Dann's blog

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!

Here's to onwards, upwards and backwards!
Dann

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!

Here's the link: http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/top-ten-tuesday-top-10-new-breweries/

Hi all, thought you might want to see this Edible Boston article on Pretty Things: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/boston/fall-2009/not-just-another-prett...

Well, we've had a great start to our project. We've been outselling our supply on a regular basis. Although people tell us often that this is "a great problem to have", it kind of sucks. We need to take Pretty Things up a notch, and well, we just did!

We've found a new brewing home at Buzzard's Bay Brewing in Westport MA. It's a big facility: we can do 50 and 100bbl batches here, rather than the 20bbl batches we've been doing in Holyoke. This is fantastic, because it gives us a lot of growing room, but it's also a scary prospect for me and Martha. 2.5x the beer means 2.5x the costs, and basically 2.5x the risks. But we are really excited to make the leap, it's going to be great, and we are loving this brewery!

So last Friday I went down to brew a 50bbl batch of Jack D'Or. We'll be making Baby Tree in a few weeks, and then undoubtedly we'll be brewing something new. We were getting inspiration for our new beer last night at Deep Ellum, which was a fun time, but that's another story.

The brewery at Westport is kind of a dream come true for me. It's a top notch facility, but in a farmhouse brewery setting. We might be able to have some tours and visits there for Pretty Things, so watch this space and we'll keep you posted.

The brewday went great, and apparently the brewery smells great now, filled with Jack D'Or sacrificing himself for our palates! On that note, keep an eye out for some new funky Pretty Things merchandise! Cheers, Dann

Hi folks, just wanted to let you know. If you've been having a hard time finding our beer in our regular accounts we apologize. Summertime has been busy and loads more people are finding out about Pretty Things. We have many new accounts and many new admirers. We're going to be making some adjustments in the near future to assure we keep up with demand. Thanks for your patronage and patience!

Cheers,

Dann

Before Pretty Things Martha and I were living in North Yorkshire, England. Last July we made the transatlantic move, old-school, on the Queen Mary II. It sounds extravagant, a five-star, one week journey on the North Atlantic. It was, but it was also less expensive than buying one-way flights and having our luggage shipped.

As we pulled into Brooklyn at five in the morning, our friend Jim Barnes was waiting on the Brooklyn Bridge with his 8mm film camera and black and white reversal stock. This is what he got:

Video credit: Jim "Bocky" Barnes