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

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). ​