Progress: August

Sapwood Cellars has finally made it to the most important step towards opening, brewing beer! August saw our first four batches:

1. Test batch to propagate our house saison culture (and homebrew wort giveaway).
2. The inaugural batch of House Saison (aka Hazeon)
3. Rings of Light our Citra-heavy pale ale
4. Ziparillo a bright and fruity wheat beer with Amarillo

You can see the brewing process for the House Saison on our YouTube channel. The combination of brewer’s yeast and fruity Brettanomyces we pitched was refined and battle-hardened over four years working in Mike’s basement. We’re excited by the way it tastes after two weeks in the fermentor – pepper and citrus, and expect it to only get more interesting over the next month. Some of the batch is headed into Sauvignon Blanc barrels for a spring 2019 release – potential first bottles for those in the Wood Club!?

We’ve got a few more batches to brew (juicy IPA, spicy rye pale ale, and a tropically-hoppy Double IPA) not to mention a lot of work to carbonate and keg all the initial batches. Things are looking good for soft opening the last week of September! Any free time we have before then will be spent preparing the tasting room for all of you! We’ve got some great custom art pieces en route, like these two by Dustin Sinner (who also happens to be Scott’s cousin)!

Plus an over eight-foot slab of quartersawn sycamore for a sign behind the bar. Bob of RRWW will be cutting our logo and name out of walnut and mounting it all!

We’re now close enough to opening that we’re ready to start interviewing bartenders! If you’re the sort of person who likes everything about beer (other than brewing and drinking it) please apply. Our days of operation will be Thursday-Sunday at first, so don’t quit your day job. While professional tap-jockey experience is a plus, so is being a beer nerd private citizen. Read more about the job and how to apply here.

Thanks for following along on this journey with us. Hopefully in a month you’ll have the chance to stop by to see the space and try a couple of our beers!

Cheers!

Mike & Scott