Well, it's happened again. We totally got sold out of beer and couldn't keep up. So we're doing a crazy three-batch-in-one-and-a-half-days brewing session starting tomorrow at 3.30am. It's going to be a bit crazy, and Dann's going to be a zombie by the end of it. I'll be trying to hold the fort together/down/whatever.
We've had a great couple of weeks, launching Once Upon a Time (now in bottles in stores!) and then going to NYC for lots of fun events, then launching Fluffy White Rabbits (in bottles starting the end of this week) and now brewing like mad. It's all good. We also worked with a graphic designer for the first time which was a good thing to do, Jen Soares took some of our artwork and made something amazing out of it so we're excited about that!
We are very lucky to have you all out there drinking our beers and talking about us. Thank you!
I'm going to make a new banner for the fests this summer: if any of you out there fancy getting busy with some sewing, let me know because I'd love to incorporate some other people's handiwork into it! It's going to go on the front of the table at the fests: Dann convinced me not to hack up our old banner, which I'm quite glad about in retrospect. So let me know by emailing martha@prettythingsbeertoday.com if you want to help. We will certainly reward any contributors with beer!! I have a couple of people already so I'm excited to work on this! Sometimes it's great to get back to our little creative projects, because they're really the heart of Pretty Things.
Alright, we're up early... very early tomorrow, so I'm off to sleepytime.
People, that was not sane. 178 years after this beer was first brewed on Brick Lane in London, our facsimile titled "Once Upon A Time: MILD" must have stirred imaginations! You arrived in the dozens, if not hundreds. You waited in the rain. You dressed in period costume (or as near to it as you could) and really elevated to the spirit of this event. Yesterday Deep Ellum WAS a city center London pub circa 1832.
So we had two casks. One is shown below, a wooden "pin", lent to us for the day by Will and the great folks at Cambridge Brewing Company. That was tapped by Max, stilled on the bar, and poured via gravity. Below, in the cellar we had a full firkin of the ale served via "beer-engine" to the upstairs bar. This is an historically appropriate method: we checked, and the beer engine was invented in 1797. Many of you were much smarter than me and thought to order from both casks. Thankfully you're also very kind since many of you allowed me to taste both from your glasses, and shared your opinions on the difference as well. Soon you'll have an opportunity to try this beer in a third milieu: bottle.
I did my best to set the stage and speak about the beer. Even without the benefit of my first pint I found it quite difficult to get the English language out quickly! But in some ways I'm very much an outsider with this beer. It's true: this beer was sort of like a "contract-brew". I was only able to take it from paper to liquid, no chance for interpretation, no attempts to gild the lilly. In that sense it was an exciting beer to make, or watch unfold as it were.
Watching everyone having such a great time, meeting many of you was a true pleasure.
Max and the retinue at the bar slung ale to us hoards as we expanded out back to the "treehouse". What larks!
You all rock. Let's do this again sometime!
Sorry it's been a while! Sometimes we have a quiet spell and don't want to bore you, the next minute we're so busy we don't have a second to write anything down. Today has certainly been one of those days, but we wanted to update this blog!
Today we packaged and labelled our new/old historical Mild Ale. Just in time, because we're launching it this Saturday! Some got shipped today so you might find it starting next week, but bear with us because the labels came wound the wrong way so we're labelling it by hand and it takes an age. But it'll get done soon, thanks to all the fab folks (Jen and Tom, Harry and Bill, we mean you!) at Buzzard's Bay! Today we filled casks and stuck labels on bottles. We're getting there.
Jack D'Or Batch 11 is out now too: see if you can spot any differences.
We wanted to let you know some great new places to get a Pretty Things beer! First, our northerlymost location is Latitude 43 in Gloucester, which looks like a great place to hang at the bar and eat some oysters. Can't wait to get up there. Second, one of our favourite Cambridge spots, Cambridge Common now carries Jack D'Or all the time! Whoo hoo! Great food, Wonderful people, and awesome beers at good prices! And finally, there's a new beer bar in town: American Craft in Brookline, serving St Botolph's and tofu steak with Baby Tree-pickled plum vinaigrette! We can't wait to get down there either.
Going around the internet is a strange way to get a sense of what's going on in the world of beer. But you can get a real feel for what's going on this very minute. I just did.
Tonight I read about my buddy Shaun HIll's long-awaited brewery project in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and a new brewery called Stillwater making a beer that's not just eerily Jack D'Or-sounding, it sounds equally delicious. There are hundreds of people entering reviews of their beer experiences as I type this little column - and others just logging in for the first time and seeing the infinite world of great beer laid out before them for the first time.
A few weeks ago Tod Alström wrote that he and his brother's website is seeing record membership growth. At the same time the beer and food world seems to be uniting in a new way, the span between us all is getting ever so small. All this despite a time in American history where the economy is a sad state of affairs, unemployment grows, politics and social warfare is generating anger and even hatred all over the place... and beer is way up here. Not just in sales growth but in a supercilious way. It's an oasis of ambitious flavours, well meaning artisans and fun-loving Americans. It's one of the last things we make industrially and by God it's something we love to make, consume and do it well at that.
If there needs to be a model for a new way forward in this country I wouldn't be too embarassed to see our 1400 craft breweries put in the spotlight for a few minutes.
That aside, I'm drinking a Smuttynose IPA and happily contemplating the next few months while Martha struggles with the taxes. All is well.
As some of you will soon no doubt be pointing out, our latest batch of Baby Tree (batch 4) was labeled as being bottled in "February 2010". We thought we wouldn't be able to bottle it until February when we ordered the labels, but then we managed to squeak onto the bottling line last week. So no, it's not actually beer from the future, but if you want, go ahead and tell your friends that it must be.
There's nothing better than something being much more than you expected. When we originally thought of creating a side-project for Pretty Things we knew we had to anchor it in reality. After all, there's very little "reality" employed in making this line of beers. And if you know us at all you know we don't do the "earnest" or "precious" brewer thing. So we went with history: honest, unquestionable and unknown to almost everyone!
Partnering to make a beer with friend Ron Pattinson was just the ticket. If you're not familiar Ron is the extremely prolific author of Shut Up Barclay Perkins: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/, and based out of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Last September we met up with him and asked if he had any particularly style-twisting beers from the past (something Ron seems to specialize in). And in no time we had a brewsheet from February 27th, 1832. This is a beer that was brewed in a brewery on Brick Lane, London, which we had coincidentally walked past two days earlier and photographed. The recipe takes us back to Dicken's London and a time in beer making that seems positively fantastical today: many thousand barrel kettles, two-ton hop additions, pre-sewer industrial practices. This was before Tower Bridge or Big Ben. An honest profession was the duty of pulling bodies from the Thames. History was giving fantasy back to us!
Last Wednesday we embarked to recreate that day. It took two days to clean the brewhouse after this eyebrow-raising experience. The result will be premiered on February 27th, 178 years to the day it was first brewed.
Great little piece by left coast beer writer Jay Brooks. He put together a list of what he considers "the ten most important and influential breweries that began within the last ten years", and for some reason we're on there!
Our winter seasonal. We're not quite finished labeling, but there are kegs and some casks in NYC and a few Boston beer places. It was only a 50bbl batch, so it might not last too long, but we're really happy with it so grab a bottle and enjoy it while it's here.
Thanks!
Check it out: we're number 16 on their current draft line up!!
Dann and Jim are having way too much fun right now, launching Pretty Things with the great beer bar and beer store owners of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I mean seriously: way too much fun!!
Thanks to our Union reps for taking them round the last couple of days. It sounds like Jack D'Or is rocking Manhattan. Yeah! If you know someone there, please tell them to go find some Pretty Things!
The Belgian Beer Fest was yesterday at the Cyclorama in Boston. We love the Beer Advocate festivals, and we've poured at them for years with Dann's past breweries. But nothing beats pouring at them with our own beers! We had a great time. Matt Tremblay, legendary beer bar tender, helped out along with Tim Dudek, another Pretty Things stalwart and friend. I got to wear my new brewing wellies again, which was a bonus.
We had the extraordinary honour yesterday of hosting our friends Br. Brian Rooney and Fr. Isaac of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer MA at the festival. For them, I'm sure it was a slightly overwhelming experience, but they had a wonderful time meeting American brewers and gained a huge amount of inspiration and support from Francois de Harenne of Brasserie d'Orval. We hope the Abbey will continue its journey into the craft beer community.
Our beers did great: we were worried that with only two beers, everyone would have tried them before at the ACBF in June, so no-one would be interested. As it turned out, we had a fantastic and busy festival meeting old friends and new, introducing a lot of people to the beers (Jack D'Or and Baby Tree). I must say, the people we spoke to blew me away. It is incredible to get out and meet people who understand and support what we are doing with Pretty Things. We put a lot of love into our beers and our project, and it feels fabulous to get some back! From the comments on our beers, to the declarations of support, to ideas for new T shirts, comments on the banner and meeting people who remember us from other events: you guys rock. You totally keep us on track and dedicated, and we love meeting you. Thank you!
I am officially psyched.
Anyway, here are some photos from the fest. Dann was on the panel in session one, along with other fantastic brewers (Megan Parisi from CBC is shown here and kept Dann giggling between the questions!). Jim Barnes did another fantastic day's work filming the fest.
As always, thank you to all the fantastic volunteers who work at these festivals. It's a lot of hard work for some great beers and a rocking good time! The support that Beer Advocate gives to beer drinkers and brewers alike cannot be overstated: I don't think our Project would exist without Todd, Jason, Candice and their families. And Uncle Jimbo, who was on excellent form yesterday!
Well, it's happened again. We totally got sold out of beer and couldn't keep up. So we're doing a crazy three-batch-in-one-and-a-half-days brewing session starting tomorrow at 3.30am. It's going to be a bit crazy, and Dann's going to be a zombie by the end of it. I'll be trying to hold the fort together/down/whatever.
The Belgian Beer Fest was yesterday at the Cyclorama in Boston. We love the Beer Advocate festivals, and we've poured at them for years with Dann's past breweries. But nothing beats pouring at them with our own beers! We had a great time. Matt Tremblay, legendary beer bar tender, helped out along with Tim Dudek, another Pretty Things stalwart and friend. I got to wear my new brewing wellies again, which was a bonus.
We had the extraordinary honour yesterday of hosting our friends Br. Brian Rooney and Fr. Isaac of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer MA at the festival. For them, I'm sure it was a slightly overwhelming experience, but they had a wonderful time meeting American brewers and gained a huge amount of inspiration and support from Francois de Harenne of Brasserie d'Orval. We hope the Abbey will continue its journey into the craft beer community.
