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 #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)

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

 
 

 

2008 Scotch Ale & Really Old Brown Dog

Well, it looks like we’ve made it through the Summer of Sans Hops. We received our first shipment of 2008 harvested Cascades last week and it was almost enough to make this old brewer cry. The initial reports are of a bumper crop and it looks like we’ve turned the corner on the hop shortage. Of course the prices haven’t come down yet, but I guess expensive hops are better than no hops. Even though new hops are slowly arriving we’re still have a few malt forward beers lined up in the Big Beer Series.

Right now we have our Scotch Ale bottled and in the stores. This is a classic Scottish style ale which we’ve brewed with a touch of smoked grain. Last year we tried peat smoked malt, but returned this year to a beech wood smoked malt as we felt it added a smoother character.

Next up will be the long awaited return of the Really Old Brown Dog Ale. This beer was initially brewed in honor of our friend and mascot, the late Olive Francis Egelston. The original batch was more in the vein of a brown porter / old ale. We’ve revised the recipe to be more like an old ale / English barleywine. It’s fermenting away right now and smells amazing. We’re planning on finishing the beer with a few weeks on some port soaked oak chips. I have really high hopes for this beer and can’t wait to check out the blend of big malt notes with the port wood. As we head into winter here in New England I can only imagine how great this beer will be on a cold evening. You should be able to see this beer in stores by mid-December.

Cheers,

David

Working through the Hops Shortage

So it seems that the experiment with strategic hopping of our Big A IPA worked out well. I think that beer came out great and we’ve been hearing real positive feedback. I’ll be heading down to the Publick House in Brookline for the 5th Annual HopHead ThrowDown this Saturday to personally see how the Big A stands up to this countries best DIPA’s. Man, do I ever stop working? It’s tough, but dern it, someone’s gotta do it.

Luckily we got our creative hop juices flowing as we’re starting to make some changes to our Finest Kind as certain varieties become scarce. After dropping an obscene amount of money we were able to secure an extra amount of Magnum so our bittering addition hasn’t changed too much. We’ve decided to use some Super Styrians as a substitute for the Simcoes we were adding with the Magnums in the bittering addition. This was mostly done to save the Simcoes for the flavoring additions where that hop can really shine. As Simcoes are incredibly tight right now we’ve starting blending some Centennials into the flavor additions. We’ll run out of those and start to look at Summits, Glaciers, and Nuggets depending on what kind of horse trading (or straight up theft) we can do. Our whirlpool addition changed a bit as well as we’re now blending Cascades, EKG’s with the Santiams we’ve always used. The dry hopping has remained the same with Amarillos adding their distinctive aroma. The first batch is tasting great and should be out in the stores in the next few weeks. As we get closer to harvest and supplies run low we may have to make some other changes. It’s certainly been a challenging year but thankfully early indications are pointing to a great hop harvest this year. Maybe even a bumper crop. Hopefully that happens but we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

DY

Note, Dave's post was originally written in mid-July. Recent signs point to an excellent hop harvest, which is taking place at this very moment, but there is still a good deal of uncertainty in the market. Stay tuned...