New Hoppy Cans

Saturday May 15th we’ll have three fresh beers in cans! You can pre-order through our online store. Below you’ll find details on our new barrel-aging warehouse and upcoming changes to our tasting room service!

Cheater Hops #17: Nelson-Citra, is the same hop combination as Cheater Hops #5, but with a different fermentation and tweaked recipe. One of the realities of brewing at our scale is that even with hop contracts we don’t get to select the specific lots we receive. Two bags of the same variety can smell completely different, and year-to-year consistency from the same processor or farm isn’t assured. Last year our lot of Nelson Sauvin was solid, but a little more green/gunpowder and a little less Nelson-y (i.e., white wine, gooseberry, rhubarb) than we prefer. Scott was chatting with the New Zealand Hops guild about a collab we’re working on and mentioned our disappointment… and some how the result was a pallet of a fantastic lot of Nelson Sauvin showing up at the brewery! We wanted to show it off in Cheater Hops #17 in all its fruity-funky goodness.

Fundle Bundle, our 8.2% all-Mosaic DIPA, is finally in cans! Mosaic is one of the few hops that we almost never seem to get a bad lot of. On top of that it works well both in the kettle and for dry hopping. We love its blend of fruity (berry) and dank flavors and this beer shows them off! We used a combinationof traditional pellets and concentrated Cryo as a way to add depth and intensity. 

Finally, Shadows Blacker, is a very different stout from the last few we’ve canned. The base is essentially a German Doppelbock brewed with Munich, Vienna, and Pilsner malts and fermented with the lager strain harvested from Sapwood Kellers. The only aberration from tradition was extra German chocolate malt. The result is rich and bready, with a clean coffee aroma. A little sweet and a little bitter. We probably could have called it a Baltic Porter or an Imperial Schwarzbier, but we opted for Doppelbock Stout as it is too roasty and bitter to fit either of those styles. As always we view beer styles as useful for discussion and explanation, rather than something to strictly adhere to!

A Slow Return to the Before Times

With the recent directives from the CDC and Governor Hogan we are excited to get the tasting room back to running the way it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we’ll be taking our time to make sure we do it as safely and smoothly as possible. We ask for your patience and understanding during the transition. This weekend we’ll increase the seating at the bar, but if you aren’t comfortable sitting next to a stranger, we’ll still have plenty of amply-spaced tables inside and out. Next week we’ll resume serving beer in glass glasses (although it’ll still be plastic-only outside). 

The extra tank capacity we added last fall will continue to allow us to have plenty of beer in cans and on draft. We’ll still offer online pre-orders, or you are also welcome to walk-in. In addition to a small amount of distribution, we’ve recently started selling beer and cider at the Clarksville Commons Farmers Market and Braglio Farms (Randallstown). 

We’d hoped that our new barrel cellar would be available for private events, but that will have to wait as we figure out the licensing. It is in the same building as our brewery, but doesn’t share a wall. While the federal government considers this continuous, Maryland does not. As a result it is licensed as a storage facility rather than a part of the brewing license for the original space. 

More May Releases

Next weekend we’ll release two more beers in cans: Double Citrus Sorbet (essentially Shard Blade DIPA with a blend of fresh citrus zest and Madagascar vanilla beans) and Hedge Trimmer (our English Summer Ale). The last weekend of May we’ll have our next bottle release, Bestagon (a sour red ale aged in gin barrels and then refermented with thyme honey from Spain).

For June we have cans of a sour beer with mangoes and passion fruit, an imperial stout with bourbon-barrel-aged maple syrup and coffee, the return of Snip Snap, and the first release of Snip Snap Black (our first Black DIPA)! Plus bottles of a dark sour with black currants and red wine grapes!

Cheers!

Mike & Scott

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