Ithaca Beer Brewers Blog

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!

Ok, gang…. I suck as a blogger.

Luckily, I don’t suck as a brewer! Last month we were awarded the F.X. Matt Cup as the best craft beer brewery in New York State. Sounds great right? It gets even better, “Flower Power” IPA was named as the second best beer in New York State, and “TEN” brought home the Gold Medal as the best beer in a tremendous field of Empire State brews! It is really a great honor, awarded and sponsored by the organizers of a terrific annual festival, TAP NY (http://www.tap-ny.com/). The list of past winners is great company to be in, and many of the beers there were really OUTSTANDING.

I had a great time, and *may* have gotten a bit carried away.

But anyway, here’s some summer news:

We are finally entering the Philadelphia market. We’ve taken it slowly in PA for about a year, the response has been awesome and we finally have production under enough control to support this great market (we think). In the next couple of weeks you’ll start to see Apricot Wheat, CascaZilla and 750 ml bottles of “TEN” and “White Gold” along with our variety 12-Packs at purveyors of better beer all around Philadelphia. Ask for it!

Boston area beer lovers will be seeing those same bottle-conditioned beers, and perhaps even sooner. We just shipped off a bunch. Again, the best thing you can do to be able to buy these product(and others like them) is go into your local and demand it.

I’ve been blocking out my summer schedule, beer dinners(specifics to follow), roadtrips, and some great festivals which include…

The American Craft Beer Fest. http://beeradvocate.com/acbf/ we’ll be pouring a great mix of our standards, and some specialties that I’m really proud of.
the Empire State Brewing and Music Festival. http://www.empirebrewfest.com/ Getting down again with the NY posse!

Belgium Comes to Cooperstown. http://www.ommegang.com/index.php?event_view_id=206&event_view=2008-08-01&mcat=3 This will bring the debut of the best sour beer you have ever had, “Brute”.

Our 2nd Annual Ithaca Beer Fest will be on Saturday, Sept 6th. website soon!

These along with a few other unconfirmeds(hey, we have to sleep it off sometime) should keep us pretty busy!

If you are a local, we’ll be pouring a really nice batch  of cask-conditioned Flower Power tomorrow night at Pixel. See you at 7!

That must mean there’s some sort of a tournament with brackety-type things going on, right?  I kid, I kid.  For those of you not already following along at home, the “National IPA Championship” has been going on for the past couple of weeks.

We’ve had a tough draw, but have somehow managed to become a Cinderella story in reaching the Final Four, defeating such giant and seminal IPA brewers like Dogfish Head(in your face, Selders!), Anderson Valley (Take that, NorCal!) and Boulder Beer(where’s your mojo, Marvin?).  Anyway, it’s very exciting and especially gratifying that the judging has been done by other professional brewers.  We must be doing something right!  This weekend brings us a tough foe in Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, winner of the 2007 Alpha King challenge.  Wish us luck.

In other news, this past week brought the long-anticipated release of TEN, our Anniversary Ale.  It’s an exploded version of CascaZilla.

The beer has A LOT going on.  Incredibly aromatic, oily and viscous, slightly woody from the judicious use of some  Bamberg smoked malt, with a sweet and juicy flavor, like cherries.  It’s the biggest and hoppiest (read: most expensive) beer we’ve ever brewed and judging by the reception it has been enjoying in our tasting room and at a couple of cask-nights- it’s a winner.  Come on down and treat yourself .

Facial Hair was also largely eliminated at the brewery this week(for those who haven’t noticed, we brewers can tend to let our grooming go during the long winter).  Bill J. took the opportunity to sport what I like to call a “Trooper”.

It’s amazing what a moustache can do for a man’s self-esteem.

We’re brewing this year’s first batch of Partly Sunny today!  That must mean that spring is upon us.  Don’t forget to reset your clocks tomorrow night…unless you’re one of those nuts who live in Arizona or Hawaii.

This coming week will see the release of Old Habit, 2008.   I’ll be writing about that next.

Loyal readers,

Has it really been a month? Oops, sorry. Anyway, we released the new batch of White Gold last week and it is drinking just great. We dialed up the carbonation a lot (to almost Duvel-type levels) and it feels very alive in the mouth. Bright and grassy dryhop flavor and aroma and a semi-tangy wheat character(about 30%) fills your mouth, and the complex blend of Belgian(Westmalle Abbey), English(Our private strain) and Wild Yeasts throws bunches of fruity esters and spicy phenols into the mix. I like to think that it’s at an intersection where Farmhouse beers, Strong Goldens, Tripels and Witbiers all share some common ground. We’re really proud of it.

Wild Yeast, you say? Yeah, you read it here first… the 1st batch of WG has certainly developed an unintentional wild final fermentation character. Now that it is a year old, the existing stock (a few 1/6 bbls and virtually NO bottles remain in stores) is throwing huge pineapple and tart notes that it just didn’t have for the first 9 months or so. The usual suspect in such cases are wild yeast such as Brettanomyces. Ordinarily, we brewers would think of this as a flaw in a product, but the idea behind the Excelsior! series is “to boldly go, etc…..” and it just happens that we think that this change in the aging product is quite complementary to the base beer. Given the age of the beer is now a year (we ordinarily consider our main product line to expire 3 months after packaging)it has really hit it’s stride in the past couple of months. I advise anyone who still has bottles of this first batch to wait to drink them for as long as you can, and store them at room temperature if you are interested in allowing this tertiary fermentation to continue, the assumption is that they’ll continue on until there’s no sugars at all remaining and those flavor byproducts intensify while CO2 volumes increase. Because it has become such a totally unique beer we cultured some of the first batch and blended the “Wild Yeast” into this new batch at bottling, hoping to help insure that this product ages as gracefully as it’s predecessor. Come on down to the brewery or ask for it at your local bottleshop!

So while I’m on the subject, this week will be a great treat at Pixel….A pin of the new White Gold alongside one of the few remaining 5 gallon kegs of the first batch and we’ll compare and contrast the two vintages. Thursday at 7pm!