Sunday, September 28, 2008

Oktoberfest Party

We are having an Oktoberfest Party on Saturday October 18th all day long at our Town & Country location. The cool news (from the brewery perspective) is that we will have 8 house brewed German style ales and lagers being served up that day! Here is the current list:

Brewhouse Lager - Munich Light Lager
Hefeweizen - Our German Style Unfiltered Wheat Beer
Kellerbier - Unfiltered Munich Light right off the fermenter
Sprockets Pilsner - German Style Pilsner
Luna de Miel - Vienna Style Lager
Oktoberfest - The Beer the Fest is Named After, an Amber Lager
Dusseldorf Alt - A Copper German Ale
Traditional Bock - A Dark German Lager

More details to follow but you can expect a big tent, lots of sausages and of course...BIER!

River Otter Ale

The last of the River Otter Ale is out of the serving tank and into kegs. We are discontinuing that beer to make room for increased production of our other year round brews and increased variety of Brewer's specials. As I write this it has been pulled from our Town & Country location and the last 7 kegs will get drained at the Oasis. If you still want a keg we can get it for you for a short time but when they are gone they are gone!

In the meantime we will not be replacing it with another pale ale per se although some of the brewers' specials planned are pale ales. We have a glut of German beers for our Oktoberfest party that will be taking up the taps for a while. More on that later...

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Special Guest Beers

We are gearing up for some fun events this weekend between the California Brewers Festival and the Northern California Homebrewers Festival but after all that is over we have a great special release for you at both our pubs.

At 5:00 on Monday, September 22nd we will tap two special guest beers: The Dissident from Deschutes Brewing and Eric's Ale from New Belgium Brewing. Both are sour beers that use a combination of brettanomyces, lactobacillus, and pediocacus for flavor but they arrive at two very different tastes. Oh, and to head off any comments or concerns I want to remind all of you that no pathogens can live in beer so don't let this talk of lactic acid producing yeast and bacteria scare you off from trying a glass.

The Dissident is a Flanders style brown ale that has been aged in wine barrels along with whole Washington cherries and brettanomyces yeast. All of that comes together for a fruity, complex and sour beer.

Eric's Ale is a sour peach beer, much lighter in color than the Dissident that has been aged in barrels with a plethora of sour organisms and whole peaches. All of these critters contribute to a very tart but still fruity dry beer.

Now, both of these ales have fruit in them but don't think of the sickly sweet or artificial fruit flavored beers in the market. These are dry beers with subtle fruit character. Come enjoy them at both of our locations.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Trash & Trinkets Rally Tomorrow (9/9)

Come out to the Rubicon tomorrow morning at 10:30 am for a rally to veto bill AB1245, AKA "Trash & Trinkets". I know it is a work day, but I just dropped everything I had planned tomorrow to get be there and show the Governor that we as small brewers do not support this bill.

Jay summed it up (again) here if you want to read what this bill could potentially mean for us small brewers. Remember this, Anheuser Bush sponsored the bill and they are the ONLY brewery supporting it. This includes domestic big brewers, foreign breweries, microbreweries and every thing inbetween. Let me say it again, they are the ONLY brewery supporting this bill so they can further flex their marketing spending muscles far beyond what a small or even midsized company can compete with. Help us maintain the current gift spending limits and come down to the rally tomorrow.

If you are the kind of person that goes into bars and bottle shops and wishes there were more kinds of beer there then pay attention to this call. “The real loser in the AB marketing game will be the consumer who will likely see reduced choices at their local market,” said Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Small Brewers Association. Make no mistake, this bill will allow big brewers to squeeze out little guys. I hope to see you tomorrow, 10:30 am at the Rubicon Brewing Company at 20th and Capitol.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Brewhouse Lager

Our new beer, Brewhouse Lager, is now online at Town & Country and will be at the Oasis later this week. It is a Munich Light style, very pale and dry with a low hop aroma and bitterness. It is made with all malt, meaning no rice or corn, so it has a bit more body that your typical light lager. The low alcohol and smooth finish make it the ideal beer for finishing out this hot Sacramento summer.

Brewhouse Lager is based on a homebrew recipe that I used to make before becoming a professional brewer that originated from Greg Noonan's book New Brewing Lager Beer. If you are a homebrewer and don't own that book go get it, it is a great resource. I brewed this beer every summer and it made for a great thirst quencher while I was waiting tables and making coffee drinks trying to crack into the world of professional brewing.

So if I may go on a tangent for a minute, I have a new pet peeve which is part of the reason why we named this beer what we did. I am tired of bars calling themselves brewhouses. According to Webster the definition of a brewhouse is:

Brew´house`

n.1.A house or building appropriated to brewing; a brewery.

This really hit home for me when a bar adjacent to the main stage at the California State Fair claimed to be a brewhouse. It was essentially a stand that sold macroswill and one or two craft beers. That example is illustrative of places that have been irking me. They typically have a modest (but not good) selection of beer and NEVER have a brewery on site. They are NOT breweries they are BARS. It just seems to be the hip thing to do right now but for the love of Pete stop calling yourself a brewhouse if you don't make your own beer!!!