A Year In
Info about tomorrow’s can releases is below. First though, we’re almost exactly a year into the worry, quarantines, lockdowns, mandates etc. resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. We were lucky to make it without any employees testing positive (most of us are now vaccinated), but many of us had family members and friends who weren’t as lucky. We just wanted to say thank you to everyone who went out of your way to stop by the tasting room to grab growlers, crowlers, bottles, or cans to drink while talking to friends over Zoom, or in your backyard.
A huge part of the reason we were able to adapt was thanks to our staff. On top of being out front wearing PPE, many of them stepped in to fill crowlers, wash kegs, paint, and a variety of other tasks they don’t usually deal with. There are some numbers at the bottom of the post if you are interested in looking at how our production shifted as a result of the demand moving from in-house to to-go.
For those of you who haven’t been able to make it in, we’re looking forward to seeing you again as things slowly begin to return to normal! We continue to have indoor seating Wednesday-Sunday, and outdoor seating Friday-Sunday. Food trucks are starting to be a regular sight as well (Taco Bar will be here Saturday and The Hotdog Hideout Sunday this week)!
Two Weeks – Five Releases
Tomorrow (Saturday, March 13th), we’re releasing cans of two beers: Danger of Light (6.4% Mosaic extra pale ale), and The New Milkshake (a DIPA with macadamia milk and bananas): pre-order here
Danger of Light, our all Mosaic extra “pale ale” (getting closer to an IPA ) is back in cans for the first time since last June! This version is 6.4% ABV and as always loaded with the dank-berry notes of Mosaic and Mosaic Cryo.
Brand new is The New Milkshake, a collab with our buddy Josey and the rest of the crew from Suspended Brewing (Baltimore, MD). He and Scott are both part of the “Vegan Brewing Mafia” and so we decided to brew a Macadamia “Milk”-shake DIPA with pureed bananas, and vanilla bean paste. We fermented the beer with the unique Bonanza yeast strain from Omega Labs. They took their hefeweizen strain and edited it with CRISPR to remove the gene that creates the clove/spicy notes. We finally dry-hopped with Cashmere and Motueka to provide some lemon-lime citrus notes.
A portion of the proceeds from The New Milkshake go to support Black Vegetarian Society of Maryland and their mission to educate the public, particularly African American and Latinx communities, on the benefits of a plant-based (pure vegetarian) diet.
Upcoming March Release
Next Saturday (3/20) we’ll have three more beers in cans: Hallow Bright (7.1% all-Citra IPA), The Quiet Parts Loud (8.0% all-Simcoe DIPA), and Shelled (11.7% Walnut-Vanilla Imperial Stout). The last Saturday of the month looks to be a couple sour bottles: Pearlized (wine-barrel pale sour with Asian pear juice) and Prosaic (blend of tart saisons dry-hopped with Mosaic).
By The Numbers
We thought some of you might be interested to see how this year (3/20-2/21) compared to the last (3/19-2/20) by the numbers.
Unique Recipes Brewed
2019 – 55
2020 – 56
Variants Created
2019 – 97
2020 – 103
Beer Canned/Bottled
2019 – 3,092 gallons
2020 – 14,911 gallons
Beer Kegged
2019 – 15,762 gallons
2020 – 6,201 gallons
Draft Pours
2019 – 100,103
2020 – 32,547
As you can see the biggest change for us was how we packaged and served beer rather than how much we brewed. This time last year we’d still only canned four batches (and three of those were contract brewed elsewhere). Since our first run with a mobile canner last April we’ve put 35 different beers into cans! We’ve been able to send a little of that into distribution at Maryland liquor stores, but as more beer goes into kegs for the tasting room there will be less beer going into cans!
Cheers,
Mike & Scott