All Categories - Bone Up Brewing Co.

In Which We Have Some Beers

7/8/2020

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.

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

7/1/2020

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!

In Which We Observe... Summerween

6/23/2020

Howdy do, friendaroos! Thanks to everybody who came out for our "grand re-opening" - it was a great weekend! A good time was had by all, and we managed to scrape by with minimal sass from the people* who seem to think that our contact tracing program (i.e. us writing down your name on a piece of paper and then eventually throwing that piece of paper away) puts us at the center of some sort of Shady Conspiracy.** But anyway, we're glad you like drinking in our parking lot, because that's... that's pretty much the deal for the next couple months. So enjoy!

And speaking of enjoy, this newfound reopening nonsense means we're slowly-but-surely bringin' back all the old favorites on draft and this week that means Henriettta! Yes indeedy, that bad mamma-jamma is set to go into kegs and on tap on Wednesday which is probably*** today! Or maybe it's the past!

Also of note, this here's a canning week for us, but we got bumped from our usual Friday time slot to Sunday for some reason (it's Tim's fault. Or maybe Tom's fault. But definitely not Tim-Tom's fault), which means we'll be releasin' our new can beer pretty much the minute it's available!

And speaking of new beer in cans, we're gonna have a new beer in cans! And if I were to ask you "what is the most Bone Up thing you can do when naming a beer," there's a chance you'd guess that it's a) named after a fake holiday, which it is 2) very candy-centric and 3) from a TV show that aired eight years ago and also 4) actually would have happened several days ago if it were a real holiday, which it isn't. Anyway, the point is that we're about to release Summerween! We got us a whole buncha watermelon blossom honey (whose tasting notes, as provided by the apiary, simply read "pink") and we tossed it into a lightly hoppy lil' grisette and it's coming out on Sunday and you should drink some!

* It was mostly people on Facebook. Of course it's people on Facebook.
** Seems like it would be a pretty shitty conspiracy if it centers around knowing your phone number and whether or not you went to a place that serves beer.
*** You might not be able to tell from reading it, but we do actually write this blog in advance and, like, put thought into it 'n shit.

In Which We Splash Into a Beer Garden!

6/17/2020

Hello friends! We know that many of y'all out there in Teevee Land have been just dreamin' of the day when you can "slug back a cold one" out in the comfort of our "parking lot"* and we thought it would take some kind of a minor miracle to turn that lot into a "beer garden" (as opposed to, say, an "unprompted lake") but we ended up getting just the opposite of a minor miracle** and somehow we got us a "beer garden" anyway! And since we had like three days' notice to prepare,*** we can certainly say that we definitely didn't construct this "beer garden" out of garbage and scrap wood, and anyway you can hardly tell because we "spruced up" the place with a bunch of stickers and string lights and hastily-spraypainted logos in a move that's totally not at all reminiscent of your high school bedroom.

Anyway, all sass aside, we think our lil' ol' piece o' paradise looks just dandy and we're straight chuffed to have you come hang out and drink beers with us again and that's good because you can do just that! Today! Yes indeedy, we've set up our "socially distant" tables and rolled out a giant chalkboard o' rules for people to pretend to read and we've got a buncha plastic cups for you to drink out of in case you had any last shred of hope that this would be a "return to normalcy"**** and you should come drink some beers with us!

And in case you're the Cautious Type when it comes to infectious disease (and we do very much support those of you that are being Extra Careful, whether by personal choice or personal circumstance), it does behoove us to mention that we'll still be doing all the to-go-oriented stuff that we've been doing since this whole pandemic business started - home delivery, curbside pickup, produce boxes (if we get enough orders to meet the distributor's minimum) - all that fun stuff is still a go until the Powers That Be make us stop.

But enough prattlin'. We're gonna go fulfill a longstanding goal and neck an entire can of Extra Naked on our patio while our dogs become more and more panicked due to our dipshit neighbors setting off fireworks for like ten hours per day. Come join us!

* And if we didn't already know that, we would have figured it out pretty quickly from the number of you who took advantage of Quarantine Rules and decided to just straight-up start drinking beers the second you walk out the door.
** Which is to say that the opposite of a minor miracle is a major goddamned disaster (or several, depending on how you look at it).
*** Though judging from the number of people who have already showed up out of the blue and angrily demanded to be able to drink in our lot, y'all must think we had, like, an "inside scoop" that gave us this news before you got it (spoiler alert: nobody tells us anything either). Or maybe people just thought we had a ready-made beer garden that we just weren't using? Unclear.
**** It's worth mentioning that we're doing all this stuff because of new state-mandated rules - we're not just, like, making shit up because we like enforcing weird rules on relative strangers. That being said, we do agree with said rules, they just ain't our brainchildren.

In Which We Continue With Our "Poorly Informed Phase II Updates"

6/9/2020

Howdy, friends! We've got slightly-more-than-zero news about that whole thing people have been talkin' about these days (by which we mean Phase Two Of Reopening and not, like, the pandemic in general) but first we got some upcoming beers to shout about, so let's do that thing I just said!

First on up on the ol' docket is the next in line in the, uh, line of double IPAs we've been doin' as of late, and this one goes by the name of Walkin' Beer! This here beer is made with tangerine puree and a mighty generous handful of fruity-citrussy hops and it would almost definitely be the perfect accompaniment to some amblin' around (if you were legally allowed to drink in public, of course). Anyway, it's goin' into cans on Friday and you should come get some!

Speaking of beers we're releasing on Friday, we're also releasing another pale ale and this one is called Picnic Time! We've noticed a lot of people these days have been reimagining what does and doesn't constitute a picnic - generally taking it from "planned outing" to "flimsy excuse to drink outside" - and we're all for it, so we made a beer for picnic times!

But bringin' things a bit back to the present, we mentioned last week that there were two new Critters beers incoming and then we kind of completely forgot to follow up on that* but anyway they're available right now!

Anyway. It's time to get down to the brass tacks of this whole hullabaloo, which should be interesting because we're operating on information that is, shall we say, spotty at best. But that's never stopped us before, so let's get to it with another Poorly-Informed Phase Two Update!

So the long story short version is that we've kinda-sorta-probably gotten the go-ahead to serve beer outdoors (the official Everett ruling happens on Thursday night), but once we are serving outside there are a whole bunch of (state mandated) rules that you'll need to follow (and even more rules that we'll need to follow), which is going to take a whole bunch of getting used to on all sides of this ol' equation.

Also of note, we did file an application with the city to allow us to expand our outdoor space (which would be nice, because otherwise we'll top out our capacity at four people), and they told us to expect an answer "within 24-48 hours," but also they told us that six days ago, so we'll see. In the meantime, we're doing everything we can to scramble together the best possible beer garden we can, from scratch, on virtually no notice, so keep them eyes peeled for updates!

As for what changes you can expect, the new rules seem to be geared towards closely replicating the experience of drinking at home, only done from the comfort and safety of our parking lot. We can't allow standing room or self-seating, which means you'll need to check in at a host stand (or similar) upon arrival (which will somehow make it even more confusing for people to find the correct entrance), and you'll also need to sign in with at least one name and telephone number per group for contact tracing purposes, and also you can't be in a group larger than six. Once you're seated, we're required to do everything we can to make sure people don't "congregate," which basically means you aren't allowed to get up from your table (people with small children may want to be particularly aware of this rule) - there's no ordering at the bar (we'll have table service) and no games (unless you bring your own) and we're not allowed to play background music (please do not provide your own).

So in other words, if you got a bunch of scientists and asked them to recreate the experience of "fun" - except under carefully-controlled, repeatable laboratory conditions** - this is probably pretty close to what they'd come up with.

And we do realize that it might sound like we're being overly-negative here (especially since we tend to focus on the bright side around these parts), but it's worth stressing that a) all of the rules we cited are factual and unexaggerated, and 2) it really feels like we're being told that we need to police our customers, which isn't fair to us or to you. But with all that being said, our biggest priority is that we want everybody to be happy and we want even more for everybody to be safe, so we're gonna do the best we can to find the middle of that Venn diagram and we're gonna figure out a way to make this all work and we're gonna drink some beer in that parking lot and we're gonna like it, dagnabbit.

Oh! And! To complete the "drinking at home" experience, it behooves us to mention that our draft list is going to be a bit more... limited than it used to be (at least for now), which means a number of things will only be available as can pours. See, since we're a very small brewery, we *only* need to plan our production 4-6 weeks out, and we've got a little wiggle room within those plans. Combine that with the fact that we had four days of definitive*** notice about being able to open, and that means a lot of our beer is in cans rather than kegs (and we're assuming a lot of people will still prefer the to-go model, so it might take us a bit to figure out how to balance the two).

* Which is, fortunately or otherwise, extremely on-brand for us.
** Which is to say, conditions that suck most of the joy out of having fun.
*** Sure, this isn't completely out of the blue, but we can't really form concrete plans based on something that kinda sorta might happen (and which might un-happen at any time).

In Which Some Critters Reemerge

6/2/2020

Hello! Hi! How are you? We're just... dandy around here and we figure that's reason enough to celebrate with somethin' fancy, and that's just a goshdarn lucky coincidence because we've got fancy treats on the brain!

But wait! Before we get to all that, we gotta tell you all about the sweet merch that we got to go with that tasty beer what we released last week! Long story short, we liked the can artwork for this year's Pride beer enough that we wanted it on a shirt and then we realized that we're the ones who decide what goes on our shirts, so we made some! We've got tanks and t-shirts and a portion (10%) of the proceeds is goin' to LGBTQ organizations and you should come get one! Or several!

Anyway. Back to beer. First on up, we've got the last - absolute* last - of our stash of Skeleton Key (which, if you're new in town, is our tequila-barrel-aged double Key Lime) in bottles and up for grabs! So if you're a fan or if it strikes your fancy, come on out and get while there's still gettin' to be got, 'cuz this beer takes eight months (and a tequila barrel) to make, so it ain't makin' a comeback anytime soon!

But we ain't just got the (re) return of some delicious old favorites, we've also got new stuff! More to the point, we've been keepin' busy scurryin' around in the ol' Barrel Hold and we discovered a whole buncha funky stuff that's ripe for the plucking and in more concrete terms that means new Critters beers!

First out the gate (this week, barring any Equipment Issues) is the creatively-titled Critters VII! This one started out as a Bière de Miel before its protracted dance with Brett and oak and also we added a bunch of bergamot puree because we thought it would be fun and dang but this is a tart 'n tasty treat! There's a pinch of honey and a punch of citrus and a strong suggestion of funk and honestly it's kinda what we always hope for when we see "sour" used as a style descriptor** and we hope you like it!

Next on up (next week? Probably?) is, shockingly, Critters VIII! This one's a sour brown that's been patiently resting in its barrel for nigh-on 600 days with naught but a bit of plum puree to snack on, but it's finally ready and resplendent in all its funky, tart, brown glory!

And as a bit of a "wrap up" on them ol' Critters beers, we feel like it bears repeating that the Critters series tends to be pretty "small batch," which is saying something coming from a brewery whose brewhouse is smaller than a lot of other breweries' pilot systems. Anyway, we're not tryin' to get all "scarcity marketing" on you or whatever, but we also don't want you to be bummed if/when we run out, so consider yourselves duly warned and so on.

Lastly, we feel like we should address a question that we've been getting quite frequently as of late, namely: what's the deal with reopening? And boy, do we have an unsatisfying answer for you!

Long story short, the deal is that we have no idea what the deal is because nobody will give us a straight answer about anything. Will we be allowed to serve beer outdoors next week? We don't know, nobody will tell us. Will we be able to expand our outdoor space once we do reopen? We don't know, nobody will tell us. What will taproom service look like? You get the idea. But! We can tell you what we do know, so we're at least on the same footing, vague-knowlede-wise, so here it is in handy-dandy bullet-point format!

Taprooms are included in Phase II of reopening
Phase II (or possibly just the first, uh, phase of Phase II) only includes outdoor seating. So no indoor seating and no standing-room.
We don't know if we'll be able to increase our outdoor space, but we're doing everything we can to make that happen.
Our number one concern is making sure that customers and staff are safe, which means we'll be going into this slowly and carefully. Probably frustratingly so. But there's no set standard for what we're doing, so it seems foolish at best to just throw a couple tables outside and let things sort themselves out.
Our sculptor said there were "structural and legal problems" with our idea for a marble sculpture of Horatio shooting beer out of his eye sockets, so we're no longer expecting to have that as the centerpiece for our outdoor space once we reopen.

* We're at least, like, forty percent sure about this
** Which doesn't bode well for how it will go over with the sour-seekers, but that's neither here nor there

In Which it is Pulpo Time!

5/27/2020

Oh hi! I hope you like beer, because we've got a lot of cool beer that we're about to talk about... right... now!

And first on up is this Friday* when we're gonna be doing our El Pulpo Vertical Tasting! See, we wanted to hang out and drink beer with people over the computer, and also we wanted an excuse (any excuse, if we're being honest) to drink a bunch of El Pulpo, so we combined those two ideas and you get to join us! We'll pump Jared fulla beer so he gets talkative for once and we'll just kinda set him loose on El Pulpo and barrel-aging and cellaring and probably a fairly disappointing story about why we named our winter beer after an octopus, so grab some bottles and come hang out!

Anyway, if you're lookin' to get your drink on with some new beers, then we've got "just the ticket" - thanks to some "poor planning" and also the fact that we "get excited" about pretty much "any shiny new thing," we've got three new beers comin' out in cans this weekend (probably at some point on Friday unless something goes wrong again). Anyway, in no particular order, here they are!

First up is the release of this year's Pride beer! Just in time for Pride Month! We weren't able to do a big fun brewday like we did last year, but we were able to brew a tasty beer using a whole buncha Grüngeist and also we will (of course) have some sweet merch to go with it and also we're gonna donate part of the proceeds to charity and did we mention that the beer is delicious as heck and you should drink some?

But the fun don't stop there! We're also bringin' back the ol' Puppers Past series and this time around we're commemoratin' the memory of a big ol' pyrenees named Domino who grew a... horn of sorts in the middle of his forehead at some point, so we brewed up a toasty, fruity single-hop amber named Uni-Dog! This here beer's got a heapin' helpin' (possibly a heapin' helpin' and a half) of MA-grown Rakau and we daresay it's mighty tasty and also you should drink some!

Completing this release trifecta, we've got a lil' ol' blast from the past: Ginger Spectacular! It's been too dang long since we've had this beer around (which definitely has nothing to do with people getting all Goldilocks about what is/isn't the "right amount" of ginger), so we made a whole bunch, and - you guessed it - you should drink some!

And lastly but far rom leastly, we're welcoming our friends Poboys 'n Pies back for another crawfish boil! This one's gonna be more of the "pick up and enjoy at home" variety, but crawfish is crawfish and you should grab some! Preorders start today and go through this Sunday, and the rest of the details reside here in this handy-dandy flyer:

*Spoiler alert: everything that we're talking about in this blog is happening on Friday.

Boy, Is It Ever Wednesday!

5/21/2020

Howdy do, friendaroos! We figured we'd do a bit of a "check in," given the recent (and completely unsurprising) confirmation that things ain't changin' much anytime soon and/or that These Trying Times™ are gonna continue on for quite a while.* We're in the middle of a situation that was literally unimaginable a couple months ago (remember that? When we thought the lockdown stuff would only last "a couple weeks?") and now we've somehow managed to trade in summer for a Groundhog-Day-esque version of the month of March** and we're slowly coming to terms with the fact that Things Are Just Different Now and even things that seemed far away at the start of all this nonsense - like, say, our birthday party at the end of the summer - will be at best drastically different than we'd been imagining.

And while all that is certainly a Mega Bummer, we're completely grateful as hell that we've got such a rad group of people out there hellbent on showing support and drinking tasty beer and just overall making it so we can keep doing what we do. We sure do miss drinking in our taproom, but we're stoked as heck to see all of y'all when you come in to grab beer to go (or when you wait outside and have us bring it to you, or when you wait at home and have us bring it to you or... you get the idea). By now it's a cliché to say that we're all in this together, but you all are certainly making sure we get through this, and it means the world to us.

But anyway! This*** is meant to be a happy occasion! And we may not have any new beers this week (canning is loosely biweekly, and bottling is... sporadic), but we do have some rad stuff to talk about!

First on that ol' list is Wasted Life! You might think we've said all we can say about this lil' beer, given that we've been talking about it for four plus years, but we got our tinkerin' pants on (as we are wont to do) and realized that our core beers need more local, so we set out to rectify that! See, most (at least half) of the hops we use overall are grown right here in good ol' Massachusetts, but our inner locavores are a bit more loosey-goosey when it comes to the grain bill - Key Lime has a buncha wheat and spelt from Valley Malt, but the other year-rounders are a bit lacking. Anyway, what that means in the here and now is that we've been started cuttin' some**** local grains into Wasted Life, startin' with some Maine-grown barley! And keeping with the spirit of bringin' it all back home, we're also about to start transitioning Extra Naked to use all locally grown hops (and technically Shut Up Kelly! and Key Lime are fully local on the hop front), which is pretty dang ol' exciting!

Also! Lastly! We have something that's actually tangible and soonish and fun! See, we've gotten a taste of those "virtual events" that all the kids***** are talkin' about these days and we figured we'd try our hands at some zoom-based zaniness! More to the point, we thought it would be fun to do a guided vertical tasting of the four El Pulpo variants (2018, 2019, barrel-aged 2018, and barrel-aged 2019) that we've currently got in bottles, and you're invited to join us! It's scheduled for next Friday (the 29th), and there's no cost of admission beyond the price of the bottles themselves (which we wholeheartedly encourage you to share, unless you're planning on having yourself a night) but there's a limited number of spots (because there's a limited number of bottles), so sign on up if this sounds like your cup o' tea!

* And, just to make sure we're understood as crystal, we're completely on board with the slow 'n' steady approach that's being taken. We're fans of caution around here, if you haven't gathered.
** I sure can't wait for March V: This Time It's Hot Outside
*** Wednesday? I guess? Sure, Wednesday is a happy occasion. And it's definitely Wednesday.
**** We tend to be pretty deliberate - in both senses of the word - when it comes to recipe changes, so we can't just pull a full-on switcheroo.
***** Adult-aged office workers who are slowly coming unraveled in unison.

In Which Everything is Peachy

5/12/2020

Howdy friends! We got a rootin' tootin' sure-shootin' buncha updates for alla y'all about beer and cans and, um, spaghetti? I guess? I don't even know what's happening anymore.

But anyway that's all groovy because Everything is Peachy! And by that I am, of course, referring to the newest beer in our "lying to ourselves" series which just so happens to be called Everything is Peachy! See, since we were so fond of our previous attempt to combine hops with fruits that taste kinda like those hops, we decided to get a buncha peachy-punchy Idaho 7 and a shitload of peach puree and whip up a lil' ol' double IPA and it's gonna be available at some point on Friday and you should come get some while we still got some!

Now, I know what you're thinking: "new beers are great and all, but what I'd really like to do is watch a live feed of strangers eating." And if that's the case, you're in luck because we're doing a "virtual beer dinner" this Friday!

Thassright, we teamed up with the "kitchen" side of Brato Brewhouse and Kitchen and we're doin' up a five-course meal with beer pairings! And what, praytell, did our master chef conjure up to pair with our loosely-Belgian-focused beer menu? Why, Italian food, of course! And this here dinner's hittin' all the favorite stops - bolognese, risotto, cannolis, caesar salad,* and pretzels!** Anyway we'll be there drinkin' beer and chattin' beer and generally just sassin' it up and there's still tickets available until tomorrow at 5pm (purchase them online here), so come get your (virtual) munch on with us!

* Caesar was Italian, right? He was probably Italian. That counts.
** They... they're garlic pretzels? Garlic is probably Italian.

In Which We Rescue Some Baby Skunks From the Wild and Release Some Beers Into the Wild (The Two Are Unrelated)

5/6/2020

Howdy-do, friendaroos! We've had ourselves an eventful* week, and some of it has even been related to beer, so saddle up and read up 'cuz we gots some yarns to spin!

First on up is the latest installment in a longstanding tradition that we hold near and dear here at Bone Up, and that's the Bestowing Of The Paddle! Long story short,** when one of our brewers has been On The Team for a year or two (the exact timing depends on how many catastrophes are actively unfolding at any given point in time), they get their own custom-made mash paddle to add to our Wall O' Brewing Paddles And Mops! Each paddle is carefully designed and then created by somebody who is pretty obviously not a professional woodworker and this week we bestowed a paddle upon our brewer Human Tom!

Tom's been with us for nigh-on two years now, and has performed adequately for much of that time. And we should also add that this moment of celebration is a tad bittersweet, as Human Tom will be departing the company this summer like some kind of stupid jerk quitter.

Anyway, moving on and moving forward, in news that has (thankfully) already come and gone, Mother Nature saw fit to introduce us to a couple new furry friends a little ways back! At some point last week, we had a couple cute-yet-startling encounters with a couple little furbabies who - it turns out - were living in one of the debris piles that were thoughtfully left out by the landscapers who share our parking lot*** with us.

And we figured out pretty quickly that these lil' kits were in dire straits when one of them tried to saunter up to our patio and order a beer like we're not in the middle of some state-mandated lockdown or something, so we did the only thing we could - rig up some makeshift traps and get 'em somewhere safe (luckily for us, they did not have well-developed scent glands yet)!

And yes, all's well that ends well (though I feel at this point that I should stress the fact that I'm not making this up) - they both arrived safe and sound at a skunk and porcupine sanctuary somewhere upstate, which is run by a very nice person whom we know only as Mary the Skunk Lady.

But enough about wildlife and amateur woodcrafting, what about beer? Well, this ain't a canning week (those are, loosely, every two weeks), but that means we've had more time for barrels and bottles and all that, which means we've got two new bottles that are (probably) coming out on Friday!

First up is the first full-fledged spinoff from our Critters series, and that's Chimera! This here beer's got a bit of a story behind it, but the Cliff's Notes version is that it's been two years in the making and also it's born of our collaboration with GrandTen Distilling (they're still aging the whiskey that we made at their digs) and also it's closely tied to the beer that started our whole funk program, which was (somewhat confusingly) Critters 2! Oh, and also there's a bit of fruit in there, because we thought it would taste good with a little fruit in there. But anyway, this is our first-ever big ol' funky beer release, and we're straight-up stoked that it's also the Friendship Beer that we made with our friends a ways back and also it's tasty as hell and you should drink some!

And the other beer that's coming out on (probably) Friday is a straight-up barrel-aged blend that's gonna have to remain a mystery until then, and that's not entirely (mostly, but not entirely) because we haven't figured out a name for it yet.

And! For the first time ever, all our flagship beers are in 16oz cans/4 packs! Admittedly, this was more news last week when we completed the lineup with our first Extra Naked canning run, but it's a pretty dang big improvement from crowler and growler fills and we're delighted to be able to offer you our finest in proper packaging. Don't they look nice?

Oh! And! It's May, which means another coloring contest has come to a close! The pool was a smidge more limited this month, so we uploaded everyone's entries so you could see their beautiful handiwork!

* Long time readers will know that our use of the word "eventful" is about as encouraging as hearing Prof. Farnsworth declare something to be "good news."
** The long version of the story involves a friend of Jared's wildly misunderstanding life as a brewer, but doing so in such a charming way that we had to make it a reality.
*** Technically they're relegated to the unpaved section next to our lot, but that doesn't stop them from dropping giant piles of dirt all over our parking spots whenever they feel like it. They're, like, super neighborly.