Posted via email from ithacabeer’s posterous
In honor of the launching of our new website, I’m reviving the Blog!
Today’s a huge day for us, our 11th anniversary! We’re having a shindig at the brewery to celebrate, pouring 09 White Gold(so perfectly fruity tangy right now),TEN(still really resinously hoppy after almost 2 years of confinement in the secret stash), Eleven(while it’s still legal-but more on in another post), and a special sneak preview of Twelve(our upcoming Monastery-style Quadrupel Ale) and serving up some tasty snacks.
In other huge news, we’re having our first ever day of simul-bottling- with one 3-man crew doing about 150 cases of LeBleu and the other rocking out 1,000 case equivalents of CascaZilla. “LeBleu” you say? Yep, it’s finally ready to bottle. It’s a blend of 8 different wine barrels of aged sour beers from 2007, 2008 and 2009 each spiked with 50 lbs of fresh, handcrushed local blueberries this past August. It is a really unique beer, and each of the barrels brought it’s own element to the blend. It’s very sour and dry, brilliantly red colored with a beautiful cap of pink foam and has that unmistakable blueberry aroma. I sampled each barrel and the overall blend while transferring them to the bottling tank, and the sum of parts is really pretty special. For those curious about the name, it’s for our old friend(and 2nd IBC employee) Bret LeBleu. He and his wife Catherine and daughter Audrey moved back to Ithaca this year, and it’s great to have them around…what with all of the brettanomyces and blueberries it just was a natural fit with the beer. Next Friday, we’ll be bottling Twelve…the highest gravity beer we’ve brewed to date, and after a couple of weeks of conditioning, these 2 newest additions to the Excelsior! lineup will be available!
The boys got the new speakers all wired up for an all-new sonic experience of eclectic musical mixing(pretty sure I heard Blues Traveler on one stereo today and Southern Rock on another?), so we should be able to power right through this winter’s annual expansion-during-production-project. Coming soon, a Whirlpool Vessel and another 100 Barrel Brite Beer Tank. Lots more great plans are being laid for our growth over the next few years, with plenty more exciting announcements to come. Welcome back!
Hey all,
I’m psyched about the event we’re doing tomorrow, a 7-course dinner in the private dining room at the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, NY. We’ll be featuring some killer beers(new ones, multiple vintages of old ones, etc.). As usual, the staff there is “cooking up” a ridiculously tasty dinner to accompany our wares. Dan(the owner) and I will be there, tickets are extremely limited(I can’t even get any!). Contact them if you happen to be available or are looking to give the beergeek/foodie in your life a suprise gift! www.nywcc.com
the chief
If you are still aware enough of this blog to be checking in and reading this, then you should definitely come out on the town with us tomorrow night!
Specials at FIVE(5) of our best locals. Free commemorative pint glasses when you buy IBC and special Casks of beer at each of (in alphabetical order):
The Chapter House
Ithaca Ale House
Kilpatrick’s
(the bar formerly known as)Korova
Pixel Lounge
One of these bars will feature a preview of our next new beer, alpHalpHa, it is a NY beer brewed with a lot of local hops and local honey.
One will proudly pour draft Brute. This GABF silver medalist is not to be missed.
One will have cask-conditioned TEN. The Best Beer in New York State*
We will be raffling off a grand prize of Ten cases of beer per year for ten years!
As always, if you see me and mention the blog, I’m buying your first beer!
Shotgun start on the casks at 6PM.
*this depends largely on it’s hedonistic appeal.
Well gang, two more sweaty months have passed and I’m all out of excuses about why I don’t blog more often. We’ve been having a lot of fun on the festival circuit, and this weekend brings my favorite…. Belgium Comes to Cooperstown! The best collection of my favorite sorts of beers together with most of my favorite brewers and some of my favorite beer geeks (you know who you are). There’s even a guy in tights who rides 2 giant horses at the same time. Plop it all down on the most picturesque brewery grounds(shoutout to the Omega-gang) in the US and you ‘ve got a 2-day party that is tough to leave on Sunday. Luckily, they let you stay as late as you like. I like to get home early enough to get to church and apologize to my god for all of the debauchery of the previous nights. No not really, but I do tend to need a nap afterwards.
“But, Chief, I don’t have a ticket!” While I can’t help you there, I can offer a consolation prize. The latest, and most different to date, Excelsior! beer hits the shelves on Friday, August 1st! It has been a slow train coming(9 months), and much anticipated(by us, at least), but it is finally ready for our enjoyment. It’s a doozy. It has a great, ripe aroma and super clean sourness balanced by a touch of honey sweetness and carried off with a nice prickly carbonation. For those of you who know gueuze-lambics, this will be a treat. For those who don’t, think of it as champagne-like. “Brute” is it’s name, and it took nine months to allow the “wild” yeast to do it’s thing and assert these sour flavors. Really, it was quite cool to watch: brettanomyces forms it’s own protective layer (called a pellicle) over the slowly fermenting beer. Lucky for you, I took some photos (not for the faint of heart):
Yep, the contents of that tank sat like that for 9 months! Some of those moldy bubbles were the size of tennis balls. In a nutshell, that slow acting yeast releases more(or at least more pungent) organic acids than it’s mainstream cousins. It’s certainly not for everyone, but those who understand will appreciate it. So if you couldn’t get any Isabelle Proximus or Cuvee de Castleton, don’t fret. We’ve got 250 cases waiting for you, and no limit on how many you may buy.
See you in Cooperstown!