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And… If you ever find yourself in Palisade, make sure to check out the delicious offerings at Palisade Brewing Co. and Peach Street Distillers… Those Palisade Peaches aren’t bad either. So, after spending the weekend walking through Glenn, Randy, and Julie’s fields of high quality, mature hops we selected beautiful Chinook and Cascade varieties that we contracted from each grower for this and next year. We will be using these hops in our upcoming Mountain Standard Reserve ‘10, Double Black IPA. Our motivation with our Mountain Standard Reserve offering is to brew an inspiring beer that uses ingredients from Colorado craft farmers, whenever supplies and quality permit, as well as to support these local craft farmers and ensure the sustainability of hop farms throughout Colorado’s western slope. We had a lot of fun picking these hops and having a beer with these growers, we hop(e) you enjoy our upcoming Double Black IPA which will use these special hops!

This kind of complexity is annoying at best and unreasonably interesting at least.

Needless to say, the government took some convincing to let us sell it. Beers aged in barrels which have been used for other alcohols are regulated much the same way as malternative beverages in the US. The TTB (tax and trade bureau), who approves labels to facilitate interstate commerce for us regional brewers, requires beers with questionable ingredients, or with alcohol potentially contributed by other means than primary fermentation to be approved after reviewing a formula or Statement of Process. This could mean blending straight ethanol and flavoring into light beer or aging beer in wine or whiskey barrels. In our case, our process was many layered and after some failed submissions, we finally arrived at a 5 page description of the inception of Deconstruction in order to protect consumers from our deliberately incremental approach to brewing. Below, please find the full story (thoughtfully redacted) of Decon’s (De-con’s) life. The beer is slated to be released August 7th at a taping event at Odell. We’ll be pairing fresh western slope fruit converted into tiny pies. I’ll be securing the fruit at this weekend’s Old Town Farmer’s Market.

Keep it surreal, Zach

For those of you living up in the north country, in the land of 10,000 lakes, we recommend pairing this complex beer with your freshly caught Walleye, lightly seasoned and grilled with bell peppers, caramelized onion and mushroom, lakefront el fresca style, with your favorite friends and family…or just nice people who love great hand crafted beer, good food, and listening to you re-tell how you caught that evenings Walleye again and again and again. And if you want to send some Walleye our way now that we are sending our Woodcut #4 your way, we wouldn’t mind!

Cheers!

Tuesday, we were off to work pouring samples throughout the Twin Cities at craft focused bars and liquor stores. We were all impressed by the knowledge the Twin Cities community has regarding hand crafted beer. Our friends at Four Firkins packed their great little store during our sampling event and had people standing shoulder to shoulder as we poured samples. Tuesday night was also the night of the Muddy Pig’s Odell Beer Dinner. A delicious chicken breast with a Mango Pico paired nicely with our 90 Shilling. I was more then impressed by the dinner and delighted that each person got an extra tasting of the firkin that was being hand pulled that night.

Wednesday, after spending the day pouring samples and talking shop at various liquor stores throughout the Twin Cities we headed on the Cinc-Odell-Mayo pub crawl around some of Saint Paul’s finest craft beer focused bars. There were people from Odell at every stop talking with craft beer travelers about Odell.

Thursday, we had the pleasure of stopping by to visit the folks at Surly Brewing company. It was great checking out their brewery and seeing how they make the great beer that they do. If anyone followed their Twitter that day, don’t worry the car was found. Thursday night was spent at Longfellow Grill on the patio braving the not so hot weather and pouring pints by the river.

Friday…Friday…Friday! What a firkin day Friday was. Grumpy’s in downtown tapped a firkin for firkin lunch, Grumpy’s Nordeast tapped a firkin a few hours later, accompanied by the 2009 Hotdish revolution winner, “Reuben Hotdish.” The Beer was tasty, the crowd was happy, and the hotdish was out of this world. A group followed us down to Mac’s Industrial for more Odell pints before closing down the night at Pracna.

Saturday, we readied ourselves for the final firkin tapping of the week at Groveland Tap by first enjoying kegs and eggs at the 3 square establishments. As the Cask Imperial Stout flowed at Groveland Tap we met a professor named Jay who had been making beer runs to South Dakota to get his Odell fix, and to say he was happy to see Odell in MN is an understatement. Jay thanks for your support, hopefully your local liquor store will be a shorter drive. We also met up with Shawn of the Beer Genome Project. I think he may have attended the most events during the week, but giving him that title dismisses far to many people who attended so many events that there is simply no way we could say that, instead we will say thanks to all of you who came out for the events!

We can’t thank all of you enough for the incredible release week. All of you who came out to each sampling, firkin tapping or just to hang out at the bar and talk craft beer with us made the week! We also want to thank the boys at Original Gravity, Paul Jr., Hanzee, Corey, Wolfee and all the others who helped keep us on track and helped keep our beer in stock as we crawled around the Twin Cities pubs.

To all of you fine folks in the Twin Cities…Cheers!

Day 1

We arrived in Louisville and visited Kelvin Cooperage where Kevin and Denver showed us thousands of different barrels ranging from new oak barrels to well used Irish Whisky barrels. We agreed to return Thursday to inspect freshly dumped bourbon barrels. Then we were welcomed with open arms by fellow craft brewers Brian at Brownings Brewpub and Joel at Bluegrass Brewing before making way over to the Louisville Beer Store to check out their vast craft beer selection. Afterwards, we were treated to a Bourbon tasting and tutorial by Jayson at 732 Social which helped set our course for the next day.

Day 2

We drove down to Heaven Hill Distillery where we were given a tour of the barrel warehouse and we had the pleasure of tasting 18 year aged Elijah Craig and 10 year aged Evan Williams. We left in agreement that the Elijah Craig barrels could play nicely with our Bourbon Barrel Stout. Then we were off to Makers Mark distillery where we were blown away at the access we had to the complete distillation process, including tasting the actively fermenting distiller’s beer. Finally we made it to Canton Cooperage where Bill gave us a comprehensive tour of the facility and the stockpile of aging white American oak staves awaiting a home in a finished barrel. All wood at Canton is aged at least two full years to allow tannins to leach out prior to barrel production.

Day 3

We set out to Woodford Reserve Distillery to take their first tour of the day before hustling back to Louisville to get Doug to the airport. Doug made the executive decision that we had enough time to swing back by Kelvin Cooperage so we could inspect the barrels they were receiving that day. We were able to “nose” many different used bourbon barrels and, once again, the three of us were in agreement about the best candidates in which to age our Bourbon Barrel Stout. We left Bourbon country with a game plan to acquire the perfect barrels for our next Bourbon Barrel Stout release. I will keep you posted as our plan unfolds.

Good That s pretty much what this beer is. Oh, define it? Hm… well that’s tough because the Brits had all the resources to make this beer, that is if they would have only been willing to embrace the “crazy” Belgian techniques of the day when Big Brown Ales were substituted for meals by the Queen’s people. Instead, we as American Craft Brewers here in Northern Colorado, now get the chance to brew a style defying beer that embraces both our English brewing heritage as well as our Belgian-esque creativity…because, after-all, we can only brew “English-Style” beers for so long before we turn our back on tradition. As for the beer…well, it fills your nose with a bright fresh pineapple character and light peppery notes contributed from the brettanomyces yeast we add to both the fermentor and American Oak Barrels. Over time this pineapple character will continue to grow and evolve, providing a slightly dryer finished product and a more complex dried fruit character. The malt contributes rich caramel and toffee flavors with a soft warming alcohol character that exists harmoniously with the pineapple. Saboteur benefits from our Brewers’ careful selection of oak barrels with which we age a percentage of Saboteur before carefully blending the proper amount of barrel-aged beer back to provide a soft, vanilla mouthfeel which complements the slightly bitter roasted caramel malts. Add raisin, toffee and a slightly sour finish and you have defined “Good.” After buying a bottle of this beer, stop by your local butcher for a 1/2 pound of Buffalo Corned Beef and then by your local baker for a loaf of Marbled Rye, return home and enjoy a glass of Saboteur with a Reuben on your back patio as the evening draws to a close and the spring sun sets over the foothills.

ABV: 10.0 %
IBU: Doesn’t really matter because it is slightly soured

Cheers!

Joe & Zach

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