But what about the creepy walk to the bathroom?
If you're a fan of the weird/confusing trek out to our lobby bathrooms, then we have some exciting news for you: it's about to get weirder! For you see, while buildout is happening (which, as we mentioned, is on a "permanently unknown" timeline) we'll hit a point where the walk to the lobby bathrooms becomes even more weird/confusing/sketchy. More to the point, we need a fire exit door through what will be our new west wall (i.e. the one that's currently under construction), and that door will be a little ways down that weird hallway* through the middle of the building. All in all, this means you'll need to take a detour through the unfinished space and then back up the weird hallway full of junk (or step outside for a minute) in order to visit the loo. It's gonna be an adventure! ​

Hello again! It's That Special Time once more, so let's get to the news about the brews! 

And to start things off, we have some decidedly non-beer news, which is to say that we will be closing early (at 6PM) on Sunday for a staff meeting (does everybody else use "meeting" as a euphemism for "drinking"? We sure do).

And moving right along with the Moderate Bummer News, there will be no cask this week. But never you fear, it'll be back in full force next week! 

And getting to all the fun stuff we've got in store for you this week, we've got beer! More to the point, we've started feeling a bit of a hankering for warmer climes, so we re-brewed Passion (Fruit) Project to give us a taste of sunnier days and it's on tap right now and you should have some! ​

And then for our weekly Fun Times™ we've got some fun times, starting tonight! Tonight (which is to say Wednesday, assuming the blog goes up on time) we'll be hosting Music Bingo and I don't know what that means, but you can be sure we'll be there in the crowd (losing horribly, as always) and you should join us!

And then on Thursday we're teamin' up with our pals at Left Couch Comedy and turning our side room into the World's Quaintest Comedy Club and more to the point there's gonna be a buncha great comedy happening (and also this is gonna be a recurring event, so if you come out this week then you get to say that you were In On The Ground Floor or whatever it is people say to try and feel cool) and it's gonna be a great time and you should join us! 

And speaking of fun events, on Friday we've got another fun event! We're hosting this month's Band Hangouts and it just so happens that we've paired up the event with a beer release! We collaborated with our post-rock pals in Girih on a "live-looped tripel"* and it's called The Hourglass and it's available on tap and in bottles starting when the Hangouts start and also we've got Junius, Pray for Sound, and Lesotho comin' in and hangin' out and slingin' merch and also Food-Zilla is gonna be in the house servin' up tasty eats and it's gonna be a ton of fun! 

And speaking of tasty eats, on Saturday we've got our friends from Adriano's Tacos comin' by all afternoon and we ain't got much by way of events that day but that's cool anyway because Saturdays should really be the kind of day where you just kind of cool it for the day without trying to "do" a whole bunch of "stuff" and anyway we've got just the place for you to do all the next-to-nothing your heart desires! ​

​Howdy friends! Welcome back! It just so happens that this week we're stoked to make a Very Important Announcement: we recoated the floors in our production area! Now, it's difficult to understate the impact that this will have on you specifically (which is to say none whatsoever), but it's something that Jared gets very excited about so we figured we'd humor him or whatever. 

​Howdy do kids and squids! It's time again for one of our* favorite year-end wrap ups: The Year In Numbers! But before we get into all that nitty gritty, we gotta give you the hip haps on what we've got goin' on here in the taproom, so let's jump right into it! 

But, actually, we have one more matter to discuss before we do that, and that's to thank everyone who came out for Horatio Day this past weekend! It was a hell of a time, full of cake and friendship and vinyl and oh so much barrel-aged beer, and we're completely jazzed as hell that so many of y'all were able to make it! It was a good enough Horatio Day, in fact, that we managed to kick every one of the special kegs that we tapped, which is rad as hell but also means we don't have leftovers to tap for the next week, but also it means we gotta step it up next year, so step we shall! ​

Moving on to next week, next Tuesday we've got more Fiddle Times! Long story short, we're hosting an open-invite old-timey jam session in the side room and you're welcome to participate (last time somebody brought a harp. Like, an entire harp) or you can just come out and listen to some tunes and either way it's a fun time! 

And then next Thursday we've got The Office Trivia Night! It'll be a night of laughs and brain-busters and reminiscing about everyone's favorite office-themed situational comedy and there's gonna be prizes and everything, so come on out! Our pals at Seabiscuit will be popping up their delicious savory pies starting at 6pm, so dinner's covered. Get here early true believers! ​

And now that we're all done ramblin' on about all the cool stuff that's comin' up, it's time we look back on last year one more time with The Year in Numbers! For those of you that are new around here, we like to come up with a bunch of stats about all the stuff we did in the past year and then we try to Get Weird with it! Anyway, you'll get the gist pretty quickly (or you'll get bored and stop reading pretty quickly, which is why we put this at the end), so let's get to it! 

And then. It's time for that time you've all been waiting for: Horatio Day!* We're draggin' out a buncha kegs of vintage and/or rare barrel-aged beer - including the first-and-only-time-on-draft appearance of Rumble Royale (our collab with Silvaticus) an the first-time-ever appearance of 600 (a barleywine we brewed to commemorate our 600th batch some months back) - and we're tappin' them on our portable draft system and also we've got a bottle fridge that's just burstin' at the seams and it's gonna be a fun time! ​

On Thursday we're hosting our monthly music trivia and the theme this time is Bad Music! So if you've got any "guilty pleasure" bands that you're just, like, way too knowledgeable about, then come on out and strut your stuff! ​

And speaking of Thursdays, starting on Thursday the 26th we're doin' a monthly comedy night! Our friends at Left Couch Comedy are steppin' up an bringin' in a rotating selection of comedians and the first one is this month, so grab yourself a ticket!

Annd moving a little (but not much) closer to now, we figured we'd give you some "inside info" on an event we've got comin' up in a couple weeks (specifically on Friday January 13th) and that's a combination beer release/book reading for our collab beer with local novelist Michael Cloherty! Michael's book is about a historic bank-robbery-turned-murder up in Malden so we brewed up a hoppy amber ale called Chalk Outline and we're gonna have him in the house doin' a book reading (and he'll probably stick around to sign some books if that's your jam) and this is the first time we've ever done a collab with a book*** and it's gonna be a good time and you should come out! 

* Or rather, you've more likely been waiting for the time when you don't have to hear us go on about Horatio Day every week, but that's really the same thing. 
** By "dust" I mean "our throbbing headaches" 
*** Though it's definitely not the first time we've collaborated with an inanimate object

January when we tried to walk the line between "life goes on" and "we must be safe" by holding Horatio Day but requiring vax cards for entry. ​

Then, our brewer Justin abruptly announced that he was moving to Florida (which was a bummer for us but he seems happy down there so we'll call it an overall win). ​

March when we started the month off with a bang by celebrating Kafka Day, which is also pretty much an excuse to tap a bunch of cool barrel-aged beers, for reasons that are entirely unrelated to Horatio Day (the true origin story is, true to the name, convoluted and potentially kind of boring, but it's mostly a "things are terrible, let's drink" kind of vibe) and then that was followed pretty quickly by Mass Beer Week which almost definitely was a thing or perhaps series of things that happened. ​

We rebounded from that pretty quickly and then released all the beers all at once including the rerelease Boneheads, which we brewed in collaboration with our screenprinter (Heads Up Screenprinting, motto: "we print shirts and stuff"), and it's notable that I say "rerelease" because the original brew was scheduled to be released at a party to celebrate their first year in business... in late March 2020. ​

We got maybe a little too excited about opening up the beer garden and we started our biweekly Barks & Brews charity events and also we brought ol' Henrietta out of hibernation and hosted our first ever comedy show and a coffee marketplace popup and also we had hell of trivia nights once again and we ended the month with more band hangouts which were accompanied by another barrel-aged beer release (namely Man Overboard, our collab with North Star the Wanderer) and this one was a first for us because we had the band come in and help out with our blending session (which was a lot of fun and surprisingly productive, especially given how... animated some of the band members got about halfway through said blending session)!

May when we continued our apparent trend of starting alternating months with a big event and this one was a three-day "nerd-themed" series of events called Dungeons & Drinks! ​

We also had our first Surf Guitar Happy Hour of the season (featuring the delightful Matt Heaton) and accompanied it with some ice cream and also this was the month that Horatio's Reserve got released! ​

And speaking of doing stuff with friends from Outside The Brewery we also did our first beer dinner in years over at State Park! ​

June when we honestly had the most bonkers month. ​

We also schlepped out to Philly for that fest I've mentioned several times already (it's a good fest) and we did another beer dinner (this time with Cunard, who made the best damn potato we've ever had. We still think about it) and also we hosted a dang air guitar competition! ​

See, we've got some friends that are very into competitive air guitar (as one does) and somehow yada yada yada we hosted the New England regional championships in our parking lot and it was completely a ton of fun and we hope we get to host it again. ​

Oh, and at some point in June Matt Heaton decided that his Surf Guitar Happy Hour sessions would be better with a live drawing component so that also started being a thing and also we kept brewing band beers all month and oh crap we did so much dang stuff this month that I didn't even mention beer yet but that's gonna have to wait until...

​July when the anniversary beers start coming out in full force, like Stick the Landing and Float Along and Don't Go and Nameless Wave and Seven X's and that's barely scratching the surface of the anniversary beers which means we had time for other fun things like having Key Lime make a comeback and also we brewed/kegged 600 (our 600th batch), then implied it would be on tap in a week or so (it was not on tap in a week or so. It's still not on tap. We're giving it time to mature before it hits center stage)​

August when we unveiled the sweet anniversary swag and also released three anniversary beers in one week and over the course of the month (mostly the first half of the month honestly) we released all the barrel blends for the anniversary including Mirage Daze and Baby Monster and WttBF and Dark Humor and Rumble and Critters XVIII and that really explains why we were a little light on new Shitty Wednesday and/or Horatio Day beers this year (because we released them all in August and we only have so much space in the cold room). ​

And amidst all that brewing and blending and beer releasing, we managed to squeak in just one more beer for the anniversary (Ad Nauseam, brewed for Stryga, who signed on at the last minute because another band had to bow out) and also we hosted a dog pool party at one point, but the main event for the month, that we spend all damn summer preparing for and getting excited about, was The Anniversary! ​

September when we started off the month releasing Sip Time, the first of *five* wedding beers we made over the course of the month (also the groom of that couple was the main guy running sound at the anniversary party, which was one friggin' week before his wedding) and also at some point in the past we had sent a cask overseas to the GBBF but nobody told us when it got tapped so we forgot to make a big deal about it. ​

November when the month started (as in, literally started, at midnight on the 1st) with signups for Mug Club! And we'd planned to have these be preorders for a mug club starting in December, but the mugs sold out in like nine hours so we figured we'd just start things a little early because y'all were clearly stoked about it! ​

And speaking of new beers we also released El Pulpo on the appropriately-named Pulpo Day, which meant we got to go completely hog-wild on different vintages/variants of El Pulpo for three days straight (which was both a good thing and a bad thing, as you might imagine) and then while we're talkin' traditions we also put out our much-anticipated (by Jared) annual Thanksgiving Beer Pairings! ​

December when we kicked off the month by going to Decibel Fest! Again! Sure it was a different one this time (Denver instead of Philly) but it was still fun times full of friendship and beer and we got teamed up with Of Feather and Bone (mostly because the beer liaison for the fest wanted us to name the beer "Of Feather and Bone Up," which we didn't do) and they're hella rad people (to say nothing of their music, which rips) and we got to brew a nice 'n light pineapple/lime grisette to bring to a death metal fest and anyway it was fun as hell! ​

And! We also collabed with the folk metal band Wilderun on a Belgian golden strong that was brewed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of their first album and for that release party they came here and played an acoustic set of the songs from the first album! We honestly didn't entirely know what to expect because we've never really hosted an entire band inside before, but it turns out that the type of folk music they were playing is very well suited to a small bar with lots of small rooms (and the fact that it was snowing outside definitely added to the vibe) and anyway it was lots of fun! ​

But other than all that stuff, December was mostly just preparing for Horatio Day, which leads us to...

the future. But we can't really recap that, so we'll take a second to look back at the year from a birds' eye view before we go about our merry way. It was definitely an interesting year - we started out with Covid Winter Part Two and then managed to settle in to something that almost felt normal for the first time in years. And though there were certainly a fair number of tribulations to be had all around this year, we managed to keep puttin' one foot in front of the other and in that process we managed to do a fair amount of growing - most years have felt like the theme of the year (for us, anyway) has been "More," but this is when we really took it to heart - we really doubled down on in-person events like marketplaces and workshops and live music and trivia (so much trivia​) and there were a couple duds and a lot of successes, but we've really started figuring out what people do and don't want to do, which means we get to do even more next year! Plus we got to do way more band collabs this year than we ever have in the past, and also this was (finally) The Year Of Extra Naked! We brewed more of that beer than we have in any of the years past (and we ran out of it a few times as a consequence), and we like to think that people are finally coming around to the fact that it's the best beer we make (a fact we've known for years). ​

And, of course, as we say every year, you all are the reason we're able to keep doing all this cool stuff we're doing. Whether you're a die-hard Mug Club member or you just swing by every now and then to play some pinball or anywhere in between, we are completely grateful that you like coming to our weird little brewery. It's been a hell of a ride these last six or so years, and we've made a lot of friends with a ton of cool people we wouldn't have otherwise been able to meet, and we're super stoked about everything that's allowed us to do - shows and marketplaces and band collabs and even relatively small stuff like our dog-themed events couldn't happen without all the people we've met along the way and we can't wait to keep doin' more cool stuff with you and for you!

Howdy folks! We're right smack dab in the middle of that "liminal space" between "the holiday that too many people have made movies about" and "that holiday that very few people have made movies about, but that's okay because it sucks anyway" and that means we're in Prime Territory for hangin' out and drinkin' some beers!

Hello again! We're back with some quick lil' dribs and drabs on account of how there's some kind of "wintertime celebration" happening later this week and there ain't much* all that's happening other than that (and it's not really the kind of celebrating you do at a bar, which is really everyone's loss). 

And on that note full of holiday cheer or whatever, we should let y'all know that we will be closing early at 6pm on Saturday December 24th and we will be closed on Sunday December 25th and also we're skippin' cask this week. Merry Christmas! ​

But wait! There's a glimmering light of hope on the horizon, just like that thing from that famous** Christmas movie! Only in this case that light on the horizon is called Jazz from Hell and it's our newest beer! See, we had a whole bunch of Zappa (the hop) on our hands and we wanted to "test the waters" a bit so we brewed up a tasty lil' single hop beer and as it just so happens we're releasing it on the birthday*** of the man himself (Frank Zappa)! Anyway we're stoked to get to know this funky lil' hop (it's related to Medusa, the first Neomexicanus hop to hit the market, which is no longer being grown) and unless something goes awry it's on tap Today and you should have some! 

Howdy do kids and squids! We're back in action with a buncha beer and good times and we're just gonna get right on in to it because there's a whole lotta "holiday spirit" all up ins and we just gon' roll with it! 

And first on up on that fun time train is cask! This week (specifically on Thursday) we've got the best-ever beer to drink on cask and that's Extra Naked! More to the point, we took a cask of Extra Naked and dry hopped the crap out of it with a buncha the delicious-but-unfortunately-named Bitter Gold and it's gonna be tasty as hell and you should drink some! 

And speaking of Thursday, on Thursday we've got this month's (belated) edition of Audio Triviality! We've got Matt in the house with a buncha Holiday-related music and he's definitely not gonna play "DMX Sings Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" fifteen times* but honestly it's gonna be a good time and you should come hang out!

But before we get into all the good beer and good times, we gotta give a shoutout to all the good beer and good times we had this past weekend at Decibel Fest in Denver! We completely had a blast and saw a bunch of awesome music (including Of Feather and Bone, who you might know from our beer Embrace of Death, and who completely crush it live) and we got to make a buncha new friends and/or see some preexisting friends because we apparently do this kind of thing enough that we know people now and anyway we can't thank Decibel Magazine enough for inviting us and we'll sure as hell be at the next one (which is in Philly in April, by the way) and we hope some of y'all will join us! ​

And gettin' back to the things that are a bit sooner on the ol' agenda, this Thursday we've got more Simpsons Trivia! The theme for the month is Season Eleven and we do suggest that you study up real good because we've got an extra special prize that is actually a real thing and not some weird knockoff nonsense, so come on out and bring your A-game!

And then on Saturday we've got an action-packed day that starts off with Emo Yoga! Crystal's gonna be settin' up in the taproom and doin' some all-levels yoga to the sounds of bands like Brand New, Fall Out Boy and Paramore! 

And then on Saturday afternoon we're hosting a winter art market! We'll have arts and/or crafts from Keep On Puppin’, Ivonne Blanco, and Chelsea Bloxsom plus some beer CANdles from Beers Over Boston and we've got Biscuitdrop in the house with tasty eats and it's gonna be a good time and you should come out! 

And then lookin' a little further into the future, next Tuesday we've got a Wire Tree Art Class that looks pretty much fun as hell and then sushi classes resume next Wednesday (we're not having one this Sunday on account of the band hangs/beer release/show we're having with our cool music friends) and then next Thursday Audio Triviality is back with Satan Claws comin' to town! ​

Howdy kids! We've got a week fulla fun stuff lined up for all y'all, so read on while we get to gettin' on with all the things that are good! 

And first up on that ol' list is the triumphant return of CASK! Yes indeedy, this Thursday we're tappin' up a cask of Extra Naked (the arguably-best beer to serve on cask) and we went and crammed it full of relatively-new-to-us fruity-as-hell Zappa and it's gonna be mega tasty and you should try some! ​

Also, congrats to our November coloring contest winners! Adequate work, everyone!