! Long story short: beers (particularly those in our Halloween Flights) will be paired with their "candy soulmate(s)" for the weekend. 

-On Friday (October 29) we'll be doin' Inferno Night with Brato! And since that more-or-less amounts to a buncha spicy food (with beer) (and also with  candy) we figured we'd invite our friend Michael Cloherty in to do a signing for his (relatively) recently-released book: Abel Bodied! 

-And if that weren't enough for ya, we're also collaboratin' with our Everett contemporaries (Aeronaut Cannery, Short Path Distilling, Night Shift Brewing, and Bearmoose) to do a good-ol'-fashioned neighborhood bar crawl! On Friday and Saturday (October 29-30) we'll all be doin' neighborhood drink passports and candy pairings (and pastelitos of course) and giveaways and all sortsa fun times and you should come! 

-And. AND. Just in case you're burned out on/overwhelmed by all the Halloween Madness that's goin' on out there, next Sunday (October 31) we're bringin' in our friends from T.C. Scoops to do a full-on Halloween sundae bar! To be perfectly honest with you, you're missing out if you haven't had their ice cream yet. It is - at worst - fantastic, and this is one of the last times of the year to getcha some, so come getcha some!

* Not gonna lie, my sense of time is messed up enough that I'd believe you if you told me we released that beer six months ago. Or six hours. Things have been weird lately, okay?
** Not unlike that one Simpsons episode where a yo-yo demonstration gets all the students to be extremely excited about yo-yo-ing for like a week

Howdy friends! We're back in action with the spooktacular suds and good times galore so read on and read up!

Oh! And! Since y'all seem to be diggin' on the cooking classes, we're hosting more cooking classes! We've got sushi making coming up on Tuesday and Ten Types of Pasta on Wednesday and they're hella fun and you should come join us!

Buy sushi class tix here: Sushi Making 101
Buy pasta class tix here: Handmade Pasta Class

Oh! And! Lastly! We've got winners and runners-up from last month's coloring contest! Adequate work, everyone!

* For legal reasons we're supposed to call them "crowler-style cans." But for not-sounding-like-dipshits reasons, we don't do that. 
** Due to our policy of not looking things up, we have not looked this up. 
*** When trying to come up with this number he kept saying things like "...and that's another concept I'm involved in" and we were too polite to ask him what the hell he means by "concept" in this context, because we really don't know. 
**** I don't... what's the verb for "calligraphy?"

​And speaking of beer that's good (aren't we always?), we kinda-sorta forgot to tell you last week that we re-brewed Ginger Spectacular! Anyway you all know and/or love that beer and even if you don't it's got a pretty descriptive name (there's ginger in it, and it is spectacular. Nuff said) and my point is that it's on tap and in cans right now!

But wait! There's more! In addition to all these new-ish beers, we've got some New new beers and the first one is The Sachem's Ale! This here's a collab between us and new-to-us band Dzö-nga and it's packed fulla pineapple and peach and it's quite the treat! Also of note, we know Dzö-nga because they showed up at the bar one day and gave us a CD and said something to the general effect of "we heard you guys like to do collab beers with metal bands, so maybe you'd like to make a beer with us?" And oh man, that is absolutely the kind of thing that we want to encourage, so we brewed the heck out of a beer with/for them and you'll be able to get some on Friday!

And speaking of new, tasty beers that you can get on Friday, we're releasing yet another new, tasty beer on Friday! This one is also a collab beer that we jammed a whole buncha stuff into. Only this is a stout with a little bit of cocoa and cinnamon and some ancho and pasilla peppers (which are pretty firmly on the "flavor" side of the spectrum instead of the "heat" side) and instead of a band we collabed with Rock'n Rescue, an organization in North Reading that finds forever homes for Puerto Rican street dogs (known as "satos")! Anyway the beer is called Sato (go figure) and it's gonna be in cans on Friday (and quite possibly on cask in the near future) and a portion of the proceeds for this beer will go to Rock'n Rescue and anyway you should drink some!

And! Lastly! It behooves us to point out that next Thursday is the next installment of our music-themed trivia - Audio Triviality - and this one's gonna be Halloween themed! We've missed trivia dearly while it was gone, so we're super jazzed to hang out and answer a bunch of weird questions that sit in the liminal space between "Halloween" and "music" and then give out a bunch of extremely stupid prizes and anyway you should come join us because it's gonna be a ton of fun!

* We still, on the regular, thank Hops that we don't have to deal with a new set of drastic, half-baked, poorly-communicated, covid-related rule changes every damn week. 
** As you might imagine, Team Extra Naked and Camp Kelly are locked in constant, bitter dispute over which is superior. It's slowly turning into some Montague/Capulet shit over here.