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!

Straw Barb, Big A, Scotch Ale and Keg Socials

Big A IPA (9.8% abv), Our international award winning double IPA, begins shipping on September 16. It'll be available on draft and in four packs of 12 ounce bottles. If you want a preview of it, stop by Smuttynose for a little beer shopping or a brewery tour.

Straw-Barb Short Weisse (3.5% abv), our strawberry rhubarb Berliner Weiss, has made it through the TTB approval process! Bottles will be available starting at Smuttynose on September 20 and the rest of the batch will begin shipping on September 23. The bottle conditioned 750ml bottles will retail for $12 at Smuttynose. Still no word on how the Jamie Bissonette collaboration beer is working its way through the system; we'll share updates when we have them.

Smuttynose Scotch Ale (8.2% abv) begins shipping October 7. Rich, malty and slightly smoky, this year's batch has a percentage of red wine barrel-aged Scotch Ale blended in. Shipments begin October 7, but if you have trouble finding our Big Beers, you can always subscribe to the series.

Other news:  We've been hosting casual keg socials at our new home in Hampton. They're nothing fancy; have a beer, take a look around and enjoy a civilized transition into the weekend. We announce each social over Facebook and Twitter a day or two before they happen. In fact, there's one tomorrow (September 6) at 4pm.

Durty is back!

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2013 Smuttynose Short Batch Redux: Durty

At Smuttynose, we’re sensitive folk and we listen to our customers.  A lot of people really liked Durty when it was first released in December of 2012, so we brewed it again. Durty is a big, hoppy, brown ale that’s got caramel and biscuit flavors from malt and a counterpoint of piney, resinous hop flavor and fruity hop aroma. We did our best to repeat the first release, but due to hop availability (or lack thereof) this batch is a little bit different. That’s ok though, we’re still really damn happy with the beer and we hope you will be too.

Durty has been packaged in kegs and also a limited run of 22-ounce bottles. The bottles will retail for $9 each and distribution will be very limited. We’ll debut the beer at Smuttynose on Friday, June 14, during brewery tours. Shipments to wholesalers will begin on June 17, 2013. 

After Durty hits the streets, there won’t be another Short Batch until July, when we’ll release our first collaboration brew, Cluster’s Last Stand, an IPA brewed in the classic style of the  early to mid 20^th Century with Greg Koch, from Stone Brewing Company. More details on that soon, on this very blog...

           

Vital Stats

8.5% abv   55 IBU

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

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

Yeast: White Labs WLP-001 California Ale

Production size:  17.3 barrels (78 cases, 66 1/6 bbl kegs)

Why do Luna Moths live for about a week?

Smuttynose Short Batch: Luna Moth

Available starting June 7, 2013

Most biologists would say it's because they don't have mouths, but we're pretty sure it's because they can't drink beer.  Luckily, dear reader, you can drink beer and I assure you, we're all pretty excited about that.

Luna Moth is also the name of our next Short Batch.  It's a hoppy saison, that features El Dorado hops, the only hop with it's own website (seriously, it's www.eldoradohops.com), as a dry hop.  El Dorado infuses stone fruit, watermelon and pear characteristics when used as a dry-hop.  Yum.

Why a hoppy saison?  Pretty simple, really...  Smuttynose only gets one pitch of saison yeast each year for our Farmhouse Ale (shipping on May 28).  We wanted to do a second beer with this unique yeast and we had just gotten a whole shed load of El Dorado pellets.  Everything really came together nicely with this one and we think you'll enjoy it.

See that? Wing-eyes, but no mouth...

We're stocking Luna Moth for brewery tours starting Friday, June 7 and it'll begin shipping to wholesalers on Monday, June 10.  Don't forget you can stop by during the week to buy beer during regular business hours, not just during tours.   Bottle allocations for the trade will be the same as every other Short Batch (~20 cases), which means the bottles will be on the shelves for the lifespan of a luna moth, if that.  All bottles are bottle conditioned, but we don't suggest aging a nice hoppy beer like Luna Moth.

Our next Short Batch release is the return of Durty.  More to come on that batch, but you can expect it in our tour nook on June 17...

Luna Moth Vital Stats

7.2% abv   15 IBU

Malts: North American 2-Row, Wheat, Munich 10L

Hops: Bittering- Magnum, Flavor- 01210 and El Dorado, Dry Hop- El Dorado

Yeast: White Labs WLP-565 Saison

Production size:  30 barrels 

June 2013 Smuttynose Releases

Just a quick update from production, for those of you who like looking forward to what's next...

2013 Farmhouse Ale (~8.7%), our next Big Beers Series release, begins shipping the week of Memorial Day, so it'll likely hit shelves and taps in early June.  We've tweaked the recipe this year with an addition of sage.

Next up, in early or mid June will be another 30 barrels of Durty (~9%) the hoppy, brown ale from our Short Batch Series.  This time around, all the flavor hop additions will be made with Falconer's Flight, a unique hop blend from HopUnion which includes Citra, Simcoe, Sorachi Ace and a few proprietary and experimental varieties.  Like the rest of our Short Batch releases, bottling will be very limited, with the bulk of bottles being available at Smuttynose.  We don't have an exact release date yet, so stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter for updates.

Vunderbar Pilsner six packs and kegs are shipping now and Summer Weizen should be in all markets.  If you can't find them at your local beer store, ask for them!  

Finally, we're happy to show off our new Big Beer Series glassware.  It holds a full pint and the artwork would be perfect for your bicep, if you want a sweet armband tattoo (let us know if you actually get one).  You can get them at Smuttynose right now, though they'll soon be in the retail store at Portsmouth Brewery.  MSRP, $6.

Cheers!

Smuttynose Short Batch: Bloom

Planetary forces are hard to tweak.  If we had more control of the weather, we wouldn't have gotten nearly a foot of wet, heavy snow the day before spring begins.  Well, snow be damned!  It's not stopping us from releasing Bloom, our spring-themed Short Batch, on Friday, March 22 during brewery tours.  Shipments to our wholesalers start on March 25.

This Belgian golden ale was brewed in collaboration with Chef Evan Mallet and his staff from the Black Trumpet Bistro and features flavor and aroma contributions from eight edible flowers not commonly found in beer: yarrow, lavender, chamomile, rose buds, elder flowers, calendula, nasturtium and dianthus, that were grown specifically for this beer by Chef Mallet's staff at Meadow's Mirth Farm.

Flavor-wise, our wood-aging funktifier and frequent-pilot-batch-brewer, Charlie Ireland offered these tasting notes: "flavors of spice and bubble gum from the Belgian yeast, an extremely floral aroma (big shock, I know), while the flowers add their own difficult-to-describe flavor contributions."  You really should just stop by and try it for yourself.

There isn't a lot of Bloom to go around, only 25.5 barrels, and most of that will be put into 86 1/6 barrel kegs.  The remainder of the batch is in a bottled-conditioned, 750ml, cork-finished package.  Bloom bottles will be available at Smuttynose for $15 and we've got a list of most of the other bottle accounts to help you out, should wish to forage your own bottle.

For more information about our tours, please visit: http://smuttynose.com/how_to_find_smuttynose.html

Bloom bottle accounts

New Hampshire:
Route 13 Stateline, Brookline
Barb's Beer Emporium, Concord
Barb's Beer Emporium, Londonderry
The Beer Store, Nashua
Bert's Better Beers, Hooksett
Top Shelf Brews, Hampton
Hampton Falls Village Market, Hampton Falls
Portsmouth Provisions, Portsmouth
Brewtopia, Keene
The Co-op Food Store, Lebanon
Smuttynose Brewing Company, Portsmouth

Massachusetts:
Julio's, Westborough
Table and Vine,West Springfield
Provisions, Northampton
Yankee Spirits, Sturbridge
Spirited, Lenox
Domaney's, Great Barrington
Kelly's Package Store, Dalton
Ball Square Fine Wines, Somerville
Liquor World, Somerville
Craft Beer Cellar, Belmont
Gordon's, Watertown and both Waltham stores
Blanchard's, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury and Allston

Short Batch: ParadoX, a session IPA

We brewed another IPA in the Short Batch Series; this one is called ParadoX.

ParadoX is a beer of the moment.  It's a session IPA, brewed with an experimental hop variety (01210, it's really lemony) and a portion of New England grown malt.  Our brewing staff has wanted to brew one of these for a long time and just about everyone in the company has been waiting to drink one. So, why'd we do it now?

Way back in late 2012, David Yarrington, our intrepid Director of Brewing Operations, was approached to brew an anniversary beer for Mohegan Sun's Sun Wine Fest's 10th anniversary (we've got the whole craft beer crossover thing covered here too), he called up one of our hop brokers to inquire about an experimental variety he'd smelled at hop harvest last fall.  Despite there being only 5 acres of this variety growing in the whole world, we were able to get enough pellets to brew ParadoX.

The Sun Wine Fest, which took place January 25-27 at the Connecticut casino, only needed about two barrels of the batch, so we've got the rest to ship out to beer lovers.  We've saved you the ticket price, but you also missed on the chance to eat some incredible food and meet some really talented chefs.

ParadoX is light bodied, loaded with lemony-citrus hop flavor and very drinkable, but you don't have to take my word for it, here are a few reviews:

Man Drinks Beer
The Boston Globe's 99 Bottles

We'll tap the beer and have 22 ounce bottles for sale ($9 each) at Smuttynose during tours the weekend of February 8. You can reserve spots for our tours on the "Visit Us" section of our website. Shipments to our wholesalers begin the following Monday, February 11.    For our home market, ParadoX will be featured on tap at three February events:

February 14 7pm-9pm Strange Brew, Manchester, NH 
February 25 6pm Black Trumpet Early Bloom event, also pouring Durty, Bloom and barrel-aged    2010 Baltic Porter, Portsmouth Beer Week
February 25 8pm-10pm IPA Night at TJ's, Portsmouth Beer Week

Vital Stats:

5.3% abv   40 IBU
Malts: North American 2-Row, English Pale Ale, Aromatic, Valley Malt C-60
Hops: Bittering- Bravo, Flavor-01210, Dry Hop- 01210
Yeast: American Ale

Production:  30 barrels (100 1/6 bbl kegs, 28 cases)

Food Pairings:  Paradox would be good with certain types of seafood and maybe some salads, but you're going to want to just drink this one on its own.

Here is a list of most of the accounts where you can find ParadoX.  Please remember that we don't know when the accounts will get their beer, or when they'll make it available, only when it leaves our warehouse.  For more information, please contact the account of your choice.

New Hampshire Draft
    Strange Brew, Manchester
    Biederman's Deli, Plymouth
    Popper's at the Mill, Newmarket
    Rudi's, Portsmouth
    The Press Room, Portsmouth
    TJ's, Portsmouth
    The Black Trumpet, Portsmouth
       
New Hampshire Bottles
    Bert's Better Beers, Hookset
    The Beer Store, Nashua
    Barb's Beer Emporium, Concord
    Ayotte's, Hudson
    Brewtopia, Keene
    Route 13 State Line, Hudson
    Portsmouth Provisions, Portsmouth
    Cigarette City, Seabrook
    Johnson's Market, New Durham

 Maine Draft
    The Black Birch, Kittery
    Pi Men Miyake, Portland
    Nocturnem Draft House, Bangor
    Novare Res, Portland

Vermont Draft: 2 logs, destination unknown

Massachusetts Draft
    Armsby Abbey, Worcester
    Plan B, Springfield
    Deep Ellum, Allston
    Meadhall, Cambridge
    Atwood's, Cambridge
    Bukowski's, Cambridge
    Christopher's, Cambridge
    Independent, Somerville
    Sunset Grill, Allston

Massachusetts Bottles
    Julio's, Westboro
    Table and Vine, Springfield
    Spirited, Lenox
    Liquor World, Somerville
    Craft Beer Cellar, Belmont
    Gordon's, Watertown and both Waltham locations
    Blanchard's, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and Allston

New York Draft
    Cole's, Buffalo
    The Tap and Mallet, Rochester
    The Ruck, Troy
    The Bier Abbey, Schenectady

Connecticut Draft
    Gingerman, Greenwich
    Mikro, New Haven

Rhode Island Draft
    Julian's, Providence
              

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.

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)

Smuttynose Short Batch #7, Redux: Strawberry Short Weiss

Smuttynose Strawberry Short Weiss, our take on a Berliner Weisse, is lightly tart, refreshing and incredibly drinkable.  It's also one of our staff's most beloved beers.

We'll be releasing bottles exclusively at Smuttynose on Thursday, August 9 between 5pm and 7pm in our tour nook.  Bottles are $15 each and we've chosen a four bottle limit to try and spread the beer around a little better.  Kegs begin shipping on August 20.

As the name implies, this style is indigenous to the German capitol and serves as a sharp contrast to traditional Bavarian weizen beers.  Traditional Berliner Weisse are highly carbonated, served in special wide-mouthed, bowl-shaped glasses and are packaged without flavoring.  The beer's light body and tart flavors are the result of a partial lactic fermentation.  The lactobacilli consume a portion of the wort sugars, creating lactic acid.  This accounts for the tartness and lightness of body, since the bacteria can consume sugars that brewers yeast can't.  We've chosen to add strawberries to our beer as a nod to the Berliner custom of offering a shot (mit Schuss) of either raspberry or woodruff syrup to the glass of beer.

So, why are we calling this a redux?

Our first Berliner Weiss was brewed in the winter of 2008 just as the "ice storm of the century" glazed a very large portion of the Northeast.  New Hampshire was hit particularly hard, with 400,000 customers losing power, including Smuttynose.  Our plan for the beer was to divide the batch in two, a small lactic fermentation and a large, traditional yeast fermentation that would then be blended back together.  Thanks to poor timing, we lost power right as the yeast batch was at the peak of fermentation, causing a massive temperature spike which filled the beer with headache-inducing fusel alcohols.  The large yeast portion had to be dumped, leaving only seven or so barrels of bacterial ferment.  Running a clever bootleg, our brewers added a healthy slug of ale yeast to complete the fermentation while bags and bags of organic strawberries followed a few weeks later.  The batch was kegged off and distributed with little fanfare. 

When our packaging manager asked about revisiting this for his wedding beer (Congratulations, Chris and Emily!), everyone who remembered the first batch got really excited.  We hope you'll get to try it and see why.

Cheers,

The Smuttynose Team


Strawberry Short Weiss Vital Stats

Starting Extract: 8˚ Plato
Finishing Extract: 1˚ Plato
5 IBU   3.7% ABV

Malts: North American 2-Row, Wheat
Hops: Saaz (for both First Wort and Whirlpool additions)
Yeast: WLP-300 Hefeweizen Ale
Other Ingredients: Natural Strawberry Puree, Lactobacillus

Batch Size: 27 barrels  (30 cases of 750 ml bottles, 121 5.2 gallon kegs)

Short Batch Series #15: Rye IPA

We're pleased to announce the release of our new Rye IPA! 

Bottles will go on sale exclusively at Smuttynose on Thursday, June 28 at 5pm in celebration of New Hampshire Craft Beer Week.  We've only got 20 cases of 750ml bottles (see Tyler's excellent modeling job below).  Bottles are $15 each and come with their own brown bag.  We don't know how sales will be during the release, but if there are any bottles left, they'll be for sale in our retail nook, while supplies last.

The beer uses our best-selling Finest Kind IPA as template, but a few key changes make this beer quite different.

1) We tweaked the grain bill adding 30% rye malt and swapped Aromatic malt for C-60.  Rye adds a spicy note while Aromatic malt adds a more subtle flavor than C-60 but increases malt aroma.

2) We lowered the mash rest temperature a few degrees, giving the final beer less body and more drinkability.

3) We jacked up the dry hopping to four times the level of Finest Kind. You know what that means, big aroma in your olfactory.

See you Thursday, and yes, we will be pouring samples so you can try before you buy.

Cheers!

The Stat Box
7.0% abv
65 IBU
Malts: North American 2-Row, Rye Malt, Crisp Pale Ale, Aromatic
Hops: Bittering-Magnum, Flavor-Amarillo and Simcoe, Dry Hop: Simcoe and Amarillo
Yeast: WLP-001 White Labs American Ale Yeast 
Batch size: 25 barrels

 
 

 

Portsmouth Beer Week Rare Kegs

We've got a number of special beers being tapped during Portsmouth Beer Week.  To help you plan better, here's a short list:

Tuesday, February 28 at the TJ's IPA Tap Takeover, we'll be pouring Finestkind IPA and Big A IPA.  The hops start flowing at 8pm.

Wednesday, February 29 (Leap Day) brings around the annual J. Lohr vs. Smuttynose Beer vs. Wine Dinner at The Blue Mermaid.  Our line-up features rarities like Satchmo, Bourbon Barrel-aged Robust Porter, and the newest batch of Vunderbar Pils.  You will need reservations for this seated, pairing dinner.

Thursday, March 1 will see the new batch of Brett and I, on tap at The Press Room along with 2006 Wheat Wine and Vunderbar Pils.  The show starts at 8 and your cover charge goes entirely to (H)Eat.

On Friday, March 2, The Flatbread Company will be tapping a log of 2007 Farmhouse Ale at 8pm. 

There isn't anything rare on tap for Saturday's Pub Tour, but you won't want to miss it.  The gathering begins at 1pm at The Press Room and the groups depart at 2.

The River House's Brunchfest on Sunday morning will feature another log of Brett and I, in case you miss the Battle of the Bands.

The full details can be found on the official Portsmouth Beer Week website, run by the 2BeerGuys.

We'll see you out and about in town!



 

Bottle Fail

The time has come for another blog post and this one isn't fun to write.

In all our communications leading up to the Satchmo (Short Batch #13) release, we told you all that we'd be releasing a limited amount of caged-and-corked 750ml bottles that would be sold exclusively at Smuttynose. We were very excited about this opportunity; we even visited Allagash during their Ghoulship release to see what we could crib from them.  

Unfortunately, our initial bottling of 750's didn't go as we had planned.  The bottled Satchmo is so limited that we have none to sell.  Our small bottler, which also fills the Portsmouth Brewery's bottles, was not working properly when we ran which meant we had to stop bottling short of our goal.  There were three problems on the day and we're glad to be able to explain exactly what happened with each of them.

Here goes:

1) The fill heads that create a pressure-tight seal over the bottle tops didn't fit over the top of the 750s.  These special bottles have wider tops so that the cage has something to grab on to.  The wider top prevented the head from going down far enough, preventing a proper seal.  Without a proper seal between the fill head and the bottle, the partially-carbonated beer will foam as it's put into the bottle, resulting in under-filled bottles.

2) The sacks of oak chips in the bottling tank impeded the flow of beer through the product line causing interruptions in the pump's prime.  When this interruption occurs, liquid doesn't get pumped and the bottle filler recognizes the error and aborts the fill.

3) We were kegging and bottling Satchmo from the same tank (tank 12), a scenario that has never been a problem when running our main filler.  In this instance it was a large problem as the smaller bottler is much more sensitive to pressure variation on the "product in" line which meant rampant filling errors and the loss of some product and lots of time trouble shooting.

The net result of these three problems was a very short period of less-than-ideal, but still acceptable filling.  Needless to say, we have learned a lot from this experience, but it has left a bit of egg on our face, as we know that some of you were very excited about a bottled Short Batch release.

On behalf of Smuttynose, I apologize for any disappointment this may have caused.  We're also disappointed and maybe a bit embarrassed, but we're doing our best to look ahead to future 750ml bottlings. We hope you are too.

Smuttynose Short Batch #13: Satchmo

"Satchmo," is a collaboration between Smuttynose and Portsmouth's Black Trumpet Bistro.  It's also a collaboration between two fungi, brewer's yeast (sacchromyces cerevisiae) and black trumpet mushrooms (craterellus cornucopioides).  Why on earth would you put mushrooms in a batch of beer?  The answer is simple...

Dave is so skilled at sacking the 'shrooms, he doesn't even need to look while Chef Mallet holds the sack.

The Black Trumpet's Head Chef/Co-owner Evan Mallet approached us about collaborating on a beer.  Being big fans of his award-winning food, it was a no-brainer.  Chef Mallet is an avid mushroom forager (he once showed up for a meeting with mushroom he'd found in our parking lot), so deciding on an angle was incredibly easy; we would make a mushroom beer!  That sounds simple enough but black trumpets can't be cultivated.  After leading his staff on a few foraging expeditions into the woods of Maine, we were well short of the 35 dried pounds that we needed for the 775 gallons of beer.  We were forced to buy the remainder.

Sometimes, you find yourself with a Scarface-like abundance of something.

Best described as a brown porter, Satchmo's base beer doesn't exhibit the roasty notes and black color of our Robust Porter, nor does it have the rich caramelly sweetness of Old Brown Dog; it falls somewhere between the two, but lacks the common taste signifiers of the two styles.  The mushrooms heroically fill that flavor gap with a subtle earthiness and mouthfeel that can only be described as "umami-licious."  

35 pounds of  mushrooms just waiting to infuse their earthiness.

Satchmo also has the distinction of being our first Short Batch beer to be bottled for retail sale.  A limited number of 750ml, caged and corked bottles will be sold exclusively from the brewery's retail nook.  While we don't yet have a sell date or a bottle count, we will be announcing the release through our Facebook page and our email list when it's time to roll them out.

Satchmo Stat Box:    

4.75% abv 

25 IBU

OG 12.5° Plato 

FG: 3.8° Plato 

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

Hops: Willamette 

Yeast: WLP-001 California Ale 

Mojo: 35 Dried Pounds of Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Sherry-soaked oak chips  

Batch Size: 25 barrels (775 gallons)