1. Oak-Aged Abominable Ale: A blend of our winter ale, aged in heavy-toasted French oak barrels and medium-toasted American oak barrels.
2. Universale: the intergalactically, world-famously tasty ale that begat the Empire of Fremont Brewing Co.
3. Interurban IPA: Perfectly balanced -- hoppy but not too hoppy.
4. Abominable Ale: roasty, chocolatey, malt flavors balanced by subtle hoppy spice. Warm up to it. Don't be scared to be Abominable.
We’ve doubled our capacity! Yesterday, Jim Uer of Interior Stainless delivered two brand-new 30-barrel unitanks that he made in his shop in Summerland, BC. We bought our first two used from Georgetown Brewery, also supplied by Interior Stainless. So now we have four identical, gorgeous, stainless steel tanks, all lined up and ready for action. Jim, his wife, and two daughters drove them down on a long flat-bed trailer attached to their family pick-up. These things weigh 2,000 lbs each and took some fancy fork-lifting to get into place. Jim’s a calm, tall craftsman whose primary clientele is small breweries -- which seems to be a lucrative and fun market niche (compared to, say, dairies or bio-deisel or any other industry needing stainless steel tanks).
Why is this major purchase such a big deal? First, some Brewing 101: beer starts by boiling grain, hops, and magic in water to make wort. Once the wort is ready, it’s pumped from the brew house into a unitank where it ferments for a week or so. After the fermentation stage, the beer is transferred to another unitank for finishing: the suspended yeast falls to the bottom, carbon dioxide is added and the beer’s ready to be put into kegs. They’re called “unitanks” because they do everything: ferment, cool, refine, carbonate.
We have a 15-barrel brew house and until now, we could only accommodate two batches of beer at any one time – one batch in the fermenter, one finishing in the other tank. Even if we brewed double batches, we’d still only have two brews (or 60 barrels max) in the pipeline at any one time. With two additional tanks, we can do more experimenting with recipes, produce more one-off specialty beers, and make more mistakes without worrying about having enough beer for our wholesale accounts and retail sales. So this is a major milestone in our evolution. Now we need to get our hands on about 300 more kegs and we can sit tight while the cash comes rolling in – until we shell out the big, big bucks for a canning line.
Reminder: we’re offering the Interurban IPA at cheap, holiday prices through December 31st: $3.00 pints at the Urban Beer Garden, $13.00 growlers (glass and fill), $6.00 growler refills, and two free FBC pint glasses if you buy a keg. Please check our holiday schedule to ensure someone’s here to take your money and check out our swanky new merchandise while you’re at it.
Holiday shopping got you stressed? We can help. We’ve got a whole new shipment of merchandise including hoodies, women’s, men’s and kid-sized long & short-sleeve T-shirts in a dizzying (but not overwhelming) array of colors and styles. Many items feature an image of one of our fermenters on the front, launching our “artsy” line of brewery apparel. We also have baseball caps embroidered with our logo. And then of course, there’s always BEER which makes an ideal gift and sure takes the shopping edge off! Scroll down for pricing or go to the “Schwag” section of our website for photos of selected items modeled by real beer drinkers (and taken by iPhone – classy!).
And speaking of beer, sidle on down to the Urban Beer Garden for SPECIAL HOLIDAY PRICES on our new Interurban IPA! Pints: $3.00, new growlers: $13, growler refills: $6. Or buy a keg of IPA for that Boxing Day party and get two free commemorative pint glasses! And, just a reminder, the UBG is open Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday evenings from 4:00 to 8:30-ish. We’re open for retail Monday through Friday during regular working hours and now Saturdays from noon until last call. The IPA special will last through this month but if I were you, I’d take advantage of our very limited quantity of bourbon barrel-aged Abominable Winter Ale – truly extraordinary (if you’re a whisky fan).
PRICING:
Hoodies: $35
Unisex and Women’s long-sleeve T-shirts: $20
Kid-sized long-sleeve T-shirts: $15
Unisex and Women’s short-sleeve T-shirts: $15
Baseball caps: $20
Growlers (excluding IPA which is cheaper): glass + fill $15, refills $8
In case you’re wondering what to give those folks in your life who “have it all” (I don’t know anybody like that but I hear they exist), I wanted to let you know that we’ve got a huge new shipment of clothes for sale. Long and short-sleeve, men’s and cute-cut women’s, kids’ long sleeve shirts, hoodies, and soon baseball caps when Destee-Nation Shirt Co., our producer, gets them to us today or tomorrow. In addition to our logo, we have a new graphic of one of our big fermenters on the front of some of our items for the artsy-inclined on your holiday list.
Last night we threw a party (see photo) for our investors to thank them for making possible what was only last year a mere twinkle in Matt’s eye. We’re completely equity-financed (until some bank does what TARP intended and start LENDING MONEY with all that cash taxpayers fronted them) and a long time ago I said that I would extend a special thanks to them.
THANK YOU SO MUCH (in no meaningful order), Kemp, Matt, Eric, Shawn, Rob, Jerry, Michael, David, Colter, Ryan, Walt, and your spouses/SO’s for your generosity!!! You saw our vision and had faith in our ability to realize it. I believe the folks who drink our beer around town and enjoy the scene at the Urban Beer Garden appreciate your support as well. Cheers to you!
This morning I sampled some of our bourbon barrel-aged Abominable Ale Winter Warmer. Wow. Dark beer heavily infused with whisky -- yum. That's a picture of Matt Lincoln tapping a barrel for samples. Also, in case you haven't heard, we're serving (and selling) our Interurban IPA, FINALLY! As you know, I'm not a hop person but even I like this stuff. It's hoppy enough to be an IPA but you don't need a chainsaw to get through a glass. Check it out at the Urban Beer Garden this week (and buy a shirt while you're at it).
An Urban Beer Garden regular recently admonished me for not blogging since Oct. 29 – my, how time flies!* But during my silence, a lot of interesting stuff has been going on around here. First, I’m working with Ross Freeman who is the Sustainability Director for Stevens Pass to finally calculate our carbon footprint using the Seattle Climate Partnership calculator. Our hope is to calculate our footprint per pint of beer produced and then, over the next few months, make serious efforts to reduce that footprint so that we can eventually get to a zero carbon footprint -- a lofty goal but there’s nothing like a challenge to motivate!
Part of reducing our footprint will entail funneling our CO2 into greenhouses that we’re in the exploratory phase of building on our roof. We’ll grow hops horizontally and probably lots of edible greens. I’ve long been distressed that the fermentation process of beer produces a bunch of CO2 that drifts into the atmosphere and changes the climate – bad, bad, bad. Adding insult to injury, we actually buy a big tank of CO2 and inject it into the beer at the last stage – expensive! The ideal solution would be to purchase a CO2 recapture system that stores our yeast-produced CO2 in a pressurized tank and converts it into a form we need in the finishing process. Big, commercial breweries do this because it’s cost-effective and they can afford the big bucks these systems cost (plus, they get carbon credits). But a system to fit our scale of operation would cost about $700,000 which is way, way, way out of our range. (If there are any rogue engineers who’d like to design us a system for less, get in touch!)
So the next best thing would be carbon sequestration -- in this case, putting that CO2 to good use by growing plants. Remember kids: plants breathe in CO2 and produce oxygen and food.
Another exciting thing is that yesterday the owners of Carpenter Ranches in Yakima paid us a visit to discuss the possibility of establishing a long-term relationship to purchase their organic hops (in this photo from left to right: FBC owner Matt Lincecum, Carpenter Ranches owner Craig Carpenter, his son, Colt, his brother, Brad, Ron Britt, Entomologist -- pest control czar, and our Head Brewer, Matt Lincoln). The Carpenter family is the oldest hop-growing family in Washington. Seven generations have been growing hops on their land since 1868. They supply several big beer producers with conventionally-grown Cascade, Columbus, Simca and other hop varieties but they’ve been devoting increasing acerage to grow hops organically. They already have several certified organic acres of land and several more in transition. But growing anything organically is more risky and costly – requiring high-maintenance integrated pest management methods (primarily developing fungus-resistant strains and using aphid and mite predators), higher labor costs, higher-tech watering systems etc. So the Carpenter family approached us to see if we’d like to become regular customers.
You might think there’d be enough organically-oriented breweries to provide a fairly steady revenue stream but, as I learned, a beer only has to have 95% organic ingredients to be certified organic and hops only contisitute about 3% of the total ingredient load. Therefore, if the grain’s organic, they don’t have to fuss with organic hops. Given the volatility of the hop market as a whole and organic hops in particular, many beer producers are reluctant to build recipes around an ingredient they can’t be sure they can get every year. And without a stable customer base, hop growers are reluctant to invest in the higher costs of organic production. But the Carpenter family is one of a handful of hop growers who are starting a non-profit organic hop association in order to share the resources needed to develop a diverse line-up of pest-resistant organic hop varieties – spreading the risk and increasing supply. Again, the beauty of the Collective!
More on all of this later. BTW, check us out at the Winter Beer Fest at Hales this weekend and we're providing the beer for a Seattle Climate Partnership event tomorrow, hosted by Unico. And we're also providing the beer for Councilmember-elect Mike O'Brien's campaign debt-relief part on monday, Dec. 6, ditto for Mayor-elect Mike McGinn on December 14th. google these events and drink up!
* By way of excuse, first there was the last push of the campaign (Richard won by almost 80% and received more votes than any Seattle candidate ever, including mayoral and unopposed candidates.). Then, on the Monday following the election, I reported for jury duty and was, despite my best efforts to get rejected, empanelled on a jury for a civil case that was to last about 3 weeks (Matt was not pleased). I served 2 days (fascinating!) but when I went to the doctor to deal with a cough I’d had for 2 weeks and the fever and muscle aches that I’d been experiencing for a couple days, I was diagnosed with swine flu and dismissed to convalesce (after likely infecting everyone in the jury box). Then there was Thanksgiving break, etc.
Posts
All Comments
Posts
All Comments
