One of my favorite spots in Denver’s excellent beer scene is re-booting the saison and naming it Collete and making it available in six-packs.
Heavy Seas + Home Brewers =
I love collaborations and I love these pro-am get togethers even more. Widmer has a great relationship with the Brew Crew in Portland and on the other side of the country you have this…
“Winners from our 2009 Letter of Marque Homebrew Competition will work along side our brewers to create this one time special release. Letter of Marque will feature a different beer every year selected from our national homebrew competition. Historically, a Letter of Marque was a document that made a Pyrate a legitimate professional. Hence, our Letter of Marque makes a home brewer a legitimate professional as well!”
Bridgeport – Highland Ambush
Reserve beers or special one-off’s are one of the reasons why craft beer is so great. And one of the series’ that I follow is the Big Brews from Bridgeport. Well, here comes one to please the BeerAdvocate crowd, who love it when the label says “barrels” & “bourbon”.
“First brewed in the 1980s as a special beer for the BrewPub at BRIDGEPORT Highland Ambush is making its triumphant return more than 20 years later. Stuart MacLean Ramsay, then pub manager, conceptualized the brew to pay homage to his Scottish heritage. This year’s Highland Ambush takes inspiration from the original ale using NW pale ale malt along with a Scottish crystal and roast malt. The hopping rate of Highland Ambush has been toned down to help highlight the complementing vanilla from the American oak bourbon barrels and caramel-toffee malt nuances. Reddish-Brown in color, Highland Ambush will warm the coldest of toes and noses this holiday season.”
Aged LSD
from the brewers at the Old Lompoc….
BOURBON BARREL AGED LSD
Save the date for the next big party – we’ll be releasing our Bourbon Barrel Aged LSD at Lompoc Sidebar on Friday, February 5th from 4 to 9 pm. Brewed in May of last year, this beer was aged in Bourbon barrels for five months and cellared for an additional three. It has a malty body with slight raisin and vanilla flavors. Look for it in bottles and on tap – 8.5% ABV.
8-4-1
On the heels of Treblehook comes news of this Redhook addition….
Redhook Brewery will release the next beer in its Limited Series, 8-4-1 Expedition Ale, in sometime in March.
The tiny print on the label reads, “Hand crafted by eight brewers working in four teams, this Imperial Brown Ale was developed from their individual recipes carefully blended into one distinctive ale. Rich and flavorful, brewed with cherry-wood smoked malts and brown sugar.”
Brau Brothers
When you think of Minnesota do you think of snow, Brett Favre or this…”A 10% ABV stout in a corked and caged 750ml bottle. Aged in oak, brewed with Belgian candy sugar and estate grown hops.”
I saw this on the Four Firkin’s website. If they ever decide to ship beer. I will take a pounding on the old credit card.
Abrasive
Not my posts (hopefully), no this is another Surly beer added to their line-up of canned beer. I have yet to mark Minnesota off my list and cans are lighter than bottles. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge.
from the new Surly website… “Pale in color, this over-hopped, under-brewed Double IPA has almost twice the amount of hops & malt crammed in the can.”
news from Deschutes
From the Deshchutes team…
This ‘Super Jubel’ was discovered by accident two decades ago when a clumsy burglar didn’t realize the weight of his stolen keg of Jubelale. He dropped it outside to freeze in the season’s sub-zero temperatures – only to be discovered the next morning by Gary Fish, Deschutes Brewery owner. More than half the liquid in the keg had frozen and the remaining beer was a very cold, highly concentrated ‘Jubelale on steroids.’ It was so good that the brewers set about recreating it, coming up with an annual ‘Super Jubel’ that is aged in oak barrels. A limited amount has been available on tap every year, 2010 will be only the second time that the brewery has bottled up this brew for sale. The first time it was available by bottle was a special millennium edition in 2000.”
canned Fearless
Fearless is in Estacada, Oregon (near where I grew up) and it is one of the breweries that I truly want to visit. Their newsletter just made this announcement…
“Scottish Ale in Cans? Some of you have been around the pub when we were battling with the ten thousand little details involved with this. I’m sorry if I inflicted some of the frustration upon you! Yes, it’s true. The Federal government has approved our label and allowed us to go ahead with our plans to sell our Scottish Ale in 16oz cans. This newsletter group is the first to get the official information about this. The canning line is in place and we are working on getting the cans manufactured right now. Hopefully we will have the cans here and ready to fill in February. You will be the first to know all the details as they become available.”
Lost Abbey – Framboise de Amarosa
As opposed to quite a few beer geeks, I like fruit beers. When done well they are (heresy) better than high abv Stout bombs. So as I perused the Lost Abbey 2010 release schedule, this beer really stood out…
“Framboise de Amarosa. This is a barrel aged raspberry beer that has been aging in our distribution warehouse since last summer. In July, we had farm fresh raspberries delivered to our brewery and they went directly into all manners of barrels. And because it didn’t have enough Raspberry character, we added more fruit to the barrels in November.”