Year End Bloggarama!

Hello again, cats and kittens! It's the end of the year and we're feeling a bit Retrospective around here (and also very little of note happened in the past week) so we've got some long-winded Year-In-Review type stuff for you to read as you stare blankly at your computer instead of actually working during this doldrum week. But first! The haps for the weekend!

...although it's mostly just business as usual around here. We're open our normal hours, including New Year's Eve (which means we close at 8:00 on New Year's Eve). We'll also be open until eight on New Year's Day, and as an added treat for those of you who can overcome the stamina of your hangovers and come hang out with us: we'll have donuts! We're gettin' a buncha bites from Union Square Donuts and the treats'll be flowin' until we run out! Tasty times!

Oh! And we have a cask! Because that's a thing we do all the friggin' time so of course we do! This time around it's Pullover ESB which (at the time of this writing) ain't even on draft yet so you lucky ducks might even get a sneak preview of this beer in cask form!

And if you're a bit more of a Forward Thinker (or at least what passes for one around here), don't forget that Horatio Day is less than two weeks away! Come Saturday January 6th, we'll be celebratin' our dapper logo dude's birthday in style with cake and special beers (we'll have seventeen beers on tap! Probably! A new record!) and stickers and cool glassware!* As always, it's first come first served, so it wouldn't be the worst idea for you to get here early if you ain't the waitin' type. 

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Anyway, as we mentioned, we'd like to take a look back over the past year (see the previous year's here) and reflect on how far we've come, what changes we've made in the past twelve months, and all that other stuff what we done did.

Let's break it down for you month-by month, shall we?

In January, the year started off as most do around here: full of what proved to be misplaced optimism. We had just brewed our fiftieth batch, the taproom was bustlin' more than we could have hoped, and we had some shiny new fermentors headed our way so's we could make more beer for all of our newfound thirsty friends! To celebrate this impending increase in fermented fun times, we added a day to our weekly open hours - and to sweeten the deal, we decided that this new day should have snacks! And thus, Pizza Thursdays** were born.

But that's not all! January 2017 was also the first official month of the Bone Up Coloring Contest! We got 63 (!) entries that fateful month, and oh man but it was a tough decision for us come judgin' time. ​​

That brings us to February, which was the fourth consecutive month that our landlords promised us more space within the building "starting the first of the month next month" (it still hasn't happened), but we ain't let that slow us down no way no how not with all the cool stuff happenin'. We started up our dang ol' cask program with a pin of Chance (remember Chance? I miss Chance), a fledgling Hot Sauce Nation was born, and - best of all - our shiny new tanks arrived! Things were finally happening, or so we said. We'd be making more beer in no time, we said.

And then we come to March, a month where our shiny new fermentors kept on keepin' on as expensive paperweights while we continued to wait for our landlord's electrician to do some work that we had been previously told would be done "definitely before January***" but never you mind all that! There were fests to attend and sandwiches to eat and casks to tap and Green Smoothies to brew (and, of course, Green Smoothie - the one beer we made a point of saying we'd never be able to brew again - is one of our most-requested beers even still). ​

In April we got new chairs for the taproom and that was pretty much all the excitement we could handle around here. 

​Alright fine that's not entirely true - it also brought us our sweet-ass Shut Up Kelly! shirts and the city's Earth Day Party that ended up gettin' the ball rollin' on our yet-to-exist patio! We got to work that day - an hour before opening time - to find The Mayor rollin' with a crew of fifty people in day-glo orange and demanding we open immediately. It was a surreal experience, but how can you say no to that?

​Movin' on, May marked the one-year anniversary of our first dang ol' brewday! And what better way to celebrate than by brewin' the style that started it all (for Jared, anyway) - a Belgian tripel! And thus, Joybringer was born. It was originally intended as an annual brew that we'd make to celebrate this anniversay but then we got tired of not having it on tap so we convinced ourselves that "half anniversaries" are a thing (they aren't) and now we have it on tap again!

Anyway, May also brought the opening of our patio! More importantly, that meant the end of having to yell at people who climbed over and/or through our barricades to go drink on our loading dock because they "didn't realize they couldn't do that" as though we thoroughly blocked it off just for laffs or something.

And then June gave us the first-ever installment of our much-loved monthly music-themed trivia event: Audio Triviality! A good time was had by all, with such rave reviews as "Is this all about heavy metal?" or "I've never heard of any of these bands" and "Is this all about heavy metal... and Paula Abdul for some reason?" But seriously though, it's a hella fun time every month, even if you're just there to take bets on whether or not Matt (our lovely host) will forget that he's drinking a 9% beer and then shortly thereafter forget how to use words. ​

Also in June, we had the honor of pouring at the Beer Advocate invitational and dang but that was a good time! We got to make hella new beer friends and we accidentally learned what we'd be calling barrel-aged Joybringer after an extra-festive attendee insisted on calling it "Jollybringer." Those Alstroms throw one hell of a fest, I tells you what.

Getting to July we did pretty much nothing but squeal with delight about how we were gonna have The Weisstronauts playing at our upcoming birthday party, interspersed by intervals of eating the tasty snacks that Sillari's thoughtfully prepared for our taproom. Oh, and we brewed our hundredth batch (aptly named "100"), which was/is a pretty big friggin' deal.

And then in August we had that birthday party I was just talking about! We roped off the parking lot and busted out the fest setup and there was a pig roast and cake and good tunes and a different cake and an antique cash register for some reason and special beer and cookies and hot sauce and lawn games and ice cream and video games and maybe a third cake I don't even know because it was a friggin' whirlwind of a day boy howdy. And then just for the hell of it, we introduced Big Stupid Cans to y'all pretty much right after that party was over, since we knew that y'all couldn't wait one more dang minute to get it in the can! And, better still, we finally started brewing into those new tanks! Remember those? From the beginning of the year? It was a pretty huge deal,**** especially at the tail end of such an exciting and exhausting and exhilarating month, which might lead you to believe that..

...in September maybe we gave ourselves a dang ol' minute to breathe but oh man haha nope that month was even more jam packed than August. The big flurry of activity was centered around Village Fest, which was basically just a year's worth of commotion crammed into a very short time, but we still found the time and energy to brew a bunch of special beers and go to some fests and also drive out to Central Mass in the middle of a brewday and visit our friends at Four Star Farms to pick up some Pepite for our all-Mass-grown wet hop cream ale: So Nude!

Then just when we thought the coast was clear, in October we got another pair o' shiny new stainless tanks, though this time around it was less along the lines of "expanding production" and more "replacing lesser-quality equipment." But that don't mean they didn't help us Move On To Bigger And Better Things - production was up and in full swing, which meant we got to be open for another dang ol' day! There was no pizza accompaniment this time around (not yet, anyway), but we're still right chuffed that we get to be up and rockin' more than ever before! Then as the icing on the cake of this hectic-yet-fun month, we got to host some of our comic book friends and have a costume contest and things got kinda dark there for a minute but it was all for fun and it was a pretty rad time if we do say so ourselves!

Pluggin' away into November we slowed down a bit on adding new equipment and doubled down on puttin' all them new toys to good use! You may have noticed us poppin' up on draft a little bit more out in The World around this point, plus we started stockin' growlers over at Pemberton Farms! Then at home base we decided to "beef up" our snack game a bit (which is an ongoing process), starting with a wall o' different jerky options! Meat times! And with snacking needs startin' to be satiated, we also took it upon ourselves to make your holiday shopping a bit easier by bringin' in a whole buncha sweet new merch - from flannels to hot sauce to those sweet thermals to shaker pints to lunch boxes to Big Stupid Koozies - that way you and everybody you know had the opportunity to be covered with and/or surrounded by our logo at all times!

And then you probably remember December because that's this month, but for posterity's sake we'll tell you all about it except that mostly we hunkered down and turned up the heat and stocked up on Big Stupid Cans (for you! Because fresh beer is the best gift ever!) and did some long-needed maintenance in the production area and then complained at length about needing to do that maintenance. But! We also continued Upping Our Snack Game by introducin' y'all to Wicked Twisted Pretzels and their tasty trio of mustards! And also we got to meet Summoner (the band, that is) which was pretty rad and also showed us that if you name a beer after a band you like, sometimes you get to meet that band and share some good times!

...and that just about wraps it up but whoa nelly was that one hell of a packed year. It seems like every time we look back like this we find ourselves saying "oh man we had no idea what in hell we were doing and/or what we were in for back then, but we made it work and things are so much more rad now than they used to be." And it's true! At some point it might be nice to look back and not feel like our (Relatively Recent) Past Selves were naive, bumbling fools, but that's ok we'll get there at some point. Unless we don't.

​More to the point: we feel like it's important to pause every now and then and take stock of just how much stuff we've done - it tends to seem like Business As Usual while it's happening because we're completely in the thick of it, so we gotta collect ourselves for a minute and realize that we went from "small, relatively unknown brewery in a terrifying building" to "small, relatively unknown brewery with a sweet (albeit tiny) patio and a whole  bunch of stuff on the walls." Anyway, it's been one hell of a year and we can't wait to keep the good times rollin' through the next one - we've got some big plans!

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One last aside before we finish ramblin': we realize that this Year In Review didn't spend a lot of time focusing on all the cool beers we put out during the year, despite that beer is what we hold dear. That was largely intentional - it doesn't do you a lot of good to hear us reminisce about beers that you might not remember and mostly can't drink right now anyway. But! We still think it's rad that we're able to make so many different things around here, so here's a quick roundup of what we released in the past year (note: this is based on packaging date instead of actual release date, if you're the quibblin' sort):

January: Summit Pale, Beer of Truth, The Monarch (Batch #50), Chance
February: Idaho 7, Lawbringer, Come Out and Play
March: Green Smoothie, Big Boots
April: Black Witow, Bullhead V2
May: Josh, Jodi, Pounder, Joybringer
June: Voyager, Ruby Rye, Madeline the Destroyer
July: 100 (Batch #100)
August: Gnasher, Cosmic Showers of Love, Fermento-Tainment!, FAO
September: Belma, Test Drive, Lil' Witeon, Quaddles, So Nude
October: Bullhead (V3), Purple Smoothie, Mo'Biscuits, Summoner
November: Oh My!, El Pulpo, Uptown, Armchair, Library, Chaos
December: Ginger Spectacular, Pullover ESB, Joybringer, Believer, Life Sentence (Batch #150), Shelby (maybe)

And since there's little else to do at the very end and/or very beginning of the year, we'll continue navel gazin' next week (unless we forget and/or get distracted by talking about Horatio Day) with the return of our personal favorite retrospective: 2017 By The Numbers!

* While we aren't charging admission for the event, you can buy the glass for $10 to have all your beers poured into it for the day and take it home when you're done! (Don't worry, you can also just get your beers poured into regular old boring glassware, or you can also just buy the glass for $13.)
** Remember when we weren't open on Thursdays? That feels like forever ago
*** We were told this in 2016, prompting a bunch of jokesters to point out that he didn't say which January, which was all in good fun until you consider that this work actually got done last week. Seriously.
**** Honestly it was pretty much the biggest deal of the year, though "using equipment that we bought months ago" isn't exactly the most thrilling, late-breaking news.