In Which We Are All About Them Neomexicanus Hops!

Well hello there! It's been a downright eventful week around here what with all the stuff that we've been doing and whathaveyou. Anyway, some of that stuff involved beer in cans and/or pinball and/or old houses and/or dogs and/or a weird fascination with the side-effects of how old-timey politics influence agriculture, so if any of that's in your ol' mental wheelhouse, read on!

Aaaaand startin things swingin' right out the gate, the first run of our canning line was an unrivaled* success! Or at least it was in the sense that there were very few literal fires during the run. Anyway. We're up and runnin' and there's no stopping now so we'll be cannin' up a whole buncha beer as often as we can! If nothing else, this dang line** is gonna have to pay its own ticket around here and - I don't know if you knew this - but canning lines cost at least fifty dollars. Sometimes more.

Anyway, the first beer off the line was a one-off (as is our wont around here), and in this particular case it was a hoppy saison made to feature the new-to-us hop Sabro™! (And, of course, we named the beer Sabrobro). Sabro™ is a pretty intriguing hop to us, for two related reasons: a) the flavor descriptors given by hop growers are completely wild: mint and passionfruit and cedar and coconut are pretty much all over the map flavor-wise, so we felt like we had to see what this hop was all about; and 2) Sabro™ is a hop that has neomexicanus heritage, which we're honestly pretty jazzed about.

Long story short(er), neomexicanus hops are (as far as we know) indigenously American, which is surprisingly uncommon in commercial hop varieties - if you look in to hop lineage for most of the well-known varieties (and, realistically, who among us doesn't read about hop genetics from time to time), there will often be a small percentage of each variety's heritage attributed to "wild American" (which, if we understand correctly, is basically like saying "I dunno, maybe it cross-pollinated with some shit that was growing in the woods," only you're not supposed to say it that way if you're a plant geneticist) but overall they can be traced back to Europe.***

​And because of that, the conventional knowledge says that hops can only grow in areas that more-or-less mimic the climate of the hop growing regions in Europe (specifically Czechia, Germany, and England), and around here that means the Pacific Northwest (and also upstate New York, but that's a different story). But then some people (possibly a monastery?) found some hops not only growing but flourishing somewhere out in New Mexico and it turns out that these hops are genetically distinct from the ones we're used to and we're now getting to a point where there are enough neomexicanus hops being grown that event tiny-assed breweries like us get to play around with them and we think that's cool as hell!

Anyway the point is that American hops (especially the wild-grown ones) were kinda looked down on for a few hundred years or so**** but now people are getting in to these crazy hops that have adapted to growing in the damn desert (and/or pretty much anywhere, as far as we can tell) and we're stoked to get to know them!

And while we're on about neomexicanus and crazy hop varieties, we should also mention that this Friday we'll be canning up our new IPA: Multihead! Multihead (the beer) is named for Multihead (the hop variety) which is - you guessed it - another neomexicanus hop! This hop has a much more sane list of flavor descriptors (it's mostly a list of fruits, which is what we're used to), so we felt the need to cram a whole shitload of it into one beer! And as an added bonus, we decided to make this a dog beer!

​We're takin' a small turn from our usual M.O. with dog beers - this time around we partnered up with Last Chance Animal Rescue to try and bring some attention to them and their adoptable dogs. Long story short, Last Chance - in addition to trying to find homes for animals in need - has a farm in North Carolina (St. Francis Farm, specifically) that provides a home for animals who might not otherwise be able to find one. Anyway, we featured one of their adoptable dogs (a fun-loving floofy boy named Dexter) on the can for Multihead and we encourage you to check them out because they're doing some great things for some good pups!

Anyway, moving on from hop genetics and/or dog farms, this Friday we're also canning up an old favorite of ours and that's Lazy Pants! Basically, Lazy Pants came about because we wanted to make a light-colored chocolate beer and then at some point we figured that raspberry would be pretty good in there, and it was, so we made it again! And now you can have some!

And. And! Now that we're done with our "Hop Facts You Don't Care About" section of the blog, we're pleased to announce that we have some upcoming events! Remember those? Events?

Anyway, first up is Thursday, Friday and Sunday of this week and that's Pinball With A Breeze! Basically, Pinball Mitch got a bit stir-crazy spending six months flappin' his flippers all by his lonesome, so he convinced us to bring in as many games as we're comfortable with (in this case, three) and set them up as close as we could to Outside without exposing them to the elements and yada yada yada social distancing but anyway we - for one brief, shining weekend (not counting Saturday) - will have pinball back!

Then on Saturday we're gettin' old-school, both in terms of "history" and also in terms of "doing things the way we used to do them back in April" and that obviously means an educational drinking conference call about a historical house! There is a broader context for all of that, but all you really need to know is that this event is more fun than it seems like it should be, and the proceeds go to a good cause (specifically the Wakefield Historical Society) and you should come join us!

Also! As our "farther in the future" event reminder, we gots to let you know that we're doing another dog costume party/contest this year! When we reflected on last year's dog costume party, we realized that it was pretty much "socially distanced" by default***** so we figured we'd go for it again! As always, there won't be any changes to our standard beer garden policies (in terms of time limits on tables, reservations, requiring animals to be well-behaved, etc.), but we'll have a dog-themed beer and a dog-themed pop-up and some stupid prizes and also some candy and it'll be a good time!

And speaking of candy, we're doin' our beer and Halloween candy pairings again this year! For those of you not "in the know,"  we figure out candy pairings for every beer on our menu (and, just to be clear, this is all field-tested. In one sitting. Each person in production consumes an amount of candy that can only be described as "upsetting." Oh, the things we do for our craft), and for the 23rd through the 31st, flights and full pours will come with candy!

And as a final note, amongst all the talk of cans and canning lines and us definitely not encouraging you to drink while you're out walkin' around even though a koozie pretty much covers the whole can label if you were to do so, it behooves us forsooth to notify you posthase as to the wherewithal of our esteemed Beer Garden. In short, we're coming to the end of the magical three-week period where we actually have Fall Weather around here and we're gonna start encountering more and more conditions that we can't fix with heat lamps.

We're gonna hold out with our outdoor seating for as long as we can (odds are you're gonna need a beer or six on election day, no matter what happens), but we (including our staff) don't really feel safe having people congregate indoors (and yes, we've thought about putting up a big tent or something outside, but that just takes all the problems of being inside and moves them to a place that is - by definition - worse), so we're slowly getting used to the idea that things around here are gonna start looking pretty similar to the way they did six months ago (i.e. to-go only, deliveries, et cetera), hence the slow reintroduction of virtual events.

​We don't know for certain how things will play out (we get the same news that you do. And honestly, we were kinda expecting another lockdown), but we figure it ain't hurt to lay the groundwork. It's gonna be a long winter, so get all the Fall Time in that you can, while you can. Cheers or whatever.

* "Unrivaled" means "modest," right?
** Our canning line is, tentatively, named Phyllis. 
*** To the best of my knowledge, hop plants in general started somewhere in Asia and then spread to Europe where they really flourished, and nowadays there aren't a whole lot of hops coming out of Asia (at least not on the export market, with the exception of a couple Japanese varieties). But also that might be wrong?
**** You mean to tell me that British colonists might look down on things that weren't native to England? That can't be right. 
***** With the exception of the children running around, which was an unexpected twist last year that we now know to watch for.`