5 Barrel Pale Ale will be available in the Boise area beginning in April! Join us as we celebrate the kick-off with a variety of events:
Monday April 2nd
- Cheerleaders 5:30 – 7:30
- Parilla Grill 7:30 – 9:30
Tuesday April 3rd
- Bittercreek Alehouse 5:30 – 7:30
- Kahootz Steak & Alehouse 5:30 – 7:30
- Falcon Tavern 7:30 – 9:30
Wednesday April 4th
- Bar Gernika 5:30 – 7:30
- The Piper Pub & Grill 7:30 – 9:30
Here’s what we’re pouring in the Tap Room this week (link)!
Last night we knocked out our second 100 barrel batch of Double Pilsner. Every other drop of beer that goes through our 12 ounce bottle line has the same yeast, except for our Double Pilsner. It’s the only lager we make in our 50 barrel brewhouse. As a true lager, it has twice the conditioning time as any other production beer, most of which is spent slowly chilling down. It’s amazing to me that lagers in general became so popular en masse with the big brewers. You know, the guys (and gals) that brew millions of barrels a year and have Super Bowl commercials. We can brew at least twice as many ales in the time it takes to traditionally lager the same amount of beer. So, from a bean counter perspective, it makes a ton more sense to make ales. Which is what most craft brewers start doing. However, in last last five years or so, we have seen a resurgence of lagers in the craft beer industry. And they rock. It’s one of the oldest recipes around and it’s refreshing to see what craft brewers can do with them. The time and care that we, as small brewers, can afford to put into our lagers combined with the billions of dollars of research the big brewers did, can come together to produce some astounding beer. We humbly submit Double Pilsner as the People’s Exhibit “A”. You can find it locally when the weather starts to warm up.
- A Quality Guy
Trial and error = #EpicWIN
We like to have fun experimenting on our Pilot Brewing playground… Like, a lot. So much so that we consider play one of our secret ingredients. Enter Shenanigans, a beer that was never meant to be. We were working on a Woodcut project, and a few barrels weren’t exactly what we were looking for. They were still awfully yummy, so we inoculated them with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It was about that time when things went deliciously wrong. Pineapple juice married with spicy phenols emerge first from the glass. Followed by the full malt body of a 9.1% crimson ale, and rounding out the tail end the oak tannins battle for supremacy with the tart finish provided by just a dash of lactobacillus. Try a bottle for yourself and savor the complexity and subtle nuances of our brewery shenanigans. (Join us Saturday, March 24th for the Tap Room Release Party!)
- A Quality Guy
If there is one thing we love more than craft beer, it’s crafting a beer with new friends. Last month, we paired up with the fine folks of Jax Fish House to create a special brew in honor of their new Emersum Oysters and Oyster Month (March). Naturally, we decided to make an oyster stout. Jax provided their proprietary mollusks for the beer, and everyone had a blast brewing. The beer is a classic dark stout brewed with generous amounts of roast. We added shucked oysters to the mash in the lauter tun and let them soak with all of the delicious sugars of the wort for a bit. Once we got the wort from the mash/oyster mixture, we boiled our wort for about 90 minutes. We then added unshucked oysters to the kettle and boiled them to extract as much as possible. Once that was complete, the wort went to a fermenting vessel for conditioning. Check out this great video of our brew day!
We’ll help kick off Oyster Month and the new brew with a celebration in the Tap Room on Thursday, March 1st. Guests can enjoy samples of the beer as well as complimentary Emersum oysters (while supplies last). Jax will also be selling some additional tasty dishes. Emersum Oyster Stout will be limitedly available on draft at the brewery and all three Jax locations (Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver).
