So, how was your holiday? Was it good? What did you do? Did you make any resolutions? No? Just kind of ate some food and watched TV? Cool cool … Not totally sure why I started this conversation. … Just been so long since I’ve been at work! You know? Can’t get back into the swing of things! That ever happen to you? Ha. Right? So WEIRD. Weird, weird, weird. OK. Time. To. Work. Woo!
*taps key board*
*makes noises with lips*
*checks phone, but clicks nothing, just stares at the home screen, even after it goes dark, pleading for something, anything.*
*opens bottle of wine*
*hits pen*
OK, let’s kick off the New Year with a Choose Your Own Adventure. Situation: You wake up one day, and you can’t look outside. If you do, your eyes will change and you will kill yourself instantly. What do you do?
Option 1: Try and wildly traverse the state blindfolded on foot with two children you don’t even like in the hopes of finding a group of strangers to live out the rest of your unfun agrarian days while still avoiding the outside world. This journey will be made exclusively through the woods and down a raging river. IF YOU CHOOSE THIS, CLICK HERE*
Option 2: Board up your windows, put on some records and booze it up until the end. IF YOU CHOOSE THIS, SCROLL DOWN.
Congrats for choosing Option 2. Here are your five beers to know this week. You must choose at least one of them to drink. Or, you can choose all of them. If you survive until next week, please send me some beer news at [email protected].
JUST LOOK DOWN AT THE BEERS AND THE BEERS ONLY! EVERYTHING WILL BE OK!
You missed out AleSmith’s Hop Drop New Year’s party and this new Brüt IPA
For the second year in a row, AleSmith Brewing Co. welcomed the New Year in true craft brewery style with a “hop drop” at the Tasting Room, in which they lower a giant hop flower at midnight EST. This is further proof all the great ideas are taken. Guests this year toasted the occasion with a preview pour of AleSmith’s February 2019 release of Brütiful Day Brüt IPA, served in a souvenir glass for certain customers.
Brütiful Day is a new AleSmith Brüt IPA that will be the first release in the classic brewery’s 2019 Hopwright Series. This effervescent brew exhibits notes of mango, white grapes and pineapple from a heavy dose of Nelson Sauvin hops. It features a delicate malt backbone, bone-dry finish and a smooth and subtle bitterness — like the one I have for missing out on this.
MadTree Brewing partners with four regional coffee roasters for local spins on one beer
MadTree Brewing has partnered with some of Ohio’s best coffee roasters to create a unique coffee beer experience. MadTree’s brewers worked side-by-side with coffee roasters from Deeper Roots Coffee (Cincinnati), Phoenix Coffee Co. (Cleveland), Stauf’s Coffee (Columbus) and Boston Stoker Coffee Co. (Dayton). They collaborated to select, roast and brew the four unique coffees to give each city’s beer a unique flavor. MadTree then packaged one of each in mixed four-packs of 12-oz cans. Each can’s artwork features a rendition of the respective city’s skyline to pay homage to the corresponding roaster. Pretty cool.
“We love coffee almost as much as we love beer, so we had this idea to partner with some of the best roasters in the state to show how the flavor profile of a coffee beer can be so different depending on the beans,” said Ryan Blevins, MadTree head brewer. “We made sure the beer took a bit of a backseat so the coffee could shine. Overall, it was awesome to see how their passion for coffee mirrors the passion we have for crafting quality beer.”
The brewery is hosting a Local Blend can release party this Saturday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m. at the MadTree Taproom at 3301 Madison Rd in Cincinnati if anyone is nearby.
Bonfire Brewing Rope Drop is the ski beer of the year
Hit the slopes of the Vail Valley this year with Bonfire Brewing‘s new Rope Drop Hazy IPA, a limited release available in six packs of 12-oz cans and on draft while supplies last. Rope Drop is Bonfire’s first canned Hazy IPA and contains huge tropical fruit and citrus notes from a combination of Citra, Mosaic, Eldorado and Ekuanot hops. These varietals, in conjunction with late boil additions and double dry hopping, provide an aroma bursting with tropical flavors of papaya, pineapple, mango, orange and hints of fresh pine. Rope Drop was fermented with London Ale yeast strain to provide a soft, yet juicy profile.
“Rope Drop is brewed to trigger that feeling you get when you roll up on a slope that is just opened — or just about to open — and you get to make the first giant pillowy turns down it,” explained Cofounder Andy Jessen.
Heavy Seas blasts new beers into 2019
Heavy Seas Beer announced several new additions and exciting changes to its portfolio in 2019. Citra Cannon IPA, Sun Burst Sour Ale and Night Swell Dark IPA will be introduced as limited releases. The “Uncharted Waters” series will introduce a new barrel-aged sour ale, Red Flag, to its lineup, as well as welcome new draft-only variants on its returning beers. Heavy Seas Cannon Crew Samplers, available year-round, will include all four Cannon Crew beers: Loose Cannon, TropiCannon, Double Cannon and AmeriCannon.
Heavy Seas will continue its small-batch beer program in 2019 and introduce 16-oz can releases along with draft availability. These limited release beers will continue to be available throughout the year exclusively in the Heavy Seas Taproom at the brewery in Baltimore. Each beer style will not be announced until closer to its release date.
Dueling barrel-aged releases from Braven Brewing
Brooklyn-based Braven Brewing Co. is debuting its first barrel-aged beers today with a launch party at the brewery. Braven brewed two of its beers, Las Tumbas Mexican-Style Stout and Scream With Me Imperial Porter, earlier this fall but set aside approximately 25 gal of each style to be pumped into rye whiskey barrels provided by New York Distilling Co., a craft distillery located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Las Tumbas is an orange/habanero/chocolate stout brewed in honor of Dia de los Muertos, while Scream With Me is an Imperial Porter brewed with pumpkin, spices, vanilla and maple syrup. The two different beers aged in Ragtime Straight Rye Whiskey barrels for about a month before being racked into sixtel kegs (5.2 gallons). During the month-long aging process, the barrels imparted myriad rich, rye whiskey notes, as well as smoothed out the bodies on both styles.
The brewpub will offer a “Deconstructed Flight” of 4-oz pours of the two original versions of Las Tumbas and Scream With Me Imperial Porter, 4-oz pours of the two barrel-aged styles and a shot of the Ragtime Straight Rye Whiskey for $20.
*1 Sheesh. Relax! You are a cool artist living in a hip city apartment! The thing that’s killing everyone doesn’t even make sense! Grab a beer and wait it out. You probably shouldn’t have had kids in the first place. Return to Option 2.
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