The Perfect Beer For Mud Season: DURTY!!!

Get Durty with Smuttynose this Mud Season!! 

A big, hoppy, brown ale is just what you need to make it through the meteorological ups and downs of spring.

Durty, one of our most talked about Short Batch releases, graduates to fill a long-vacant spring slot in Smuttynose’s seasonal beer rotation. 

Each bottle and pint features a delicious balance of carmelly brown ale malt flavors and the hop profile of a double IPA. Durty has enough oomph to get you through the frosty mornings and chilly nights, while the light body and hop flavor will awaken your tongue and senses for the coming

warm weather. 

We’re also excited about Durty’s packaging.  It’s our first beer with two distinct images.  There’s no telling what the label mix will be in a six pack or twelve pack, but both images are featured on the six pack and twelve pack containers.  

Durty will be shipping out throughout the month of January, but you can try it and buy it at our Holiday Open House on December 21.  Stop by between 11am and 4pm at 225 Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth, our current and original home.

Durty Vital Stats                         
8.4% abv  97 IBU
Malts: North American 2-Row, Munich 10L, Chocolate, C-60, Brown Malt
Hops: Bittering-Magnum, Flavor- Nugget, Dry Hop- CTZ and Chinook
Yeast: White Labs WLP-001 American Ale

Available in six packs, twelve packs and cases of 12 ounce bottles as well as 5.2 gallon and 15.5 gallon kegs. Durty will be hitting markets throughout the month of January.

Holiday Open House

On December 21, we're opening the doors of our Heritage Avenue brewer for a holiday Open House.  You can try Pure Biss, our culinary collaboration with Chef Jamie Bissonnette, and Durty, a hoppy brown ale (8.4%, 97.5 IBU), on tap, and bottles of both will be for sale.  We'll be offering brewery tours, good humor and, if you ask nicely, impromptu Christmas carols.  You're welcome to drop in from 11am-4pm. Our staff will merrily greet you!

This is one of two six pack designs for Durty

Yup, we're using both.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Christmas came early to our new brewery site in Hampton!

Our state-of-the-art brewhouse (see picture below) and bottling equipment has arrived from Europe and we begin unpacking it tomorrow.  There are two reasons we're telling you this.  First of all, we're really, really, incredibly excited that these vital pieces of equipment have finally arrived. The other reason is that we're ready for our close-up.

You can follow the unloading and installation process on our webcam from the comfort of your own home.  Just direct your browser to http://www.towlefarm.com beginning tomorrow (12-10) and see the latest images from the production floor.

We don't know how Santa wrapped these presents in wood.

We hope you tune in and see how things are shaping up.  Once the brewhouse is commissioned, we'll start brewing, so it shouldn't be too much longer!  We estimate it'll be just two more months, including the German installation team's Christmas break, to get down to business.

Introducing Pure Biss, a Culinary Collaboration

 Pure Biss, Smuttynose's third chef collaboration (and first Smuttlabs release) debuts this weekend at Sonny's Tavern in Dover.

This unconventional witbier gets its swerve from the contributions of Chef Jamie Bissonnette. Instead of the traditional coriander and orange peel, Jamie brought kaffir lime leaves, spruce tips and 25 pounds of grapefruit zest to the brewday.  The rest of the ingredients are appropriate to the style.

How does it taste?  You'll have to come see for yourself at Sonny's, or after December 9, when the beer begins shipping to wholesalers.  Bottles will be available at Smuttynose, the weekend of December 13.

 

This is Biss

Chef Bissonnette has been widely recognized for his cuisine at Coppa, Toro and Eastern Standard in Boston, as well as winning "Chopped" on the Food Network. He has just opened a second Toro in New York, with business partner Ken Oringer. Coppa, Toro-Boston and Toro-Manhattan will all proudly feature Pure Biss bottles. 






Pure Biss Vital Stats

5.4% abv 15 IBU

Malts: North American 2-Row, Wheat, Flaked Wheat, Flaked Oats
Hops: Bittering-Magnum, Flavor-Sterling
Yeast: White Labs WLP-400 Belgian Wit

Batch Size: 30 barrels, packaged in 5.2 gallon kegs and crown finished, 375ml bottles.

Fight the Black Friday Blues with Beer!

With Smuttynose Beer, of course!

At Smuttynose, we consider a pint of flavorful beer an excellent way to take respite from the hustle and bustle of our busy lives. Black Friday can certainly be a whirlwind of door busters, mega deals and crowded stores—or another day trapped in the house with your family. Fortunately, we have a solution for both situations: our first Black Friday Open House!

We're opening the doors of our original/current brewery on Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth from 1pm-7pm on Friday, November 29 for beer samples, tours, hospitality, and retail sales. We hope you'll stop by to enjoy some rare beer samples, case discounts on Scotch Ale, Barleywine, and Winter Ale, and a selection of "Smerchandise" to help you get some holiday shopping done in a casual, pro-beer environment. You won't need a reservation, just drop-in; we'll be glad to see you!

*Our 5:30pm tour will still be taking place, as scheduled.

Bouncy House Release this Friday!

This Friday, November 15, bound on over to Smuttynose at 4pm to try our newest Short Batch release, Bouncy House!

What is Bouncy House?  It's the next step in our quest to brew the perfect low-alcohol, high-flavor, hoppy American ale.  We learned a few things from brewing ParadoX earlier this year, like lowering the alcohol content and avoiding the terms "session" and "IPA."

When you taste Bouncy House, you'll taste a modest malt bill of North American 2-row, British pale ale malt, C-60 and Aromatic malt mashed for a refreshingly light body that leaves plenty of spotlight for a melange of Warrior, Calypso, El Dorado and Citra hops.

In-house, organoleptic tasting left us with some great first impressions, but Team Smuttynose wants to know what you think.  If you're on Untappd, please check in with a comment for us.  If you're tweeting, please use the #bouncyhouse hashtag.  You can also send us direct email or leave note on our Facebook page.  Your feedback will help guide any changes for the next brew.

To encourage your experimentation, we're offering 22 ounce bottles of Bouncy House for just $3 at Smuttynose and in the off-premise trade.  Draft prices will be difficult to peg exactly, but they'll be in line with what you can expect to pay for our year-round beers. 

So please come say hello, have a beer and speak your mind this weekend.  We're looking forward to it!

Newness Update

The weather is certainly crisping and brisking up as we move closer to Thanksgiving and bask in the glow of another Boston Red Sox World Series championship.  The beards they've got going are pretty awesome too; it's like a natural kinship shared with our brewers.

If you need more Granite State goodness to fill your glasses this fall, then look no further because we've got a bit of everything for you to choose from. 

Option #1) The return of Smuttynose Barleywine to the Big Beer Series:  This year's release (10.6% abv) will begin shipping on November 11.  We took a few years off from making barleywine and it's back this year with a leaner malt profile and slightly lower bitterness.  This means more drinkability (hooray!) for sweater weather and beyond. We may also have filled some oak barrels for future deliciousness opportunities.

Options #2) In the opposite direction of Barleywine is Bouncy House (4.9% abv), our next Short Batch release.  A light-bodied, light-colored, quaffable, hoppy American ale brewed with Warrior and Calypso hops in the kettle and Citra and El Dorado in the fermenter for dry-hopping.  We'll be packaging Bouncy House in the second week of November with a final release date yet to be determined.  There are only 30 barrels of this beer and we want to know what you think once it's out, so hit us up over Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Option #3) Smuttynose Winter Ale (5.8% abv), our take on Belgian dubbel, is just getting to markets now.  We love telling people that this beer is completely spice-free, which allows the spicy Belgian yeast notes and fruity malt flavors to shovel their way to your taste buds. Smuttynose's art department has also created posters, coasters and glassware for select bars and restaurants, so keep your eyes peeled.

Last but not least, it's not too late to see where the magic has been happening for nearly twenty years at our home on Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth.  We're still offering brewery tours on Fridays at 5:30pm and Saturdays at Noon and 2pm.   They're free and you can make a reservation online, to make sure you've got a spot on the tour of your choice.

New Brewery Update- October 28, 2013

Things are starting to pick up at our new, under-construction brewery in Hampton, NH.  Last week, which saw lots of visible changes to the space, was capped off by a visit from New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan (Below) and a busy keg social on Saturday afternoon, with over 100 people stopping by for a pint and look around. 

What's happened recently?  

Quite a bit actually.  Most significantly, the production facility and offices are nearly complete and we're starting to receive pieces of equipment, which you'll see below.

Six 270 barrel fermenters and two 270 barrel bright tanks have arrived from Mueller.  They are being brought in and put into place as this post is being written.

Packaging conveyors and machines are being laid out and installed. This does not include our bottle filler, labelled or rinser that are coming from Germany, but includes machinery that will prepare the cases, six packs and twelve packs to receive filled bottles.

The centrifuge and its control panel (in the picture) have also arrived and will be installed in the near future.  This means we can spin yeast and other haze-casting compounds out of the beer to the extent we wish as well as recovering more beer out of each fermenter. For you, it means clear beer in the keg or bottle.

We've also recently fired up the boilers and incoming water treatment system, which will prepare our process water and the steam we'll use to brew beer.

So, when will it open?  
We don't have a set date yet. There are many timelines that feed into the bigger timeline, which means there are lots of variables between now and then. Our brewhouse and bottle filling equipment should be leaving Europe in November, for what we hope will be an uneventful, month-long, trans-Atlantic voyage in November. Once the state-of-the-art arrives in Hampton, the installation and commissioning process will begin. We don't exactly know how long that will take, but it's safe to assume a few months. The pub and restaurant is slated in late spring, as transitioning production is our main focus right now.

Please make sure you imagine a large asterisk next to this last paragraph. There are plenty of variables that could affect this timeline and we don't want to incur the wrath of the fates...

The place is starting to look (and sound) like a real brewery, but there is still plenty of work to be done. More updates will follow, as will more keg socials.  Thanks for checking in.