For those of you following along at home, we've got a few Short Batch releases coming up over the next few months: Straw-Barb Short Weiss and "TBD." Both of these beers have been delayed due to registration and approval processes at the Tax and Trade Bureau. Here's the deal:
If a brewery makes a beer with ingredients and processes that are outside the accepted lists, that brewery has to file a "statement of process," explaining what other ingredients were used and how they've used them. Once that's approved, the said brewery must then apply to register the label for the brand, which they have to do with all new beers.
In and of itself, this is nothing new; we've been following this procedure for years, but two changes outside of our control are really putting the brakes on the paperwork flow.
1) There are now over 2500 breweries in the country and lots of them are making beers with atypical ingredients and processes, so that means paper work queues and quoted wait times of 45 business days.
2) The federal budget situation has led to staff cuts and retirements at the TTB.
So with more work and less people to do it, these two beers (see below) are sitting in limbo. Going forward, we'll adjust our schedule to accommodate the uncertainty. We're sorry for the delays; we're really excited about these beers.
Beer #1: Straw-Barb Short Weiss; Light, tart, refreshing, brewed with real lactobacilus, strawberries and rhubarb. We expect this to be the first release and we've pledged to send this to the Great American Beer Festival, so our fingers are crossed.
Beer #2: A still-unnamed collaboration with Chef Jamie Bissonette (of Boston's Coppa and Toro) , which would have been the first "TBD" on the schedule. A riff on a Belgian witbier, Chef brought up spruce tips, kaffir lime leaves and 25 pounds of grapefruit zest to add to a traditional grain bill and yeast situation. You should have smelled the brewhouse that day...
So we'll keep you posted on the release dates as the evolve. In the meantime, we're looking forward to Rhye IPA, which drops on August 19.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Bureaucratic Purgatory and Short Batch Beers
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Cluster's Last Stand Events in Western MA and New Hampshire
The Cluster's train rolls on! You can find our Stone Brewing Co. collaboration beer at the following places; all of which are wonderful spots that you should visit again...
July 25: Cluster's Last Crawl-Seacoast, visit some of our Short Batch accounts, pay as you go and join or bail as you please. Smuttynose folks will be out and about to drink and schmooze at some of our favorite ale vendors.
5pm The Black Birch
6:30pm The Portsmouth Brewery
8pm the Press Room at 8pm.
July 31: Cluster's Last Crawl- Portland, ME; Just like the one in Portsmouth, we'll stop in some of Short Batch accounts for a night of old school, hoppy goodness.
5pm The Great Lost Bear
6:30pm Novare Res
8:00pm LFK
9:30pm Nosh Kitchen Bar
Aug 1: Julio's Liquors, Westborough, MA; 4pm-6pm, Smutty/ Stone Tasting and Cluster's bottle Release
Aug 1: Dive Bar, Worcester, MA; 8pm-11pm, Smutty/ Stone Collaboration night at the Dive (3 beers each on tap plus Cluster's)
Aug 7: Provisions, Northampton, MA; 4pm-6pm, Smutty/ Stone Tasting and Bottle Release
Aug 7: Northampton Brewery, Northampton, MA; 6pm-8pm, Cluster's Last Stand Cheese Pairing
Aug 7: Sierra Grille, Northampton, MA; 8pm-10pm, Cluster's Last Stand Tapping
Aug 12: Plan B, Springfield, MA; 5pm Cluster's Last Stand Tapping
We'll have more information about events in other places coming soon. Please stay tuned...
Monday, July 15, 2013
Cluster's Last Stand releases at Smuttynose July 19 and goes to other places too...
So last month, Greg Koch from Stone Brewing Company joined us to brew 30 barrels of Cluster's Last Stand, a beer that recreates the original, right-after-Prohibition Ballantine IPA recipe, as found in Mitch Steele's, epic book on India Pale Ales. You can see from the ingredient list below that Cluster's Last Stand truly isn't your everyday IPA, but we just drank some during the bottling run and it's just as delicious as anything out there on the market today.
| Smuttynose DoBrO David Yarrington (L) and Stone CEO and Founder Greg Koch (R) mashing in Cluster's Last Stand |
We are releasing our small allotment of bottles at Smuttynose on Friday, July 19 in conjunction with our brewery tours. We'll sell them until they're gone.... $9 a bottle. We do take reservations for tours and bottles will be available for folks that don't take the tour, starting at 5:30. That being said you really should see this place before we shut the doors later this fall.
If you can't make it to Heritage Avenue on Friday, there are other options. Boston's take place on the 23rd at Craft Beer Cellar from 5pm-7pm where bottles will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and then on to Lord Hobo for a keg tapping. We're curious to see how long it will take to kick. Smuttynose's DoBrO David Yarrington will be on hand for both events with Stone's Jeff Nelson and Smutty's Joe Grotto.
Attendees at the Southern New Hampshire Brew Fest will also be able to sample Cluster's Last Stand at one of New Hampshire's best beer fests, put on by the good folks at White Birch Brewing. It's on July 26-27.
More events are being planned and we'll keep you updated here on our blog.
8.3% abv 62 IBU's
Malts: North American 2-Row, Flaked Maize, Munich 10L, C-60
Hops: Bittering-Cluster, Flavor- Brewers Gold and East Kent, Dry Hop- Bullion
Yeast: White Labs WLP-001 American Ale (widely rumored to be the original Ballantine strain)
Monday, June 24, 2013
Rolling Out Indiana
Smuttynose Indiana Rollout Events
Cavalier Distributing of Indiana are kicking off their distribution of Smuttynose beer over the next few weeks with this brilliant slate of events. It's a heck of welcome for us; these events are all over the state! If you've got friends in the Hoosier State, please spread the word; Smuttynose is coming in a few days.
Wednesday, June 26th
300 N Weinbach Ave
Evansville, IN
Bottle Tasting 4pm-6pm
2100 W Franklin St
Evansville, IN
Tap Assault/Pint Night 6pm-??
58 Campbell St.
Valparaiso, IN
Tasting 7:30pm-9:30
Thursday, June 27th
617 E Lewis & Clark Parkway
Clarksville, IN
Promo 5pm-7:30pm
715 W Riverside Drive
Jeffersonville, IN
Tap Assault/Pint Night 5pm-??
1 W US Highway 30
Porter, IN
Tasting 3pm-5pm
219 S. Main St.
Goshen, IN
Tap Assault 6pm-??
Friday, June 28th
110 Knable Lane
New Albany, IN
Bottle Tasting 5pm-7pm
210 S. Main
Crown Point, IN
Tasting 7pm-9pm
3312 Plaza Drive
New Albany, IN
Smuttynose IPA, and Robust Porter will be draft feature all day.
Saturday June 29
503 Broadway
New Haven, IN
Tap Assault 5pm-??
Saturday, July 6
3030 45th St
Highland, IN
Tap Assault 8pm
Friday, July 12
8103 Taft St.
Merrillville, IN
Tasting 3pm
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
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 20th
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)
Thursday, May 30, 2013
View from the Top (of Towle Farm)
Check out these aerial photos of our new brewery!
The main brewery building is now weather-tight. Floors have been poured and interior finishes are being installed. The permanent electrical connection is live, while other utilities are coming online soon. The farmhouse-to-pub conversion is completely framed out and exterioir work is under way.
Other elements are coming together as well. Our new beehives have been populated and the apple orchard is in middle of it's transformation, but we're most excited about our new brewhouse which will arrive from Krones, a German firm, in early September. If you've seen our current brewhouse, imagine one twice the size, with twice the number of vessels and lots of consistency-making automation. It's like the brewhouse version of a Ferrari-BMW hybrid- quality engineering, strong dependability and high performance. A new bottling line is being built in Italy right now. The schedule currently projects November as when we'll start brewing.
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| The sections from right to left are: the brewhouse, the cellar and the main entrance, which is in front of the packaging line, and warehouse. The office is just above the main entrance on a second floor. |
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| The building by the trees, on the right, will be the pub. |
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| A view of the main drive. We thought we'd start showing you that now. |
Stay tuned for more updates and more delicious beer.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
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.
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| 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
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
2013 Smuttynose Farmhouse Ale
Shipments begin on May 28!!!
Farmhouse ales are less of a style and more of a loose branch on the beer family tree, originating in the agrarian borderland shared by France and Belgium. When farm owners needed to provide nourishment and compensation to seasonal farm workers, beer was an obvious part of the package, since they were already growing many of the ingredients. The humble origins of these beers meant that they were brewed with whatever ingredients were on hand. This lack of convention has lead to breweries that specialize in or even focus exclusively on saison-style beers, like Oxbow in Maine and Fantome in Belgium.
We don't work on a farm now, but we will be before the year is done. In this spirit of change, we've tweaked the Farmhouse Ale a little bit this year, adding a small amount of sage. The result is slightly amplified fruit character, so don't be afraid that we've completely recreated the beer.
As always, Smuttynose Big Beers are released in limited amounts. The next two releases are Homunculus, in early July and Rhye IPA, a new release featuring copious amounts of rye malt and the Falconer's Flight hop blend, in August.
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