In Which Everything is Changing, Except For the Things That Aren't

Howdy-do friendaroos! We've got a whole buncha fun taproom rule/policy changes now that the Official Government Policy has abruptly changed to "let's pretend like covid never happened," but that's a whole buncha nitty gritty so we figured we'd start with the fun part and that's beer!

And hot dogs!

And first on the ol' docket is something that's not actually beer at all, but which is beer-related so we'll just roll with it and that's holiday hours! This upcoming weekend is one of them "long weekends" that we keep hearing so much about* and anyway that means that Monday May 31 we will be open from 12-8!

We set out to make an entirely new party-themed ginger farmhouse blend for you (we even had a name locked and loaded) and then during our group tasting we accidentally ended up right back at the Disco. Sooo... enjoy round two!

And moving on to actual beer, we're stoked to announce the rerelease of a beer that was a fast favorite around these parts: Ginger Disco! We took our beloved ginger farmhouse and aged it in a bunch of blueberry liqueur barrels (specifically Summer Reserve barrels from our friends at Short Path) and whoo-ee is it tasty and it's on tap and in bottles right now and we sure do recommend that you getcha some!

Fruity and fabulous!

And. AND. On top of the return of the disco, we're also releasing this year's Pride beer! This time around we took a nice 'n light lil' session beer and dumped a crapton of pomegranate in it and it's gonna be in cans and on tap starting on Friday!

wE bEaT u CoViD LoL

And that's it for beer, so now we get to get to all the fun rule changes! Now, as you may have heard 5,000 times already, the governor recently announced that all covid-related restrictions and policies and whatnot are being rolled back on May 29th. But! It turns out that's an exaggeration - some of the rules/restrictions are still hanging around, albeit in a more relaxed form (though we're not 100% clear on which rules are staying, or how relaxed they are). And on top of all that, we're also under the jurisdiction of the ABCC (who are essentially the Beer Police) and the City of Everett and they both also changed-but-didn't-quite-remove a bunch of rules and they seem to have put a lot of effort into making sure that there is no possible way for us to know what the hell is going on, which is going to make things pretty fun. 

So! Without any further hemmin' or hawin', here's a list of what is gonna change and what ain't gonna change (yet), at least as far as we can figure:

What is changing:

• There's no more mask mandate, so that means you ain't gotta wear one if you don't want to. We still encourage you to wear a mask if you're in a crowd, but that might just be because we feel naked without ours. 
• Group size limit has been increased to ten (from six). But with that being said, we won't be rearranging any furniture to accommodate larger groups (our biggest tables seat six, eight if you're very comfortable with each other). So in other words, if you wanna roll deep you'll need to split up. 
• No more signing in. As entertaining as it is to hear people fret about how "the government" is tracking them, we're not taking names anymore which means that the gubbermint will need to get your phone number some other way. 
• There's no more food requirement. As much as we were really hoping to sell an entire cow's worth of hot dogs this year, we no longer need to pretend to be a restaurant, so now it's your choice if you want to eat several hot dogs or not (what a concept)!
• Beer delivery has to stop once the State of Emergency ends on June 15th. We think that's kind of silly (there's no compelling reason not to allow us to deliver beer), but that's not gonna be the hill we die on so we'll just roll with it. 

What isn't changing (yet):

• Our staff will still be wearing masks, at least for the nearish future. We're all vaccinated, but we get that not everybody is comfortable with sudden reversals in policy, so we'll do what we can to help you ease back into "normalcy."
• We'll be holding off on reintroducing communal games. Frankly, this is as much about safety as it is about not wanting to clean Battleship pieces out of our parking lot for the next couple of months. 
• We're keeping table service and holding off on bringing back bar seating. This is partly logistical (it would be a train wreck if everybody in the beer garden had to order at the bar) and partly because we're still not the most jazzed about crowded indoor spaces (and also very few people opt to sit inside when it's nice out anyway, rendering that issue moot for a while).  It's also probably worth mentioning that we're only allowed to do "seated service" anyway, but that's in line with what we're already doing. 
• We will continue not having a dance floor, which was pointedly mentioned by the ABCC (in general, not to us specifically).

So in other words, everything is changing, except for all the things that aren't.

Make sense? Cool. Our heads are spinning just like everybody else's are, but we've gotten through weirder crap than this, so we'll just post up at a picnic table with a buncha beers and hot dogs and ride this one out like we always do. Cheers!

* I heard that some of you guys get days off? How do you get days off, I want days off. ​