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!