Winter Weizen & Winter Warmer Social

Hey all,

The Winter weizen went on yesterday thanks to the hard work from Zach. Tod and I both took the day off and Zach stepped right in to get it transferred and get it ready to go for you guys. This batch came out very nice. The residual sweetness and body are still there, with a slight fruity note. But the clove aroma and flavor and more up front giving this beer a much better balance of flavors. Very nice beer.

To respond to your questions about a new years party I cant say for sure. I don’t think we are going to have an official New Years Eve party, though we will be open and serving some great beers! But if you take a look at the calendar on the website, http://portsmouthbrewery.com/our_calendar you will find some up coming beer socials that you should take a look at. It has been called the winter warmer social in every internal e-mail I have received. It is going to be a good one, with samples of winter beers from the Portsmouth Brewery, Smuttynose Brewing Co. and a few more that you will have to come to see what we are busting out for you. There will be food and drink for all, but the numbers are limited so start your inquires today!

Cheers,
Tyler

Hoppy Holidaze!

Hey all,

I wanted to let you know that the Holidaze Porter is gone. Big sad face for that :( We are replacing it with the return of the Winter Weizen. But it isn't quite ready I am sorry to say. We are going to transfer it first thing on Friday, so you peeps are not going to have to wait too long for it.

On another note I want to thank all of you who have been following this blog throughout the year. Your inquiries and thoughts have kept Tod and I on our toes insuring we continue to make a great product for you.

Thank you for you support of the Portsmouth Brewery and this Blog!

Hoppy Holidaze!

Tyler

Hop addiction?

Howdy,

Well the Whipper Snapper’s new name went over well since it is now gone! But now we go to the other extreme in the IPA world. Replacing and easy drinking slightly hoppy session beer with a big bold hop bomb, our Imperial IPA. The Imperial IPA wont disappoint all you hop head out there. Plus at 9% abv it will keep you warm for the upcoming snow storms. I hope you all have you snow blowers all tuned up and ready to go!

Cheers
Tyler

Sour Beer!

Hey all,

Wanted to let you know that the sour mashing went well over the weekend. We have our Flanders (style) red in a fermenter and it is fermenting away. Smelling like fresh mangoes and pineapples with tropical fruits as well as hints of chocolate!! WHOA!! This is gonna be one crazy beer! Peace out!

In a Holidaze

Hey all,

To all that made it to the company party last night I hope you had a great time. The special pin we had on the bar was a Holidaze Porter with Cabernet Oak, and it went over very well. We are going to have to play with that some more soon!

Just checking in with you all. Back to work for me.

Cheers,
Tyler

Welcome Winter

Greetings beer lovers! An unrelated topic.... I was able to take a mid-week day off on Wednesday and went to Newry ME for a much anticipated mid week ski day after seeing Warren Millers' "Children of Winter". What a great day it was... A sunny &40 balmy degrees with decent snowcover, lots of long cruisers and soft snow and NO CROWDS!!. My legs were in a bit of rough shape on Thurs. but none the worse for wear. So, if you can and do ride or ski I'd say get out there ASAP! I was also able to see my brew buddy Stoo Mason at the Sunday River Brewing Co. He had some tasty beer on draught ( 420 IPA and 840 IPA!!) and was well worth the trip. On other notes about the brewery.... We've just put on the Barleywine which is showing itself quite nicely, albeit young, with big fruity (figs & plums) notes and a great hop balance. A little bit different from last years version and I would humbly say a better one. Good job T-Money (T$)!! We have also procurred a few kegs of Sierra Nevada Celebration for your, and our, enjoyment. This is one of the best winter ales I know..... besides ours of course! This years version is similar to last years with it's beautiful amber color medium body and hops running throughout the length of the brew.... a true world class beer. Be on the lookout for our Holidaze Porter which should be available on Monday the 8th. We used 25#s of wildflower honey and Galangal (Thai) ginger. The overall impression is a dark medium bodied ale with a menthol-like spiciness... oooh soo cool for the wintertime. Well, that's all I've got for now. Have a great weekend. Cheers! todm

Winter Weizen

Hello all,

The Smoked Dunkelweizen that was loved by some and a little to phenolic for others is gone. We replaced it with another wheat beer though, our Winter Weizen. this years winter weizen is very nice, it has that banana and clove nose and taste right up front as you would suspect in a German style wheat beer. But with a higher alcohol and body then your normal wheat beer, hence why we called it our Winter Weizen. Defiantly worth a try.

But those who were in love with the smoke character of the dunkel, don’t you worry we are weaning you off of it with the new cask. We added oak w/ Lagavulin scotch to our Scotch ale, where the peat smoke character of the Lagavulin adds another layer of smoked character to the scotch ale. Very nice beer!

That’s it for now.

cheers,
Tyler

American Mild

Hello,

The Murphy Law's Red Ale was loved by all and is now all dried up. We have replaced it with our American Mild. Which is a smaller version of an IPA. Meaning that the alcohol is light, at 4.5% ABV, so you can have a few of them. Similar to how a British mild is low in alcohol, but we put the American twist on it by making it golden in color and adding a mostly late hop additions making it taste similar to an IPA. We used a new Cascade hop product this year as our dry hop vs. the traditional Warrior dry hop that we used in the past. Let us know what you think. Is it better this year then last? Dose anyone have tasting notes from last year?

By the way, we are in the process of renaming this beer. It has been called Weenie Rocket, and Short Fuse in the past. What is your take on Whipper Snapper as the name?

Cheers,
Tyler

Winter Rye

Hello,

The winter Rye is out and tasting great. You definitely get the Belgian yeast character right in the front and then the slight tantalizing tartness of the rye malt comes though and lasts into the finish. A very nice medium bodied beer that will warm you right up as we are getting into the colder days of November. I can’t believe that it is getting to this time of year. The evergreen wreaths are hanging from the light post in Portsmouth now, and every store you walk into you have x-mas carols being sung by the latest top 40 artist. Snow should be here before you know it.

Cheers,
Tyler

Out of Deep condition

Hey all,

We have to say good bye to the ALTenator. But we kept the tap flowing with our Scotch ale. It is malty full bodied with a hint of smoke in the background, truly a fall beer. The moat mountain is all most gone, I am saying a some point today or possibly tomorrow the winter Rye will hit the taps with fanfare. Keep an eye out for this one.

Cheers
Tyler

How long has it been since my last post?? Too long!

Greetings beer lovers,
First off I'd like to say I feel proud to be part of history as we have finally given the nod to an African American to become our President, Three cheers! to Barak Obama!
Well I am back at the 'old mac' to give a brief update on what's happening around here since Tyler has the day off to take care of his bebe, Rachel, who is having her wisdom teeth yanked out.... poor thing. Hope you are OK, Rach. Anyway, we did get the cask changed to Oatmeal Stout with Styrian Goldings...... earthy yumminess with a hint of roast. The Alt beer is getting low so if you haven't had a chance to taste this wonderful elixer..... I'd check it out as it is quite tasty. It looks like the Moat Weiss will be hanging on thru the weekend but be ready for a tasty Rye beer we're calling our Winter Rye. It is very similar to a wheat beer in it has a tart-like character but it is quite different in that it is a bit more complex with a few layers of malt and hops. And lastly someting for you big malt lovers we've got our Scotch ale in deep condition and will be ready when the Alt kicks.
Of other points of interest Rob Martin, our executive chef, has asked me to post some tasty morsels for you all to ponder. Rob has just received a pig from the Hasty Family at Breezy Hill Farms and will be running some piggy specials this weekend.... consisting of a Confit of pork, a pork chop and a reillette of pork. My arteries are already hardening!! Nothing like a little OBD or Black Cat Stouy to wash this goodness down. Hope you are all getting in the mood for some tasty portions of pork and beer. Until the next time, Cheers! Tod.

Did you Vote?

Hello,

We started up a little late today so Tod and I could get into Vote before we came in. Hope that you did the same or are leaving early from work to make it in before the polls close at 7pm.

The Murphy's Law Red ale is back and better then ever. Its nice and malty with very light hopping making the beer a easy drinker. Great beer to have as an after election celebration drink.

cheers,
Tyler

curriculum vitae

Well since you asked.

I'm a NH boy and grew up in Concord NH and went to Concord High. I then continued my education at UNH and studied Chemical engineering while falling in love with the seacoast of NH. I got a job out of school as a traveling sales man selling filter presses, filter plates and filter cloths. But after a year of that I got sick of my cubical and sick of airports. I had been home brewing since my sophomore year of college and was getting into it. So I decide to go to UC Davis and got my master brewers certificate. I made my way back east and asked Tod for a job. There wasn't one available so I worked at Mercury Brewing Co down in Ipswich MA. I kept in touch with Tod at least monthly to see what was going on, and one day he asked me to come in for a working interview. That was a year and a half ago now. And the rest is history.

cheers,
Tyler

The seasons a changing

Hey all,

I apologize for not getting to all of these changes sooner, but I was away for the weekend at my girlfriend’s brothers wedding. Don’t you worry I was a dancing machine. Ride that Pony!

About the beer, we have to say good buy to a couple of favorites the Pumpkin Ale as well as the Hop Harvest two. Going to have to drink the Bottle rocket now all you hop heads out there. With these beers going quickly left us down two taps. Hence us bringing in Moat Mountain Weiss, which will bring back memories of summer as you sip this light wheat beer. But don’t you worry we have plenty of beers in the works, just not any that are quite ready yet. I am getting pumped since this is one of my favorite beer seasons. Big bold interesting beers coming left and right, Scotch ale, Barley wine, winter rye, YUM! I am interested to see how the Winter Rye comes out too. I wasn’t here for the brewing of it. Tod and Zach took care of it over the weekend while I was away. But I hear it has a Belgian yeast strain in it. So we will have to wait and have a Smoked Dunkelweizen in the mean time :)

The cask has changed and is almost out. The current cask is our Blonde with the addition of Stinging Nettle and Licorice Root. Which adds a nice spicy herbal note to the beer. When that goes we have a Blonde with Yarrow that I don’t know what it tastes like since I have never used it before. So again we will have to have an ALTernator and wait this one out too.

See ya all in soon for a pint!

Cheers,
Tyler

Beer Mecca

OMG! The only fitting description of Ebenezer's is that it is Beer Mecca. First off the bar/resturant is attached to the side of the owners house (Chris) which is next to a golf course in Lovel ME. The place had 5 different Cantillon beer on DRAFT! De Proef Slaapmutske and the De Proef collaboration with Jason from Allagash, on tap; Black Albert along with a slue of the De Struise beers, on tap and in bottles; a bunch of vintage Stone products, on tap; just to name a few of the selections! Plus the Bottle list is crazy. I am defiantly going to have to go back sooner then later. All of you should go check it out when you get a chance.

Well I have to get back to planning my next trip.. uuuh I mean get back to work :)

Cheers,
Tyler

No milk in my oatmeal

Hello,

So the milk stout was enjoyed by all and is now gone. We have replaced with the oatmeal stout which is terrific as always. The smoked dunkel has really started to come into itself and tasting better day by day. Well its field trip time. We are going on a company field trip to Ebenezer’s! I'll let you know how it was later.

Cheers,
Tyler

PS Sean, no worries the B-wine is doing fine I just didn’t know how long out it will be ready. I'll put it back up there for you.

It's Smoky Mc Smokington time

Hello,

So the Oktoberfest didn’t even last the month of October. You guys must have loved it! We replaced it with our smoked dunkelweizen. this dark wheat beer has a nice and not too overwhelming smoke character. This year we used lilac wood and it gives the beer an almost floral smoke character that balances well with the fruity and spicy notes of the weizen beer. And yes it is served Mit Hefe (with yeast).

Prost!

Tyler

I am the ALTerator!

Hello all,

The Smutty Maibock is gone and is replaced by our Double/Imperial Alt that we like to call the ALTerator. This beer has the big malty profile of an Alt beer and it's 7.5% abv is balanced well with subtle German hops. A beautiful beer.

Tod did just get back from GABF, but sadly our Bluebeery, Kolsch, Smoked Dunkel, Hefeweizen and Oatmeal Stout didn’t win anything this year. Wish us better luck next year.

Smoked Belgian squash saison...WHAT?

Hello,

Well I wanted to let everyone know that the first Hop Harvest I has gone by the way side. We brought on a new fall beer for you all though. Our Pumpkin ale is pouring now. This beer has 200 lbs (in a double batch) of organic pumpkin that we add to the mash tun. The Pumpkins are from a local farmer and are a mixture of Dickenson and Cinderella pumpkins. The Cinderella’s look like the pumpkin carriage in the movie, hence the name. We hand shredding them and spread them out though out the mashing process. The color of this beer is amazing! We added some pumpkin pie spices, but not too much, to the boil with a light kiss of hops makes this beer delicious. We are truly in fall now.

To answer a few questions:

Mutual Fund Guru: We didn't participate in the Tettnang sale by the BBC. Mostly because we don’t use Tet in anything, and secondly for an interesting German flavoring hop we are playing with the new variety called Saphire. Imperial Pils? We will have to see. Also too bad to see that you are cutting back your visits here. I was hoping to get some investment advise from you since you are a Guru on the subject :)

David: The hostess, Rachel, that you spoke to when you were here is actually my girlfriend. (Sorry ladies I am spoken for!) But I am glad that you heeded her advise to contact me via the blog. Your request for a Belgian Style Triple Bock had Tod, Zack and myself scratching our noggin's this morning. First off Triple Bock is a trademark BBC (Sam Adams) product, aka not even a real style. Secondly a Bock is a German style beer. Though a Belgian yeast strain in a Bock beer would be interesting. But I think it would turn out to be a Belgian dark strong beer when it finished out. Those Belgian yeast strains kick of crazy esters and German beers are all about the clean finish of the beer. Most importantly so we don’t get sued, we have never or never will make a triple bock of any type. The BBC has great lawyers!

On the Smoked Dunkelwiezen, this years is going to be delicious. We added a kiss of smoke to the malt by house smoking 50lbs of malt with lilac wood. Milled it in to a malt profile of crystal and dark wheat malts along with some German pils and 2row. Making the finished beer a nicely "dark wheat" beer (aka "Dunkelwiezen" in German). It is still in fermentation most likely going to be finished this afternoon and dropped in temperature to start the maturation process. Don’t you worry though, it is going to be worth the wait.

Cheers,
Tyler

Here Comes Fall!

Greetings fellow beer enthusiasts! It has been a long time since I have posted because Tyler is the "unofficial" blogmaster general and I am usually tied up in the brewery plus..... my typing skills are only rivaled by 5 year olds!!. So, here it is 1 day 'til October and and we have a whole bunch of new brews to let you in on.
First off the Oktoberfest beer is on and smooth as silk. With an upfront Munich flavor the maltiness is caressed with some noble Czech Saaz hops. OH Yea!! This beauty is honey in color with a very drinkable body followed by a kiss of hops. A true lager with unparalleled smoothness.
Speaking of smooth we just put on the Milk Stout which has 30 pounds of lactose, a milk sugar, which is an unfermentable sugar which leaves a percieved sweetness on the tongue. If one is lactose intollerant please do not imbibe! However, if you like a well balanced "sweet" stout your ship has come in. Big chocolate and roasty note followed by a swift sweet note.
On the other side of the sweetness scale is our third and final offering our Hop Harvest 2. This is our second "wet" hop beer for the year. This baby has 120 pounds of wet Simcoe hops added throughout the entire boil. 75/45/30/15/10 & 5 minute additions plus a whirlpool and hopback addition. This one is the real deal. It took all our brewing skills to finagle the hops into this beer but worth the effort. The Simcoe hops give the beer a huge citrus note very reminescent of grapefruit. It is not just for breakfast anymore!! or something like that. This one is for true hopheads. Enjoy! Cheers! Todm

You like the big beers huh?

So the Killer B lasted about a day. We have our last vintage beer the '06 Wheatwine on tap now. It went on last night after the Killer B so there is only a little bit hanging around. Most likely it will kick today, just an FYI. This is the wheat wine that was judged last year that gave us a silver medal at the GABF for the Wheatwine category. Toffee sweetness the main flavor and the 11.5% abv is so very mellowed it tastes like a 4% session beer.

The cask has changed over to Oatmeal dry hopped with Columbus as well.

Cheers,
Tyler

Killer B

Hello,

Well the vintage Barleywine seemed to go over well. The half barrel keg we had lasted all of 3 days! Now we have a '06 Killer B on. The Killer B is a braggot which is a beer where a good chuck of the fermentable sugars come from honey added to the boil. This beer comes in at 10.5% abv with a sweet toasted oak nose medium body and lots of residual sugar on the palette. The years of ageing of this beer helped out a lot.

Cheers,
Tyler

Harvest Time

Hello all,

Well harvest time has started here at the Portsmouth Brewery. The Moat Mountain Weiss is gone but we have replaced it with our Hop Harvest I. This beer uses the locally grown east coast hops in it. they are a Fuggle derivative, which is a British style of hops. The grower did his doctorate research on organic and sustainable growing with his focus on growing hops. He said that he can trace back this hop variety to the original hops the pilgrims brought over with them on the Mayflower. So in turn this beer is a mellow version of a hop harvest. It has a very floral nose with a nice resin backbone on the palette. If I had to compare it to anything I would say it is almost like an ESB (extra special bitter). So I am going to have to say it is a Extremely Extra Special Bitter. EESB, HA!

The Double Wit has left us as well. But our Double Alt aka the Alternator isn’t ready yet. So we busted out some vintage stuff for you all. Right now we have an '07 Barleywine pouring. The dark fruits flavors of plums, raisins and figs are nicely present on the nose and palate. The 11.5% abv has mellowed out amazingly leaving an hint of vanilla in the post nasal aroma (the aroma after the swallowing). It is amazing what a year can do for a beer. It will cost you $6.00 for a bubble glass of it and since it is a very limited amount we are not filling growlers of this bad boy. So you are going to have to come in to have a taste of this one and I promise that it will totally be worth it.

Cheers,
Tyler

Hefe bier

Just wanted to let you know that we put on our Hefewiezen. I think that we have gotten a handle on the new yeast strain too. There is a nice banana note on the nose while the beer comes off with nice clove spiciness on the palate. Very nice bier!

Cheers,
Tyler

Cask bier/MBAA

Sorry about the Licorice Root cask. Apparently it was taped this weekend while Tod, Zack and I were in Portland at the MBAA meeting, and it was hit hard. We just pulled through the Kolsch dry hopped with Spalt which is very nice. Its earthy and spicy all at the same time.

The MBAA meeting was a great time up in Portland. We saw some great speakers talk about more efficient ways to clean hard piped equipment. We learned about the hop harvest and saw all the equipment used for this. Plus a great lecture on the correct way to taste/critique a beer. Plus the night life wasn’t bad either. If you get up there make it to Novare Res. It’s a great beer bar and has every beer you could ever want. Well except for Kate ☺

Cheers,
Tyler

Hey O!

Hey all,
The 5 C’s has kicked and been replaced with the Bottle Rocket IPA. Mmmmm good old stand by, glad to see her back! The cask has changed over to Kolsch with licorice root, and no it doesn’t taste like Sambuca. The licorice root gives it a woody and spicy character to the beer.
And to clarify a bit on my last post on the Kolsch bier (correct spelling this time!!! JA!) Is a fall beer for us, since we send it to GABF (in Category 40 German-Style Kolsch). But if you go to Cologne, Kolsch is brewed year round and is so freaking crisp and tasty you’d probably wanna move to Köln ( in German of course) foreva!! PS Thank you Tod for your input!

On the brewers table added to the blog, I know that there is the menu on the website, but it hasn’t been updated in a while. I will get on that and light a fire under someone’s butt.

That’s it for now
Cheers,
Tyler

Kolsch beir, ya!

Hello all,

I take a day off and look what happens!

So the Blueberry kicked, so you are going to have to wait for next year if you missed it. But to keep you all happy (you too NFLBrew) we are getting the Kolsch into a serving tank this morning. So we are going to have our first fall beer of the year on. For those who dont know about the Kolsch style it is a German ale that is traditionally made in the Cologne region of Germany. It is an ale that is fermented at slightly cooler temps then our other ales and then we lager (cold age) the beer. This makes it a nice a fruity version of a German style beer, but still having the crisp clean finish you expect from a German beer.

The Cask changed to the 5 C's with Nugget. I have yet to try it but when Tod pulled it though yesterday he had to have a glass of it because it was that good.

And just a heads up the 5 C's is getting low so if you haven’t had a chance to get some, GET IN HERE!

Cheers,
Tyler

Oatmeal Stout is ON!!!!!!!!!!!!

HEy all,

I just pulled through the Oatmeal Stout that is going to GABF. Is is so tasty, you need to come in and give it a try. And i forgot to mention that we are sending out hefewiezen to Denver this year on my last post. The hefe should be on soon. Great time to get to the Portsmouth Brewery if you ask me!

Cheers,
Tyler

GABF right around the corner

Hey all,

I am doing some prep work for this years GABF. Filling bottles/kegs that are going to be sent out to Denver. The list of beers this year is, Bluebeery, Kolsch, Dunkelwiezen and Oatmeal Stout. Tod is heading out to Denver this year, he was asked to Judge this year too. That means that I will be here manning the fort and keeping the beer flowing. Wish us luck!

PS the cask has changed to the 5 C's dry hopped with Warrior. I haven’t even pulled it thought the line yet so it is going to be super fresh and delicious tonight.

Cheers,
Tyler

There ya go

Boo ya!

I want to congratulate Anonymous for the correct answer for the 5 C's question. The hops used for the 5 C's are Columbus, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook and Crystal. Cluster was a great guess too though. But Cluster is more catty then Simco with a high co-humulone level, which comes off as a very harsh bitterness in the finished beer. OMG Cluster is such a 90’s hop!

And I thought we could keep it under the radar about what went on with the 4 musketeers. But if you do a goggle search for "Kabert" I am sure you will find it interesting.

Cheers,
Tyler

The 5 C's IPA, can you name them all?

Hey all,

I wanted to let you know that our bottle rocket has been consumed at a record pace, keeping in tune with the way that the summer has been flowing. But we do have the 5 C’s IPA on tap right now so you can still get you IPA fix. It is has a much more citrus nose and taste then the Bottle Rocket and finishes slightly dryer too. It should be a suitable replacement for the Rocket. Plus it is named after the 5 diffrent hop varities that start with the letter C and we happen to use in this beer. Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Tyler

PS Hope you had a great summer and welcome to fall!

The four Musketeers

Hey all,

Yes it is true what you hear. The De Struise Brew boys where in the house on Wednesday. We made a collaboration beer that is going to be big bold and beautiful. But is not going to be ready for quite a few months. And no I don’t have an exact date of release.

Other beer news, the Dunkel is going to be off for a day so we can make sure the back up Dunkel will be ready to serve. It should be back on by Sat. The cask has changed to Black Cat w/Columbus, and it is delicious. 5 C's is almost ready and is coming out soon I promise. And we just got word that our first wet hops are ready for next week so we are going to get in the first hop harvest of the year into production!!!! So excited.

That’s it for now.

cheers,
Tyler

Witt^2 is grand

Hey all,

We now have our Double Wit beer on tap. It is the big brother to the Belgian Wit we had on a while back. Bigger in flavor and alcohol. The increase of ethanol helps the orange and coriander aromas flow to the nose making this beer very well balanced at 9% abv. Defiantly a delicious brew.

Luckily Zach just made in it in time to get the last pint of his OBD with Dalwhinnie. Sad to say that it is gone. Now on we have our Bottle Rocket IPA with a dry "herbing" of chamomile. The chamomile isn’t overpowering at all and adds a nice floral flavor to the finish of the IPA. Our First stab at herbs in beer. We will see where this leads us.

Cheers,
Tyler

If you havn't checked the website in a while

Oh ya

I almost forgot to mention that the new Kate the Great count down as been added to our website. Feburary 9th, 2009 at another random time of 1:14pm. www.portsmouthbrewery.com Plus there is a awesome video made by Atlantic Media about the last Kate release. Go Check it out!

Cheers,
Tyler

New Cask! Get in here Zach!

Hey all

We gave our Intern (who now is a part time brewer here for the summer) Zach Bodah a green light to make his first cask conditioned beer. He chose to use our OBD and add toasted oak chips that were soaked in Dalwhinnie Scotch. It went on last night and it is great! So you need to get in here Zach to give it a whirl before it is gone. Secondly, the OBD kicked last night just as we were leaving. So I came in nice and early today to clean sanitize and purge a serving tank and I am now transferring the Old Brown Dog so it will be on in a matter of minutes.

Now the word on the Portsmouth Brewery Old Brown Dog. As most of you know by coming in and reading this blog this has been one of the busiest summers on record for the Portsmouth brewery. We have been running out of beer faster then we can make it (in most cases). So we decided to bring in Smuttynose Old Brown Dog for the rest of the summer to free up a fermentation vessel and serving tank(s). This will hopefully allow us to keep more of our seasonal on tap and be able to give them the time they need to finish correctly. So the batch of Portsmouth OBD that I am transferring right now will be the last for a few months. We will be getting in the Smuttynose Tap handles when it changes over and I will update the What's on Tap section of the blog to keep you guys in the know!

Cheers,

Tyler

All 10 in the hizzy

Hello,

We are now back to a full tap lineup here at the Portsmouth Brewery. Well we still have one guest tap of Moat Mountain Weiss bier, but close enough. Our Hefewiezen is back. We used a different yeast strain to try to get more clove and less banana esters in the beer. It is close to where we want it but you be the judge. The bottle rocket IPA is back as well. After all the intense west coast IPA's we had on for a bit, it is nice to have a nice well balanced IPA for a change. And I know some of you are looking at the Dunkelwiezen and are excited for the smokiness that normally comes along with it. You are going to have to wait a few more months for our smoked Dunkel to some out, it is such a fall beer se can put it out now. This is our version of a Summer Dunkelwiezen. Dunkel is dark in German, so this beer is a dark German wheat beer.

Cheers!

Tyler

And then there were 4

Hello Again,
It is 6:26 and we just ran ou of our Imperial IPA.... bummer! Oh well chalk it up to a busy season. Looks like we will be running on 4 beers til the IPA and double Witt come on later this week. Sorry for any inconvenience. Cheers! Todm

WHOA!!! Summer is in full swing

Greetings beer lovers. It is August 9th already and we are slammin'. I thought last year was busy but this year is already ahead of where we were last year!(whatever that means!!) Cheers! to all you P-brew enthusiastics!! As our beers develop in deep condition we are running lots of guest beers to help us thru these crazy times. We have some Moat Mountain beers (from N. Conway NH) as well as Stone beers from San Deigo CA. Hope you enjoy these fine guest beers.
So, there is some great news from Smuttynose Brewing Co. and that is Peter Egelston, President and owner of Smuttynose and P-brew, too,hence the sister company thing, got the go ahead for the development of the new Smuttynose brewery in Hampton NH!!! I am so sure Peter is ecstatic over this development as he has been working on a new site for Smuttynose for the past 4 years( me thinks) Cheers! to Peter for sticking in there.
Our IPA will be back later this week as will our Hefeweizen and perhaps our double Witt. We are trying to keep up with the heavy demand.
I want to thank not only Tyler my assistant for kicking butt this summer but I want to throw out a huge THANKS to Zach our intern from the American Brewers Guild who has worked the past 6 weeks without pay during the busiest season ever!! Coincidence??? I think not. Anyway we hired him on for as long as it takes him to land his first brewing job.
I would also like to throw a huge thanks to Rob and the chefs and our waitstaff without whom we would be dead in the water.Lastlya big Cheers! to Brennen Rumble and his Managers who make the cogs mesh and run without grinding..... did I just use the term "grinding"?? Oh well!
Peace and Cheers! Todm

IPA situation

Hello,

Well we didn’t end up getting Arrogant Bastard to the dismay of a few bloggers to this site. It is a great beer but we were out of IPA, so we needed to get an IPA on. I know what you are going to say, Stone Brewing Co is a Southern Cali aka West Coast brewery everything is hopped out crazy like. But I am sure that you will enjoy the Ruination IPA from Stone as a suitable substitution for our Bottle Rocket. The Ruination stands up to the west coast style of stuffing hops in everywhere. The web site says that it is Magnum and Centennial hops in this one. But there has to be others in there too, we are thinking late additions of Summit but hey what do we know. Try one and let me know what you think.

Mack, my apologies about the 5 C’s being in the works. I put it up in the beginning of the week and then we realized that we didn’t have the correct hops in house for the 5 C’s IPA. So you will have to try our Imperial IPA when you get here. I am sure it will cure your fix for hops!

Secondly we put back on our Oatmeal stout and once again tweaked the recipe just a little bit, and it worked out beautifully. We are going to have to send this one to GABF this year! So tasty.

That’s all for now

Cheers,
Tyler

IPA is on its way

Hey all,

We got backed up on our Bottle Rocket IPA and it is not going to be ready for 10-12 days. But we are talking with the Stone Salesman and we are hoping to get in some Stone IPA or possible Some Ruination. We will see what we can get from him when he swings in today.

We do have the Wiezenhiemer on now. It is an American Wheat beer. Meaning that the malt profile is similar to the Hefewiezen but we ferment it out with our house yeast strain so it comes off nice a clean. A very easy drinking summer beer.

See ya all soon!

Cheers,
Tyler

Crazy times at Ridgemont High.

Hey all,

I want to apologize for not posting in a while. We have been crazy busy here in the brewery. After the crazy Red White and Blue offering this July 4th It put our staple beers in jeopardy and we have finally gotten back on track (I say with my fingers crossed). Plus we just got back from pouring at the Vermont Brew Fest up in Burlington. An amazing brew fest, right on the lake in the park. Plus you can't forget about the amazing pubs there are in Burlington. If you get a chance to go next year defiantly check it out.
So beer wise we are doing great for now. Our Old Brown Dog is back on, and we have our Black Cat Stout back on. Seasonally the Saison kicked and was replaced with our Hefewiezen and the Murphy's Law Red has been replaced by our Thaizenhimer. What is a Thaizenhimer you ask? Well it is a Thai influenced American wheat beer. Having a malt and hop profile similar to our Weizenhiemer but the addition of Kaffir Lime leaves, Lemongrass and ginger add that unique flavor and aroma to this light bodied beer.

Well back to the cleaning for me. See ya all soon!

Cheers,
Tyler

New Beers on tap

Hey all,

You are going to have to say good buy to the Bluebeery and the Hefewiezen. But don’t worry, you will see the Hefe sooner than later and the Bluebeery you are going to have to wait until the end of the summer when it is actually blueberry season where we will make a double batch of it. To replace them we have our Bottle Rocket IPA back in action and we put back on our Saison that has been aging in a serving tank. (I had some at the servers meeting this morning and WOW the age has helped it become beautiful).

Secondly the Smutty Robust Porter has kicked and we will be putting on our Black Cat stout. So we have a stout on now!

Cheers,

Tyler

Warning!

I just want to let everyone know that we have gotten a couple of concerns on two of our beers.

First, we had a Bluebeery Ale sent back because it tasted too much like blueberries! We do uses 120lbs of real blueberries per 7bbl of beer, so they might be on to something .

Secondly we after our Imperial IPA went on we had a complaint that it tasted too hoppy! Well not really, it was compared to a west coast IPA. So we stole a few tricks from the west coasters, hop backs, dry hopping, having 8 kettle hop additions. We wanted to wake up those taste buds of you all!

I thought I needed to share that with you all.

Cheers,
Tyler

Summer time and the livin easy..... HA!

Hello all,

My goodness, you guys are drinking some beer this summer! We are going though Old Brown Dog here faster then we have ever, the IPA is being sucked out of the tanks so fast, and every one has discovered the glory of a cask conditioned beer. Here is the rundown.

Bottle Rocket IPA kicked yesterday afternoon with the back-up just finishing primary fermentation. So to keep you hop heads from burning down our house we decided to put on our Imperial IPA to tide you over. This beer has hops stuffed and jammed into it in ever step along the brewing process. Mash hopping, over the sparge, on first runnings, 8 kettle additions, hop back and Fermenter. So if you cant find the hops while drinking this beer get your tongue checked, and at 9% abv you need to be gentle with this one.

Our OBD flew and production wise of getting the Red, White and Blue ready for the 4th made it so we couldn't fit in our OBD. So we have Smuttynose's OBD as a replacement. The two beers are very close in all aspects. I find a slightly more roast character coming from Smutty's but hey you tell me what you think.

The Oatmeal stout was a big hit as well. We are going to put back on our Hefewiezen as a filler which means that there is not a stout on the menu. But if you are looking for that dark roasty-ness you should try the Smuttynose Robust Porter that replaced the Bigfoot. One of there finest beers if you ask me.

That’s all for now!

Cheers,

Tyler

Happy Birthday USA!

While Tod and Zach are working on the Mash Tun I thought I would get a quick Blog in.

Happy 4th of July everyone. To celebrate here at the Portsmouth Brewery we decided to do a Red, White and Blue sampler for you all to enjoy.
The Red being our Murphy's Law Red Ale, our version of a Irish Style red ale.
The White being our Belgian Wit, which is a Belgian Wheat beer with orange and coriander flavors and a nice white color from the raw wheat used in the boil.
Last but not least is the Blue, which we put out another fan favorite our Bluebeery. It is a light bodied beer that has turned almost purple from the 120lbs of REAL blueberries added to this brew. If you have never had our Bluebeery you have not experienced what a real fruit should taste like.

See ya here for a pint later!

Cheers,
Tyler

Ya intern!

Hey all,

Our intern Zach Bodah started yesterday giving us the extra set of hands that are truly needed in the summer time. He is from the American Brewers Guild program and his beer education will be completed here at the Portsmouth Brewery. Come in and say hello to him if you get a chance.

Beer wise the Wild Thang is gone and been replaced with our Hefewiezen. This is a traditional German style Hefe with the banana and clove esters created during fermentation. Remember No F.L. The lemon will cover up the beautiful nuances. The cask is Oatmeal Stout dry hopped with Columbus. Personally one of my favorite casks we make here. The columbus add a earthy spiciness that works so well with the oatmeal stouts mouth coating roast character.

Tod asked what was in my radar. Well I am hoping to be able to get another chance to make the Barleywine this year to tweak the recipe one step closer to perfection. I am going to try a home brew batch of Gruit and see how it turns out. But I am still searching for a few key ingredients. Dose anyone know where I can find Marsh Rosemary or Labrador Tea? If we like the outcome we will scale it up to a batch here and hopefully have it out for the fall.

Cheers,

Tyler

Kate the Great......has come and gone!

Greetings all. It was a sad morning for me when I walked into the brewery only to look at Tylers long face to realize the end had come. Kate had left the building! I am veklempt, saddened and BLOW AWAY how quickly and well recieved this beer was and is no longer on tap. The bottles (900 hand filled!) were sold out in less than 6 hours! The 5 barrels on draught lasted all of 4 days, I hope people were able to try Kate. This years version was as good as ever but would really improve with a little more aging. I would imagine another 6 months will make her shine. We are already planning for the next batch. I might have a little more cloaking on this batch and have the black beauty in stealth garb 'til just before release. Peter, Tyler, Brennen and I will discuss. As far beers to look forward to we will be releasing our Imperial IPA in about amother two weeks and then next up will be our double Witt. Tyler what is next on your radar screen? As always the beers on tap at the brewery are constantly in flux. Well that's all I've got for now. Cheers! todm

Rain Check

Hey all,

First off thank you all fro coming yesterday for the Kate release. There was WAY more people here than I would have never thought. As those of you with a rain check know, we came up 120 bottles short of the 900 bottles we were going to because of equipment/time restrictions of the Portsmouth Brewery Bottling line (aka one head Malvico filler). Those of you with your rain check come on in on Fri (6/26/08) between 11:30am and 2:27pm to claim you Kate. And then after 2:27pm we go back to the old school first come first served for the rest of the Kate until it is gone.

I got to run.

Cheers,
Tyler

Tic....Toc....

Hey all,

It is minuets away from being 24 hours left until Kate makes her debut. Captain Hook is twitching as the clock is ticking down. I want to apologize on the lack of posting I have been doing lately, we are getting super busy around here. I mean we have been bottling for 4 straight days to get the 900 bottles ready for tomorrow! Luckily our intern Zach Bodah starts the first of the month so we will be getting an extra set of hands in here for the summer.

Another adventure we had was the American Craft Brewers Festival in Boston last weekend. The festival went over very well and there was a great showing of great breweries from around the country. I don’t want to make you jealous so I wont list all the breweries that were there, but it was a great time. We brought our IPA, Saison, Wild Thang and Dirty Blonde; no Kate was brought down to the dismay of about every third person asking if we were pouring it. We wanted to saving it for you guys out there reading this and coming tomorrow.

The Stout has changed over to the Oatmeal. We used flaked and malted oats again in this batch. It came out very nice and will be a good appetizer to have while you are milling around the bar waiting for 2:27pm.

Well I have to get back to the bottling! See ya all tomorrow!

Cheers,
Tyler

Happy Market Square Day!

Hello all,

Today is Market Square Day here in Portsmouth. If you are reading this and are planning on coming downtown for the festivities I wish you good luck finding parking. For Market Square Day the streets are closed off, vendors of all sorts are everywhere, plus all the restaurants and bars are open and ready for you. A good time for all ages here in Portsmouth.

But back to the beer! I have a couple of beer changes that I want to share with you.

First off the Scotch ale is gone. But we filled that tap handle with our Saison. Saison's are deemed Farmhouse style ales because every person that worked in the fields as part of their payment received beer from the owners own special recipe made in his farmhouse. This makes every Saison slightly different. Ours is light in body with a very nice fruity and spicy notes for the Belgian yeast strain we used. Robust in flavor but sill very drinkable.

Secondly, The Wiezenhiemer is going to kick in about 35 seconds. So I am telling the future to you, and my crystal ball says that Wild Thang is to follow. Wild Thang is a wild rice beer. It is not made completely from wild rice (sorry if you have a gluten allergy) but there is enough added to the mash to give a beautiful nutty character to the beer. The late additions of Sterling hops add a cherry flavor to the light bodied beer.

Thirdly, The cask has changed to Oaked Bottle Rocket IPA. Bringing IPA back to its root of traveling across the seas in a wooden barrel. We didn’t rock it back and forth for days on end to totally simulate the traveling. Or vibrate it at 135 hertz (OMmmmmm ☺). But the oak adds some nice tannin character with a hint of vanilla that play nicely with the hoppy IPA.

That’s it for now!
Cheers,
Tyler

Cask beer is grand!

Hello

Finally! The beer engine is back up and running. So come on in as ask your server/bartender what we are offering on cask today and have a hand pulled pint.

Cheers,
Tyler

Hefeweizen is back

Hey all,

Since I was away this weekend doing my groomsman responsibilities for one of my good buddies from 3rd grade Tod has to work the Sat shift. But good news has come from it. The Hefe is back on as promised. I know that most of you out there reading this are really savvy in your beer knowledge. But the Portsmouth Brewery's is a German style Hefe, not and American style (like Windermere bros). So try it w/out a lemon before you fire some fruit into the brew. I hope that you will enjoy the spicy and fruity note in the beer that are naturally occurring form the yeast strain and will think twice about fruiting a beer in the future.

Cheers to No FL!

Tyler

Breathing, and sleeping, again in Portsmouth

Whew! The sleepless night are over now that the issues surrounding Kate the Great have been resolved. The people have spoken. The laws have been laid out. I know that there will be some unhappy soles out there but I am convinced more people will be able to get this wonderful stout for more days than our previous release. The timing in December was perfect depending on how you look at the half full glass. The BeerAdvocates deemed this wonderful elixer the 2nd best beer on the planet and the #1 beer in America!! WOW!! No wonder there was such a fast run on poor Kate.There will be a limit on the amount of bottles available per person and no growlers available. If we had a 50 barrel capacity things would be different. But realistically, with only 75 cases being produced (and let me tell you how excited I am about this prospect) and the remainder available in draught only I am convinced the beer will last longer for more people to enjoy. I hope to meet many of you out there in "blogland" at the release of Kate on the 24th. Till next time. Cheers! Todm

How Kate Gets Divvied Up - the Final Word

As those of you who've been following this blog & our newsletter know, the big question here at the Portsmouth Brewery is how are we going to divvy up our limited supply of Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout, which is due to go on tap in a few weeks' time? The rumor mill has been working overtime, with lots of conjecture, opinion and a few "facts" mixed in. Please consider this the definitive source of information and accept no substitutes.

Before we start, however, here's some background: this past December, as he normally does, Tod put his imperial stout, dubbed Kate the Great, on tap. At roughly the same time the December issue of Beer Advocate Magazine appeared, naming Kate as the Best Beer in America (and Second Best on Planet Earth), a judgement based on the thousands of Beer Advocate reviews posted online over the previous year. Needless to say, the beer sold out very quickly, leaving folks clamoring for more, and asking when Kate would make her next appearance. Frankly, the whole experience was quite gratifying but a bit overwhelming. (Here's Tod's interview on New Hampshire Public Radio.) In January, Tod & Tyler brewed the next batch, which they planned to put in tap sometime in late spring or early summer. 

In response to many inquires, and just for the fun of it, we chose an utterly random date and time for Kate to make her reappearance - Tuesday, June 24, at 2:27 pm - and even placed a countdown clock on our website. Well, we really stepped in it this time. After receiving reports of bottles of Kate trading on e-Bay for silly prices, and hearing ominous warnings about lines of people pitching tents on our sidewalks on June 23, we realized that we'd need to establish some protocols. Given my reluctance to establish arbitrary limits, we asked our newsletter subscribers to help us find the most equitable way to distribute the very limited amount of this tasty libation. The four options that were voted on ranged from no limits, to moderate limits, to strict limits. 

With several hundred votes submitted, the people have spoken, and they have chosen, by a significant plurality, Option Four - two bottles per person per day.

So, this is how it is going to work - 

• This batch of Kate consists of approximately ten barrels. Five barrels will be transferred to a serving tank to be offered on draft; the remaining five will be bottled. That's seventy-five cases, or nine hundred bottles.

• Kate the Great, both bottles and draft, will go on sale at 2:27 PM on Tuesday, June, 24th.

• Bottle purchases will be limited to two per person per day; Portsmouth Brewery Imperial Pint Club members will be allocated an additional two bottles - not an additional two per day, just an additional two.

• There will be no quota on cases offered for sale each day, as was originally suggested. In other words, if 450 people show up on Day One and each buys his/her alloted pair, the beer will be sold out on Day One. 

• On June 24th, bottles will be sold downstairs in the Jimmy LaPanza Lounge, not in our retail store, due to space constraints. After the 24th, bottles will be sold in the store, during regular store hours. Bottles will not be available after ten PM, as per standard policy.

• The cost per bottle will be ten dollars, same as before, NOT twenty as has been rumored.

We are not going to offer Kate in growlers. Instead, we have upped the amount to be bottled from forty-five to seventy-five cases. This was a difficult decision, but at the end of the day, we decided the 22-ounce bottle is a better, more stable package, and that the inevitable spillage that happens when filling growlers is not worth it.

So there you have it. We're looking forward to hoisting a glass of Kate with you on the 24th!

Cheers,

Peter

Beer Engine

Our beloved beer engine has sprung a leak. I took it apart this morning and cleaned and replaced the seals and check valve to no avail. We are going to need to get parts shiped in to rebuild it. So keep an eye out here to when we get the engine back up and running so you can enjoy our beers on cask again.

Cheers,
Tyler

Guest bier, ya!

Hello all,

Everyone loved the Hefewiezen we put out and drank it up faster then we could make the next batch! So we have the Weiss Bier from Moat Mountain up in North Conway on as a guest beer to tide us over until our hefe is finished. This beer is also an unfiltered German style (Bavarian Weiss if you want to get technical) wheat beer giving it the traditional banana and clove esters during fermentation. He uses the old school open fermentations process and has a different malt profile then we do that changes the overall flavor of the beer. So it is similar, kind of like a cousin, of our Hefewiezen. Some on it and give it a whirl.


Cheers,
Tyler

Summer has hit Portsmouth Brewery

The unofficial start of summer is Memorial Day (Thank you to all that are and have served!). Since the town pools are open now we have to get into the summer sprit. Wiezenhiemer is flowing with much rejoice from our sous chef Jon Hebert, because it is his favorite beer on the planet. Wiezenhiemer is an American wheat beer with a similar malt profile to a Hefe BUT we use our house yeast strain. So rather then a banana and clove esters that the German yeast strain give a Wiezenhiemer smells very clean with a hint of the wheat presence in the nose, slightly haziness from the wheat malt rather then the yeast strain, and has a clean ale front that fades to a slightly tart finish. Very, very quaffable! Bring on the 80 degrees weather! We are ready for it here at the Portsmouth Brewery.

Cheers,
Tyler

Overwhelmed in P-brewtown

Greetings all,
I am finally back on track with my brewery operations after a splindid, albeit short, visit to London. Catching up with my daughter and friends Dann Paquette and his wife Martha was great. I already spoke about the Fullers tour, their hospitality and sweet tasting room. We drank some of the beer Dann brews at Daleside Brewery from Yorkshire. A gingered Porter and a pleasent Bitter were among some tasty brews. Dann also indulged us in some Scottish (?) Extreme beers from a company called Brewdog. These were scotch infused ales and some crazy hopped up thing. The day got a little long for me and I lost my tasting notes!!
However, some of the coolest stuff we did in London aside from the Tate Modern, which would fill an entire block of blog and I will get to some day, was hanging at the pubs. Two of which were The Market Porter right across from Boroughs Market( open air market ) and The George an old inn with full gallery courtyard and just sooo olde!! The UK has such an amazing pub culture and you just hang out and imbibe. Not to get drunk but to ponder life,enjoy the setting and communicate with one another. You just enjoy the scene. I wonder why our pub scene here in America is so different. I guess I'll need to spend more serious reserch and development time in the UK pubs figure it out and fill us in on the datails!
Now on another note, the whole Kate the Great issue needs to be resolved asap so I can sleep at night and not be worrying if we've made the right decision. As wonderful as Kate is there is a limited supply of this fine elixir. We can only make about 330 gallons per double batch due to this smallness of the Portsmouth Brewerys brew length. There is just not enough to go around. DRINK IT HERE AND ENJOY IT HERE!!! Take home a bottle or two or a growler share this fine product Do not hoard it or put it on E-Bay for resale!! Just enjoy it, It will be back again in Jan. '09
With my heart in my throat, Todm

Kate the Great - Tulipomania Redux? Vote for you fav!!!

This was copied from the Newsletter that Peter Egleston put out for smutty and the portsmouth Brewery.
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Ever since Tod's Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout was named Best Beer in America (and Second Best on Planet Earth) in December's Beer Advocate Magazine, we been in turns thrilled, perplexed and appalled by the response. The enthusiasm reached tulippy new heights with the news of bottles trading for hundreds of dollars on e-Bay. And now we've really stepped in it by announcing the exact date and even time when the next batch will be released - Tuesday, June 24th at 2:27pm, for those of you keeping score at home.

So here's our dilemma, which we're hoping that you, kind readers, will help us resolve: We've only got ten barrels of the ebony elixir to go around. Five will be put on tap on the aforementioned date. Two will be racked off into half barrels and squirreled away in an undisclosed location for some future festive occasion. And three will be put into 22-ounce bottles, to be sold in our retail shoppe. That's forty-five cases, or five hundred and forty bottles.

We've not figured out exactly how this will work. We've been told to prepare ourselves for thirsty hordes camping out overnight on our front stoop. Some have warned us to place limits to discourage e-Bay speculators. However, Peter is philosophically opposed to placing arbitrary limits on how much each individual can buy. (Don't ask him about the pie policy at a certain famous diner in central-coast Maine.) He is convinced, however, that whatever he decides, he's going to end up looking like a jerk. Besides, he's convinced that Tod makes other beers that are every bit as tasty as Kate, so perhaps he shouldn't have a say in the matter anyway.

So this is where you come in. If you wish to weigh in, send us an email with one of these options. (Putting the Option number in the subject line will be enough):

-Option One: Let 'er rip. Make Milton Friedman proud - don't place any limits at all. Greed is good. Put all forty-five cases in the store on the first day and let the free market reign.

-Option Two: Make this a regulated market, but don't overdo it. Maximum purchase of six bottles per person per day till the beer is all gone, even if it runs out on the very first day.

-Option Three: A little more regulation, please. Put ten cases in the store on each of the first two days, then five a day thereafter. Limit purchases to six bottles apiece, or the equivalent of two growlers.

-Option Four: The Famous Diner Pie Policy. Two Bottles Per Person Per Day, and don't think you can get your friends to sneak in and buy more pie - I mean beer - on your behalf. We know who you are and you'll never get away with it.

So there you have it. Send us a note with your choice to news@smuttynose.com- Option One, Two, Three or Four in the subject line. We'll tally the votes and go with the popular choice. And if you want to send this along to friends to encourage them to vote, please feel free.

Hefe goes on tap.

Well you wheat beer lovers out there we have heard your cry. The Portsmouth Brewery's Hefewiezen has been put on tap. And don’t worry we have decided to have a wheat beer on all summer long. If might not be hefe, could be wiezenhiemer or thaizenhiemer, you will just have to keep your eyes on the blog for the updates.

Cheers,
Tyler

Shilling Scale

I thought that the Shilling Scale for the rating of Scotch Ales was based on how much you had to pay for a pint. the Higher the alcohol the more you have to pay, assuming 10 shillings per ABV (70 shilling= 7abv etc.)

But after doing some research it was how much they had to pay per barrel of beer. in 1488 the first recorded sale of scotch ale went for 12 schillings/bbl. Plus there is a difference between Scottish and Scotch ales. Scottish ales called 60 (light), 70 (heavy), or 80 (export) shilling are in the range of 2.5 percent to 5.0 percent ABV. Scotch ale, or wee heavy, starts at 90 shilling and usually measures at least 6.5 percent ABV, with an original gravity of about 1.070. Some historical Scotch ales might be as high as 140 shilling, with a starting gravity of 1.125, although the scale has slid downward some over the last 150 years. Today's 80 shilling might be equivalent to a 60 shilling of 1850.

This information was taken from the following website if you want to read up on it fully.
http://www.allaboutbeer.com/style/24.5-scotchale.html

Our Scotch Ale is 8-9% abv so we are calling it 80 Shilling this year. Looking over the history maybe if should be more of a 120 Shilling but hey we are in America not Scotland.

Cheers,
Tyler

Scotch is on!

We were sick of waiting. The Belgain Tripple kicked so we decied that it was time for the Scotch Ale to go on. Oh man, you need to come on in and try it. Sooooooooooo good.

Cheers,
Tyler

Kate the great bottle availiablity

Here is the scoop. We are going to have 10 Cases of 22oz bombers of Kate available for the 24th and 25th of June. After that we will have the store stocked in the morning with a max of 5 cases per day until the bottles are gone. After that happens there will be no more bottles available. Kate will be on draft and available in growlers as of the 24th of June at 2:27pm. We feel that this give everyone a fair chance to get here for some bottled Kate, in case people have to work on a Tuesday.

Cheers,
Tyler

Greetings from London

Arrived in London May 1st (my birthday, by the way) to fabulous weather. We spent the day walking and landed in a few pubs to drink a few pints of local cask conditioned ales. Of special note was Hole Hearted and Timothy Taylor's Landlord. Leigh, my daughter, suggested we visit the Queen's Arms, her local, for dinner and of course a few more pints. London Pride, Duvel, and Aventinus were the libations of the evening. Friday, we awoke to another spectacular day and made our way to the Tate Modern, which was overwhelming. So we needed another pint. Fortunately, we had a private tour at Fuller's in Chiswick with their Head Brewer, John Keeling, who greeted us with English civility. After an in-depth tour, John realized we needed another pint. We presented John with some presents: a Portsmouth Brewery hat, t-shirts, and a bottle of 2006 Kate the Great. He returned the favor by opening the bar to us and gave us a bottle of 2003 Vintage Ale. I'll let you know how it tasted after dinner tonight. We're meeting with Dann Paquette, another New England brewing legend, and his wife and friend. Richard, Dann's friend toured us to Borough's Market and Southwark Cathedral, both of which were incredible. We went to the Market Porter pub and The George. Both of which were purveyors of fine ales and the George was around in Chaucer's time, so of course, we had a couple pints. Are you guys getting a theme here? We've loved England and are sad to be leaving in another day and a half. We'll fill you in on the rest of the details when we get home.

Cheers,
Tod

NERAX/Oatmeal stout

Hey All,

I am getting all my transfers and cleaning done early today so I can head down to Somerville to the New England Real Ale Expo (NERAX). We sent down a firkin of our American Mild dry hopped with Sorachi Ace. It is a great festival where you can try a lot of different styles of beer on cask. Beer is sent from all over New England as well as shipped across the pond from England. All the people working the event are true cellerman and treat the casks like they do in the old country. The tap them and fine them (adding fining agents to help with the flocculation of the yeast) ahead of time making the beers beautifully bright. the beers are served either from a beer engine or just a gravity fed tap. If you have a time you should try to get tickets. They might be sold out, but try anyway.

Now about the Oatmeal stout that went on yesterday. We used flaked and malted oats in this batch and the beer turned out wonderful. I feel like the malted oats added almost a caramel note to the stout that I don’t remember from the last batch we made. Served off our Nitro tap giving the beer a big fluffy white head and making the beer very easy drinking with out being to mouth coating. Great dessert beer, and yes I drink beer for dessert!

Cheers,
Tyler

American Mild

Two assistant brewers ago here at the Portsmouth Brewery, JT (who now happens to brews for Smuttynose), said ,"Man I love the IPA but after 3 of them I cant stand up out of my stool with out stumbling." Right there the Portsmouth brewery's American Mild was born. It is a mild ale, meaning low in alcohol only 4% abv and with 20 IBU's. But it is hopped with many different American IPA style hops, in the kettle, hop back and even dry hopped in the Fermenter so it smells and tastes like an IPA. Great beer for sitting and having a few with friends.

Cheers,
Tyler

Back on the East coast

Hey all I did make it back from San Diego. The CBC taught/reawakened so many topics for me. From yeast handling all the way to food and beer pairings. I am going to use all this new information and integrate into the Portsmouth Brewery and make the beers better then they already are.

The sun was nice but I am excited to be back here on the east coast. The people are a little more real here, but hey that’s just my opinion. The beers are all super hopped over there too. Which was great for the first few beers I tried, then though out the stay they all just tasted super resiny and coated the tongue to the point you couldn’t taste any of the malts. A little out of balance, but some times done very well. I am not mentioning any names because I don’t want to try to sell you any west coast beers, because that is just mean since you can't get 2/3 of them here.

I did make it up to Carlsbad to the Pizza Port and there saw a line up of brewers drank bottles including, Smutty Winter, Smutty Farmhouse, and Portsmouth Brewery's Kate the Great. So that’s where all the beers go, shipped to the west coast!

Any who, its good to be back and brewing again. It felt odd to not be brewing for 5 days strait.

Cheers,
Tyler

Shorts come to Portsmouth!.... Too!

So, it looks like Tyler arrived safely in San Diego.....and had to change into his shorts. Lucky guy! As luck would have it our weather here on the Seacoast has been quite favorable for wearing shorts as well! In fact I think it might even hit 70 degrees today. Needless to say it is quite hot in the brewery and I, too, am in my shorts!! With all this beauteous weather heading our way we'll be looking at some crisp refreshing beers to come along in the not to distant future. One of my favorites is our Lupes Wild Thang which utilizes he nutty character of wild rice and the cherry-like character of Sterling hops. We'll be playing around with a few Hefeweizens as well as our Weizenheimer and Thaizenheimer. The latter being our Thai influenced wheat beer with the addition of Kaffir lime leaves, ginger and lemongrass. YUM!! But we still have to deal with the reality that is New England. It could snow tomorrow! and we'd have to be ready for anything so that is why we have our Scotch ale in the wings just getting better as we wind our way thru spring. That's all for now. Cheers! Tod

CBC!

I just landed in San Diego for the Craft Brewers Conference. First thing I did was run into a bathroom and put on shorts for the first time this year. I will give full details of the conference when I get back.

Please warm up NH for me for when I return.

Cheers,

Tyler

Cellar News

Greetings from the cellar here at the Portsmouth Brewery. As we head into Spring we are gearing up for some nice weather which always conjures up good beer. As we posted earlier we have pulled our Cream ale off our line-up and replaced it with our Dirty Blonde. The Dirty Blonde has the same grist and hop profiles, respectively, yet we changed the yeast to decrease production time by a week. This is good for us as Tyler pointed out, however, the flavor profile has changed a wee bit. What we are finding is the Blonde has a more crisp flavor profile and the hops seem to jump into the back of the swallow. With warm weather the "Quaffability" of the Blonde is quite remarkable. We hope you will enjoy this change. There are a few tweaks we have planned and should increase the pleasure of drinking this light golden ale. Cheers! Tod

So a Dirty Blonde goes on Tap at a Bar.......

What’s the punch line you ask? There isn't one! HA!
The Cream Ale has been retired for a while to be replaced with the Dirty Blonde Ale. I have had a few people already tell me, "I think I liked the Cream better." The honest truth is that our Dirty Blonde is the same Grist and Hop profile as the Cream, but fermented out with a different yeast strain. I feel it gives the beer a crisper finish and comes of a little lighter on the palette then the Cream. Perfect for a summer beer. The new yeast strain ferments out the beer in 2 weeks vs. the 3 weeks that the Cream ale took to finish. You are thinking one week what is that going to do? But with the upcoming summer rush about to hit where 7bbls goes in 20 days, one week is going to be huge for us here in the brewery. But I digress.
So when tasting the Dirty Blonde for the first time don’t automatically try to compare it to the Cream. Take a sip and enjoy the beer on its own, because I am sure that you will.

Oh ya

I forgot to mention that our Belgian Double is going on today. It tastes great!.

Cheers,
Tyler

Kate's Volume

To answer your question about why we can't make more Kate then we already do. Here at the Portsmouth Brewery we are a 7bbl Brewhouse, some brewpubs are 10bbl even 15bbl capacity. Us, being smaller allows for more flexibility and creativity to create a wide variety of beers from our blond ale all the way to the complex Kate RIS. But this small size limits the max volume we can make of one type of beer as well. Our biggest Fermenter (we have 2 of them) is 14bbl in capacity. These are designated for our more popular beers to ferment out in so we can keep up with the demand; Blonde Ale, IPA to name the few stand-bys that are always on. To be able to fit our specialty brews into these takes a few months of planning making sure we have enough back up in our serving tanks and in our horizontal condition vessel to allow us to use the big double Fermenter to make a specialty beer. So after all this planning we can finally brew a double batch of Kate. But since Kate is a RIS we use an insane amount of grain and only run off 5bbl of wort. This gets our original gravity to 26 oP and what allows the Kate to be 11% abv. So this means that with a double batch we get a total of 10bbl of beer to serve. So 10bbl is the most that we can make with our current fermentation space we have now.

This year we are changing up the service slightly. We are transferring 7bbls of Kate into a serving tank to serve off our taps. And the remaining 3bbls we are going to bottle off before June 24th @2:27pm so there will be plenty of bottles available that day (40ish cases or so). About the limit of bottles one person can buy I will have to talk to a few people to see what the state law is and our regulations as a brewpub. But I do know that Three Floyds in Indiana has there Dark Lord Day (their RIS that isn’t as good as ours). Where they release 600 Cases (40bbls) and their limit is 6 bottles per person. But I will be getting back to this soon.

Cheers,
Tyler

Tuesday June 24th at 2:27pm!

On Tuesday June 24th at 2:27pm the stars will be aligned! Pluto will be in retrograde this phenomenon will allow Jupiter’s moon Titan to be as close to the rings of Saturn that it has even been. Since both Mercury and Venus will be on the back side of the Sun as well as Earth and Mars parting like the Red Sea to allow the Sun’s rays to warm Titan to approximately 8.05oC. This temperature increase will cause the small ice caps to melt slightly and the added gravitational pull of the newly formed water will cause particles from Saturn’s rings to create a pre-historic like atmosphere on Titan. On this day, at this time, looking NNE and up at 28o off the horizon you will see a green flash. Then you will know that Earth will no longer be the only planet with life on it in our solar system!

Oh ya Kate the Great is coming out then too.

Cheers,
Tyler

Big Changes at the Pub

Wow, I am not sure if we have had this many beers kicking/changes all at once.

The Hefewiezen has been replaced by its big brother Winter Wiezen. We used the same yeast strain as our Hefe but we bumped up the malt profile giving a slightly sweeter and slightly more ABV with the traditional clove and banana esters of a German style Hefewiezen.

Good work on the Moat Mountain Square tail stout. It has been replaced with...Drum roll please...our Le Chat Noir (Black Cat in French). This beer is the same malt and hop profile as our Black Cat stout but fermented out with a Belgian Yeast strain. This yeast gives the fruity and spicy esters off during fermentation to make this a great Belgian style stout.

The IMP IPA has gone away. But don’t worry it will be back some time soon. It has been replaced by yet another Belgian style beer, our Triple. This beer is golden in color but sneaks up on you with the ABV of around 9%. The Belgian yeast strain we used was different then the Le Chat Noir giving a hint of the bubble gum nose that you get in a lot of great Belgian beers.

So yes we are turning into a Belgian Brew house for the spring. Behind the Flemish style Sour Brune we have a Belgian Double waiting in the wings. So excited for spring to get into full swing.

Cheers,
Tyler

Saturday is a work day

Hello all,

Working on a Saturday, always a good time. There is always a brewers presents on Saturdays though so I can’t complain too much, I mean I make beer for a living!

Today I am transferring the Le Chat Noir (our Belgian Stout) so it will be ready as soon as the Moat Mountain Stout kicks. So if you are Jones-en for the Le Chat come on in and help kick the Moat. (We have one keg left as of this morning)

And yes our good old friend Bottle Rocket IPA was consumed faster then we thought. So the "rivalry" (in a brotherly love kind of way) continues by us putting on the Smuttynose IPA to let our beloved Bottle Rocket IPA mature properly. It shouldn't be too long of a wait. But we love building the suspense.

See ya in the Lapanza Lounge tonight for a pint.

Cheers,

Tyler

Moat Stout is on

Hey all, just a heads up that we did get in a couple of kegs of Moat Mountian Square Tail stout in to tide us over. This stout has a little more roasty/coffee notes then our Black Cat and is a great change of pace. Go give it a whirl.

Cheers,

Tyler

Smutty Baltic vs. Portsmouth Baltic

This post is in response to a comment I received on one of my previous blogs. The question that goes something like this, "Is Smuttynose (insert beer name here) the same as The Portsmouth Brewery (insert same beer name here)?" This question gets asked quite often. It is not a bad question by any means and l personally was a bit confused before I was working here. So here is the low down.

Peter Egelston opened the Portsmouth Brewery (PB) in 1991 right in downtown Portsmouth becoming the first New Hampshire brewpub. Making all the beer on site to serve from the taps, having no dedicated tap line to "yellow fizzy stuff". The Portsmouth Brewery (PB) took off and after handing off the head brewing responsibilities at PB he decided to open up Smuttynose brewing company in 1994 to attack the distribution side of the brewing world. Rather than just keep making the same beers that the brewpub made on a bigger scale he gave his new head brewer at Smuttynose control and freedom to make bees how he wanted. Now through out the years the head brewer position at both companies have changed hands a few times. Now the Head Brewer at the Portsmouth Brewery is Tod Mott and the Executive Brewer at Smuttynose is Dave Yarrington and they are both making there own beers.

So to answer your question the Smutty Baltic Porter is not the same as the Portsmouth Baltic Porter. Same style of beer, but not the same beer by far!

Cheers,
Tyler

WTF mang!

Oh my Gourd! The stout is out!!!!! The oatmeal is d-o-n-e, done. Sad face! Sorry for the inconvenience We should have the Le Chat Noir (Black Cat stout via a Belgian yeast strain) by Saturday. We might be able to get in Moat Mountain Square Tale Stout to get us to the weekend but we have to talk to Will up there to see if we can get some.

Cheers,
Tyler/Tod

Wheat wine in the house!

In the 2007 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) our Wheat Wine won the silver medal. This years batch turned out just a amazing if not better. We did some dry hopping and oaking that we didn’t do last year. I feel that the oak smoothes out the 11% abv beer and makes the almost toffee sweetness come out even more. So nice and so excited! I am going to go have one now!

Tyler

Stout and Porter Dinner @ Redbones

Hello all,

This is Tyler Jones the assistant brewer at the Portsmouth Brewery, I am all set up and will be posting a blog from time to time so keep an eye out for up coming events and news from here.

Last night Tod and I attending the Stout and Porter Dinner at Redbones in Summerville MA. Great beer bar, and a little anniversary for me. Last year on my first day of work here, Tod, half way through the day said, "You want to go to the stout and porter dinner at Redbones?" Of course I said yes and it was the best first day of work I have ever had. This year did not disappoint either. We brought out Baltic Porter and the Oatmeal Stout and they both went over very well with the insane amount of BBQ that was consumed. Will Meyers from The Cambridge Brewing Company brought his Chocolate Chipolte Porter and LuvBuzz Espresso Stout. The New England salesman, Allen, from Dogfishead was there as well, handing out their Chicory Stout and the World Wide Stout. It is fun to have our beers outside the brew pub. They seem to taste that much better because we are not in the mind set to critique every sip. Plus being able to compare our beers to other top-notch beers and having them stand up in every way is great.

That’s all for now

Cheers,
Tyler