On Saturday, April 3rd (2pm – 3pm), in conjunction with the Vermont Arts Council and its on-going Art of Action Program, we will be hosting a presentation entitled “The Art of Fermentation“.  The Arts Council’s description is very good:

Presentation on the history and art of fermentation, with The Alchemist’s Executive Chef Jeff Lang, Brewer John Kimmich, and Red Hen Bakery owner Randy George.  Samples of kombucha, kimchee, bread and beer.

The modest price of admission is 5 dollars, and the proceeds collected will go to Revitalizing Waterbury and The Waterbury-Duxbury Food Council.

Seating is limited to 30 people.

We are trying something new here as well.  To make purchasing a ticket as easy as possible, we will be using the PayPal system.  Please note that in clicking the button, you will be taken off our site to compete this transaction.

Thank you in advance for your interest in supporting local initiatives!

We will be closed for the following days this coming holiday season:

• Christmas Eve:  December 24
• Christmas Day: December 25
• New Year’s Day: January 1

Sometime during the holiday season, or very shortly thereafter, John also has some things in the pipeline that will be coming to fruition, namely a new batch of Beezlebub, the return of Petit Mutant, and an all new mild ale.

In the meantime, we’ve sure got lots of snow and look forward to seeing you as we kick off this winter season.

Happy Holidays!

Jen and John are once again hosting our annual Employee Party!

They have rented the pavilion up at Hope Davey Memorial Park in Waterbury Center for the day.  Lots of great stuff to do up there:  softball, frisbee golf, our annual dunk tank extravaganza, and, yes!, barbeque.  They’ve put together a great menu for us all to enjoy:

• Open Raw Bar courtesy of Stowe Seafood
• Ribs from Sugar Mountain Farms
• Chicken from Misty Knoll
• Potato Salad
• Greens from Pete’s Greens
• Slaw and fresh vegetables courtesy of the Stowe Farmer’s Market (thanks Jen!)

Thanks for understanding, and pray no one gets hurt!

Updated: Apparently someone thought “Employee Party” meant the public was invited.  With all due respect, it’s a private party.

Saturday, July 4th, we will be closed so the Alchemist staff and families can go out and enjoy themselves celebrating this holiday.

Sunday, August 9th, we will be closed so the Alchemist staff and families can go and celebrate what promises to be the biggest wedding of the season:

Jennifer Elaine King and Kenneth McLean Gardner

are tying the knot that Sunday.  It promises to be quite a day!  Everyone ’round here and across New England is excited, happy and lining up designated drivers.

Our heartfelt congratulations and best wishes go out to our two dear friends.

In the meantime………we’ll continue to brew, pour, and cook so come on in out of the heat.

Severed Head Hops

Just wanted to send out a quick announcement.  The Alchemist has joined the 21st century and now has a Twitter page.

I will now be able to keep all of our loyal customers up to date with real-time announcements of fresh batches of beers being released.  ANY time I put on a fresh batch of ANYTHING, you can receive a text message to your mobile phone.  Missed that last cask of Heady Topper?  Didn’t know about the 5 gallon keg of year old Misinformation I released?  Not any more.

All you have to do is go to the following link and sign up to follow our account.  I promise not to annoy you with random messages of self-absorbed bullshit.  This is strictly to be used for notifying beer lovers of fresh beer.

If and when you decide to create an account, you will be able to forward all of my messages to your cell phone by registering your phone in the settings section.  I hope this works flawlessly for everyone.  Just to cover all my bases, I’ve also had a live Twitter feed embedded within our website too.

It should be much easier for us.  And really, isn’t that what matters most…

Alchemist Pub and Brewery on Twitter

p.s. the severed head in this most recent hop photo is for point of reference and scale, and was most definitely not taken from the shallow grave under our kitchen….shhhhhh

Though it’s not the sort of project where, when everyone returns on Tuesday, May 12 you’ll walk through the front doors and go wow!. Iit’s still rather important to all of us and we’re very excited about the changes it’s going to bring to The Alchemist.

You see, we’re completely renovating and re-doing our kitchen.  The flooring is going to be all new, some of the current equipment will be replaced, and we’re buying some brand-new equipment.  All of this working towards bringing you guys even better food.  Jeff is working on some really great ideas to bring to our menu through this new equipment, which we’re all really excited about too.

Our apologies for any inconvenience, our thanks for your patience, as we just really want to bring you the best beer and food in Vermont!

(Updated: story reflecting updated and accurate dates)

As to the site itself, we’re pretty much back 100% and running smoothly.  Just one more database related job to be taken care of, as well as the following cool story.

I was talking to Jeff last night during service, and he mentioned he had a friend back home in Cincinnati (so I just kept my mouth shut and let him think I believed him ) who, through some sort of grace and good luck had somehow managed to save to his computer all of the past and lost blog posts that John and Jeff had made on the old site.  Which is an unbelievable bit of good luck for us here!

So as I understand it, they’re being forwarded to Jeff who will then forward them here to be re-published.  Thanks a ton both to Jeff and our guardian saviour.

Update:  Apologies if, sometime during the morning of 12/11/08 you came across a totally crashed site.  That was on purpose!  Not only have I now installed a database back-up system, the entire site management software has been updated.  Never say never, but should be smooth sailing from here on out.

We’re back up and running.  There’s still a few pages and administrative details that need to be hammered out, but they are getting done.  So the site will be back almost completely sooner rather than later.  I say almost, as sadly some of John and Jeff’s earlier blog posts are now gone .  I did manage to dig up a couple of them, and I’ll be copying them back here.

Most importantly though, John’s brews haven’t stopped flowing and Jeff’s food hasn’t stopped amazing, so please come on in!

Thanks again for your patience.