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| Lindsey, as we'd like to remember him |
When Lindsey Altshul passed away
unexpectedly this summer, our community felt the loss in a deep, wide and
profound way. When I say our
community, I don’t mean just our beer community, but our regional restaurant
community and our arts community. Lindsey touched a lot people’s lives,
including members of our staff, our customers and accounts in our home
market. He did this in many
ways, from the simple sharing of a pint or a quick origami lesson, to providing
a detailed list of museums, music venues, bars and restaurants to someone
visiting New York City for the first time or offering solo folks a spot at his
annual “Christmas of Misfit Boys.” Diners at Pepperland Café, the South
Berwick, ME restaurant he co-owned with Chef Kevin Hahn, were never asked "what would you like," but the rather telling question, "what's your pleasure?"
Lindsey was also great lover of
craft beer, well before it was trendy or common place; serving as one of the
earliest treasurers for NERAX and travelling to Belgium, visiting breweries and stocking
his cellar, before stocking cellars was even a thing. He once told me a story about buying an entire barrel of
Cantillon lambic that wasn’t able to find a home anywhere else (imagine that happening these
days!) and then bottling it off to be better saved for a later date. His passion for beer
was also manifest on the four taps at Pepperland Café in South Berwick, Me,
which he co-owned with chef Kevin Hahn.
Those four lines often have one of the most interesting and diverse
line-ups on the Seacoast.
Arts and crafts folk work within
their medium, so the decision to brew a memorial beer for Lindsey began not
long after his memorial service.
He loved Kolsch and supported local agriculture, so this was another no
brainer. It gave us a chance to
use grains from Valley Malt, a two-year-old Massachusetts maltster who seeks “to provide the
Northeastern craft and home brewer with artisanal malt from locally grown
grains.”
This beer also gave us a chance to
revisit a style we hadn’t brewed since the late ‘90’s. “Smuttynose Kolsch” was part of the
inaugural Big Beer Series, but to call it a success would simply be
erroneous. Our wholesalers sent
pallets of cases back to the brewery, explaining that “people won’t buy it
because they can’t pronounce it.”
My how times have changed….
About The Releases: The
allocations are very different for this Short Batch release than what we typically do, for obvious reasons. Almost the whole batch is staying here in New Hampshire for a two-part roll out. The
accounts listed below, will all be tapping kegs of Lindz on
Thursday, October 18 at some point in time that day. Please contact each account for details. We hope you'll join us in raising a pint in memory of someone
who’s dear to you.
As with all Short Batch releases, a limited number of bottles will be available exclusively at Smuttynose on
Thursday, October 25 from 5pm-7pm.
There will be a two bottle limit. Bottle sales will take place
both inside our retail nook and outside under a tent (weather depending of
course).
About Kolsch: Kolsch (German for “from Cologne”) is one of the two
German ale styles, the other being altbier from Dusseldorf. Both of these styles are unique in the
ale family because they’re cold-conditioned like a lager, while Kolsch tends to
be lighter in both body and color. If you've never tasted a kolsch, you're in for a treat. The first sip reveals a pronounced hop bitterness and a soft, slightly-bready malt character. You're not going to be knocked over by big flavors in one sip. Kolsch are appraochable beers that are typically well carbonated and show a great
depth of subtlety- and they’re very drinkable, whether or not you can pronounce
the name properly.
New
Hampshire
Portsmouth:
The
Press Room
Moxie
Portsmouth
Brewery
Blue
Mermaid
The
River House
Street
Surf
Rudie’s
The
Black Trumpet
The
District
Dover:
The
Barley Pub
Newmarket:
Popper’s
at the Mill
Maine:
Kittery:
The
Black Birch
When
Pigs Fly
South
Berwick:
Pepperland
Café
Wells:
Féile
Portland:
Novare
Res Bier Café
Nosh
Pi
Men Miyake
Bangor:
Nocturnem
Draught House
Vital Stats
5.27% abv 10 IBU
Starting Extract 11.1° Plato
Finishing Extract 1.3° Plato
Malts: Valley Malt Organic Pilsner
Malt, Valley Malt Organic Munich Malt, Valley
Malt Organic Wheat Malt, all grown in New England and malted in
Hadley, MA.
Hops: Motueka, a newer variety from
New Zealand
Yeast:
WLP-029 German Ale/Kolsch
Batch
Size: 30 barrels (60 cases of bottles, 20 half barrel kegs, 50 sixth barrel
kegs)
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