Spring Brewing News
My oh my, it has been a while. Sorry it has taken so long to get out a new blog. All kinds of things have been going on here at The Alchemist. Aside from brewing beer like a madman, I’ve been slowly, but surely, making headway on some brewery improvements. As I write this, I’ve got a guy in my brewery putting spray foam on two of my fermenters. On Tuesday, we brought in two additional tanks. One is a new fermenter, which will give me 33% more capacity. The other is a 7bbl Grundy which will enable us to provide hand-pulled Holy Cow, 7 days a week! That will come on line around June 1st, just in time for the summer madness. We will still be offering a rotating cask on Fridays, so, for Fridays and Saturdays, we will have two hand-pulled beers on tap. I am also in the process of installing a glycol system for chilling my beers. This will help my beers to be even better, and will take a load of pressure off me for the summer.
All good things, but not something you really care about. So, on to beer news.
Petit Mutant, and Heady Topper fans should probably come in sooner, than later. Both will be gone in about a week. You won’t see Heady for a while, and the next batch of Petit won’t be released until winter.
There is a little bit of Celia Saison left, so if you want to taste the best gluten-free beer in the world, come and get it. We recently won a Gold Medal at the World Beer Cup for the Celia. The next gluten-free offering is getting brewed in two weeks, Celia Pale Ale.
I have had MANY requests to bring back the IPA, but it was just too bitter in my opinion. So I will compromise with making a 25-30 ibu hop bomb to be released some time in May. We will most likely have a two week gap in our gluten-free offering around the early part of May.
Brecky is back on tap. This is the second batch, and I changed things up a little. Instead of 5.5%abv, it is at 7.5%. This makes a big difference in the final taste, the most obvious is that the new batch is a little drier. All in all, it is still an incredibly satisfying beer. Don’t look for it to come back any time soon, it was a bitch to brew, and I always get a terrible yield. That is the double whammy death knell for any beer. Should be on through May.
Sterk Wit will be around for a few more weeks. This is one of my favorite batches so far.
Coming down the line are a couple of old favorites. When the Heady Topper is gone, we will be releasing this years batch of Shut The Hell Up!. An American mild ale coming in at 3.8% abv. LOADED with Simcoe hops, and absolutely oozing with the flavor and aroma of pink grapefruit. As always it will be served in a larger glass so that our employees will have the option of offering their indecisive customers a “nice tall glass of Shut The Hell Up”. Good stuff….
Menage a Trois will come on tap when the Petit is gone. This Belgian-inspired strong golden ale has been aging in my cooler for the last ten weeks. Smooth, delightful, and nicely phenolic.
The new batch of Honky is just about done fermenting, and will replace the Sterk Wit. Honky is our house white ale brewed in the traditional manner, using coriander and Curacao orange peel in the kettle. Light and Summery, just in time.
So that is it. Hope this helps.
Drink good beer…..
