Smuttynose Short Batch #18: Durty

Smuttynose Short Batch #18: Durty

Smuttynose is proud to introduce our eighteenth Short Batch Beer, "Durty," a brown IPA!

There's no denying that IPA is king of the craft beer world right now.  The style is getting so popular that even the big brewers are attempting their own versions, while IPA sub-styles, like session IPA, double IPA, white IPA and black IPA, continue to be created and defined.  Brown IPAs combine the caramel and nutty-biscuity flavors of a brown ale, with an American IPA-sized does of hops; it's pretty straight-forward, but pretty delicious.

On to the beer...Durty is a big beer (8.4% abv, 55 IBU) packed full of big hops.  We've used Polaris, a new German high alpha variety for bittering, followed by American hop icon, Nugget, for the flavor additions and finally, a boatload of Simcoe post-fermentation for dry-hopping. The malt selection isn't too different from Old Brown Dog, but it's a bit heavier on the nutty character and dark cocoa notes.

Durty will debut at Smuttynose on Saturday, December 15 from 3pm-5pm (unless you join us for a tour that day).  We hope that this time change will allow more of you to come to Portsmouth for Durty, and other Short Batch releases.

This will also be our first Short Batch to appear in 22 ounce bottles, each of which are bottle-conditioned.  Bottles will retail for $9 and there will be a remarkably small amount (25 cases) of off-premise distribution in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  They will ship from Smuttynose on December 17 and be available at a very minute number of beer stores (see below).  If you'd like to know when these accounts will have the bottles, we suggest you contact them directly, as we don't know when they take deliveries from our wholesaler.

Vital Stats

8.44% abv   55 IBU

Malts: North American 2-Row, Munich 10L, Chocolate, C-60, Brown

Hops: Bittering- Polaris, Flavor- Nugget, Dry Hop- Simcoe

Yeast: American Ale Yeast

Batch Size: 106 logs, 69 cases


New Hampshire: Top Shelf Brews (Hampton)
                               Hampton Falls Village Market (Hampton Falls)
                               Johnson's Market (New Durham)
                               The Beer Store (Nashua)
                               Bert's Better Beers (Hookset)
                               Barb's Beer Emporium (Concord)
                               Ayotte's (Hudson)
                               Discount Beverages (North Conway)
                               Portsmouth Provisions (Portsmouth)

Massachusetts:    Table and Vine (West Springfield)
                                Craft Beer Cellar (Belmont)
                                Liquor World (Somerville)
                                Kelly's (Dalton)
                                Spirited (Pittsfield)
                                Domaney's (Great Barrington)
                                Liquors 44 (Hadley)
                                Ryan and Casey (Greenfield)
                                Yankee Spirits (Sturbridge)
                                Julio's (Westboro)

                                Bogie's Beer and Wine (Beverly)
                                Redstone Liquors (Stoneham)
                                Blanchard's (Jamaica Plain)
                                Ball Square Fine Wines (Somerville)

*We haven't quite finalized all the case allocations for the Boston area yet, so there will be a few surprise drops.

Brown, Belgian and Bourbon-barreled: welcome Zinneke to the Big Beer Series!!

Zinneke

2012 Smuttynose Big Beer Series Release #6

"Zinneke" (pronounced zinn-eh-kuh), Smuttynose's new Belgian stout and Big Beer Series release, will begin shipping to wholesalers on November 12!   

This relatively new sub-style combines Belgian, American and English influences to create a beer whose total is more than equal to the sum of its parts.  Here’s how Zinneke breaks down and adds back up.

Part 1) Start with a strong stout.  This is the Big Beer Series after all… 

Part 2) “Belgianize” it by altering the grain bill and fermenting the wort with a Trappist yeast strain. We backed off the heavy caramel and roasted malts to create a more complimentary flavor profile for the yeast, which contributes fruity esters and leaves a light body for deceptive drinkability.

Part 3) Put some wood on it!  10% of the batch was brewed early and aged in bourbon barrels for 10 months.  Why? because it adds complimentary vanilla and toasted oak flavors to what’s already there.  Think of it as an infusion of awesomeness!

These three parts combine to create a beer with dark color and light body with prevalent flavors of dark fruits, vanilla and toffee, while subtle chocolate flavors appear in the finish.

This deep brown-colored beer has lots of dark fruit flavor and a nice chocolate highlight in the finish.  We'd suggest pairing it with creamy desserts, roasted vegetables and rich, roasted meats, like duck.

What in tarnation is a "Zinneke?"

The name of our new beer is endearing Brussels slang that originally described the mongrel dogs that lived around the River Zenne during the Middle Ages.  The multi-cultural residents of Belgium’s capitol city, have since reappropriated the term as a tongue-in-cheek nickname for themselves.

 

TRIVIA: Zinneke began life as Short Batch #10: Belgian Stout in September 2010, but like several other of its series-mates, it has graduated to a larger release.

Vital Stats

8.4% abv 50 IBU
Starting Extract 18.9° Plato

Finishing Extract 3.75° Plato

Malts: North American 2-Row, Carawheat, Munich 10L, C-120, Chocolate, Roasted Barley, Brown
Hops: Magnum, Glacier
Mojo: Dark #2 Belgian Candi Syrup

Yeast: WLP-500 Trappist Ale Yeast

Batch Size: 200 barrels (6200 gallons)

Here Come The Hops!

Monday, October 29 marks the anticipated return of our award-winning Big A IPA!  After a five month hiatus, The Great British Beer Festival award-winning double IPA returns for a limited engagement.  We can only brew 100 barrels a month from October through January, so supplies of twelve ounce four packs and kegs will be limited, but available, throughout our distribution.  Tell your local beer store or beer bar that you need to see for yourself why the New York Times named Big A the top IPA in America and Men’s Journal picked it as one of the top 25 beers in America!

Here are the vital stats:

9.7% abv  120 IBU

Malts: North American 2-Row, British Pale Ale

Hops: Bittering: Magnum and Cascade

            Flavor: Magnum and CTZ

            Dry: Cascade, Nugget, Sterling, CTZ

Recommended Food Pairings:
Vietnamese, homemade guacamole, spicy scallops, tandoori chicken and spicy biryanis

Smuttynose Short Batch 16: Lindz

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)

Smuttynose Short Batch #17: Herbaceous

Her • ba • ceous [hur-bey-shuhs, ur-] adj  1: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an herb

It’s that time of year again, hop harvest time.  And what could be better than a wet hopped beer?  Since the East Coast is about 3,000 miles from the hop fields, our access to these beers can be a tad limited.  Thirst no more beer drinkers; Smuttynose is ready to fill your pints with Herbaceous, our new Short Batch, wet-hopped beer!  

We’ve been talking about brewing a wet hop beer for several years, but the freshly-picked hops need to either be dried and baled or, in the case of wet-hopped beers, used in a brew within hours.  Getting hops from Yakima Valley was a daunting expense for two reasons.  One, we needed 150 lbs and two, they had to travel 3,000 miles as quickly as possible.  Well, the stars aligned this year, which means we snuck the overnight shipping charges past Peter while he was busy with the construction of our new facility at Towle Farm in Hampton.

His oversight is your gain, because the beer came out beautifully.  We decided to go with a very simple malt bill using nothing but Vienna and CaraMunich II, from Weyermann Malt, to brew an amber ale as the base beer.  Bittering was done with Magnum and we used Willamette and Sterling for the flavoring additions.  The 150 lbs of freshly-picked Citra were used exclusively for the wet hop-as- dry hop component that we felt was the best way to showcase the pungent essence of hops right off the vine.  The best way for you to showcase these ethereal hop flavors it to drink the beer as soon as possible, just not on your way from Smuttynose.

We've got 46 cases of bottles going on sale on Thursday, October 11 from 5-7pm.  There will be a two bottle limit and as always, we'll have Herbaceous on tap for you taste.  If you haven't been to Smuttynose for a Short Batch bottle release, please enter through our tour entrance located in the back corner of our building at 225 Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth, NH.

 

 Stat Box

4.35% ABV 50 IBU

Starting Extract: 11.6° Plato Terminal Extract:  3.5° Plato

Malts: Weyermann Vienna and Weyermann CaraMunich

Hops: Bittering: Magnum, Flavor: Willamette and Sterling, Wet: Citra from BT Loftus Ranch

Yeast: WLP-001 California Ale

Batch size: 30 barrels (46 cases for sale)

Raise the Haggis! Scotch Ale is back!

Exactly one week from today (on September 24),  Smuttynose Scotch Ale will begin shipping for the first time in four years.  Since 2008, we've heard a constant, yet subtle, din of voices trying to resurrect its thistled visage (I'm looking at you specifically, Martha).

If you're not familiar with Scotch Ales as a beer style, they're all about malt sweetness and smoke (at least in the US).  This has lead to a common misconception that all ales brewed in Scotland fit this description, though a closer examination of brewing history shows that Scottish brewers have always brewed a range of styles, including IPA as well as other lighter and more subtle styles.  History is interesting, but some details will always be forgotten; as such, you'd be hard pressed to find a traditional American-style Scotch Ale that doesn't use some portion of smoked malt. 

Smuttynose Scotch Ale is still smoky, though we've substituted beechwood-smoked malt for malt smoked with peat, the "traditional" American choice.  The change results in a softer smoke character that we prefer. 

Another non-traditional aspect of 2012's Scotch Ale, is that it's a blend of non-barrel-aged and barrel-aged beer.  Many moons ago, (all the way back in March), we brewed a small 30 barrel batch of Scotch Ale, which was then aged in red wine barrels for about six months, before being transferred into the main batch just before bottling.


As always, each wholesaler's Scotch Ale allotment will ship with their first order after the 24th.  We will also have bottles for sale at Smuttynose, in addition to a small number of brewery-aged 2008 Scotch Ale bottles recently released from our stash.  Feel free to stop by between 9am-4pm, Monday through Friday as well as during our tour hours which are Friday from 5:30-6:30 and Saturdays at 11am and 1pm.

The Stat Box  
8.2% abv
28 IBU

Starting Extract: 18.05° Plato 
Finishing Extract: 3.1° Plato

Malts: North American 2-Row, Munich, Carastan, Chocolate, Smoked Malt
Hops: Willamette
Mojo: Red Wine Barrel Magic
Yeast: WLP-001 California Ale Yeast
Batch Size: 200 barrels (6200 gallons)

Suggested Food Pairings:  Mutton, smoked fish, empanadas and, of course, haggis.  The malt character in this beer gives it the ability to stand up to spicy foods while the smoke character will pair well with other smoked flavors or with creamy desserts like flan.

Towle Farm Update 9/17/12

Here's a brief update on Towle Farm construction, but we should have more (visually) exciting stuff later in the week.

As of Friday, September 14, most of the work that has gone is site prep or behind the hill from what our webcam can record.

One of the first significant projects to be completed is the construction of two "ponds" on the backside of the property.  Unfortunately, these won't be for fishing, but they do serve a significant purpose toward minimizing the environmental impact on the surrounding land. 

In the above photo, you can see a trench with a concrete barrier at the end of it. This simple system is designed to collect rain and other surface water which will then be slowly dispersed through the slot in the concrete barrier.  Another pond is being built on the back side of the apple orchard.  According to the site supervisor, grass and other vegetation will be planted along the banks soon, which will be very attractive and give an early hint of completion.

If you've been checking the webcam, you've seen lots of dump trucks and excavators, prepping the site so it's stable, flat and ready for the building.  This stage isn't the most visually stimulating part of building a brewery, but it's obviously a vital step.  Geotechnically speaking, the back side of the land has been a bit easier to level out and prepare than areas near the front of the property, which have turned up lots and lots of giant rocks. The flattened land you see to the left is the future home of our warehouse and loading docks, so just imagine a sea of Smuttynose cases and kegs just waiting to ship out all over the East Coast!

 This gaping hole is right next to the barn.  There are still plenty of rocks to be pulled out of this space and plenty of digging left before reinforcing the ground.  Our visitor's center and offices will be on top of this hole.  Every member of the construction crew was excited to get all the rocks off the site, saying that it'll look much better and more like the final version.

This final picture is a draft rendering of what our water treatment plant will might look like.  The plans are still being tweaked, but hopefully the sci-fi look won't disappear.











That's it for now, but please stay tuned for more updates.

Cheers,

JT

Looking For Towle Farm Updates? Look No Further!

As many of you know, on August 16, we officially broke ground on our new brewery at Towle Farm after four years of hard work and planning. Over those four years, we've had a large number of inquiries about our new brewery but, until recently, we didn't have much to say.

Now that Smuttynose mark II is underway, we thought we'd let you all check in at your own leisure, through the magic of a webcam; just click on this link.

The cam is mounted on a pole just south of the historic barn and points directly at the front of what will become the main entrance to the brewery.  The silver tank you see on the back of the site is the collection vessel of our waste water treatment system.  If the camera were able to turn to the right, you would see the farmhouse, which will be transformed into a 95-seat restaurant pub.  You can see the house in its current location, as well its original basement in the photo below.  The basement has been filled in and leveled out so that we can build our fermentation cellar in its place.

Once the exterior of the building is complete, we plan to move the camera inside and aim it one of our production areas, to keep the content dynamic.  Until then, we hope you enjoy watching our progress!

*We'd like to send a special thanks to Mike McCormack of Sebectec, who installed and maintains the camera.