Holidaze are here!

Hey all,

We are having our Imperial pint club party today!  I tapped a Cask of bottle Rocket IPA D/h with Summit on the bar in the Jimmy Lapanza Lounge. people are here and having a good time.

The Scotch ale just kicked we cleaned the line and put on our new Ronin Beer.  It is a 35% Rice beer that we used Sorachi Ace a Japanese hop that has a lemon peel flavor to it.  To keep the Japanese flavor profile we added both ginger and horseradish to the whirl pool.  Giving just enough spice note to taste on the first sip and have build slightly though out the pint. 

This is the first of a couple of beers to kick today so all you Imperial Pint clubbers get in here and enjoy some beers!

Cheers,
Tyler

Turkey day is comming...

Hey all,

With Thanksgiving coming fast i thought i was a perfect time for a couple of fun beers.  First off we put on the Mayflower Thanksgiving Ale.  this beer is an 8% abv old ale/american Strong ale that has been aged on toasted Oak just long enough to get some nice Vanilla Oak flavors in the meduim to ful bodied beer.   So nice to sip on during this cool weather we are getting. 

Secondly we put on a Dirty Blonde Cask that we added some fresh cranberries to.  This first cask we ruff copped and the muttled the crainberries.  It added a nice tart finish to the beer, but no color.  So we are making another one today where we are cooking the crainberies in the Dirty Blonde then adding that to the cask.  Hopfully this one will have the same nice tart finish, but pull out some of that red color.  My fingers are crossed.

cheers,
Tyler

Beer left over from Pour-nicopica...

Hey all,

There was a little bit of beer left over from Pour-nicopica on Wednesday.  You can find the beers in the Jimmy Lapanza Lounge on the extra taps.  The Hop Harvest 3 was hit hard and is already gone, but there is still some Pumpkin ale and Oktoberfest Lager ready for the weekend.

cheers,
Tyler

It made it around Africa...

 

Hey all, 

So everyone probably knows the story of how IPA came into existence.  The British were stationed in India and there low abv, low hop, beers were spoiling on the sea journey from England, around the tip of Africa and then to India.  So the Brewers decided to up the hopping and up the abv, both preservative qualities in a beer, and low and behold the beer made the journey.  So that got me thinking...it would take at least 3 months to sail from form England to India... So what would a 3 month old IPA cask taste like.  

So the last batch of Bottle Rocket IPA (brewed in August) I racked off a Cask of Bottle Rocket IPA, dryhopped it with Summit and let it hang out at cellar temperatures...until today.  If you come down the the Jimmy Lapanza Lounge tonight you can see what the sailors were drinking so many years ago. It held up amazingly, still lots of hop aromatic, but the bitterness is subdued just enough. 

Makes me want to do this again!  Let me know what you think. 

Cheers,

Tyler

It's a Battle of the Kilts....

Hey all!

So, it just so happens that our next beer for today's New Beer Friday is Portsmouth Brewery Scotch Ale.  We just tapped the first of two kegs of Smuttynose Scotch Ale yesterday.  So for New Beer Friday it is a battle.  The Portsmouth Brewery Scotch Ale is lighter in color with a little more pronounced smoked character and an added phenolic component really helps cut the cloying sweetness of the finish of the beer. 

But, I leave it up to you, dear reader.  May the best kilted beer win!  Let me know what you think here, on Facebook or Twitter.

Cheers,
Tyler
 

Because You Need Something Even More Special....

Portsmouth, our bustling restaurant city by the sea, hosts several restaurant weeks each year, to bring new folks to try our fantastic offerings, while shaking regular diners-out from their usual haunts. We've been a happy participant for many moons and we will be for this fall's festivities as well. Restaurant Week runs from November 7-16.

Executive Chef Jon Hebert and his sous chefs Des and Rolf have crafted this seasonal, pick-three, prix fixe menu for your enjoyment. It's available as long as our kitchen is serving food, for both lunch and dinner. You can even pick your three beers!

RESTAURANT WEEK MENU

$16.95 includes a 3 Beer Sampler

1st course:

Roasted Pumpkin and Goat Cheese Dip with roasted pumpkin seeds and fried pita chips 

or 

Cup of Soup of the Day

2nd course:

Sage and Dunkel-Rye marinated Grilled Pork Chops with apple and beer-braised red cabbage, sweet potato puree and apple cider reduction

or 

Wild Mushroom, Roasted Squash and Beet Risotto with Pecorino Cheese

or 

Sumac-dusted Scallops with spaetzle and a wilted arugula and lentil salad

Dessert:

Warm Gingerbead Pudding with Old Brown Dog Caramel Drizzle

or 

Scoop of Gelato

If you're coming in, don't forget to bring your City of Portsmouth Parking Tickets. We'll take your payment and ticket, deliver it to City Hall and give you a free pint of beer! Who says paying the piper has to be painful?

Options, options! Get your new food options!

Just in time for autumn, the World Series and the Portsmouth Halloween Parade, Chef Jon has unleashed new Cheaplie and Weekly Specials menus for your gustatory pleasure. Check out the line-ups!

Weekly Specials

Mondays: Delicious Veggie Enchiladas stuffed with poblano peppers, onions, black beans, sweet corn, house-made queso fresco and topped with enchilada-ale sauce, jack cheese and avocado cream

Tuesdays: Italian Roast Beef Sandwich- Tender roast beef marinated in rosemary, garlic, oregano infused IPA and served on a toasted baguette alongside house-made giardiniera and basil-pesto mayonnaise

Wednesday: Korean Beef Tacos- Same awesome mixture of house-made bulgogi beef with avocado, daikon, chili paste, house kimchee and cucumber-rice salad; different day!  You can get this meat-free.

Thursday: Old Brown Dog Lamb Tagine- Lamb stewed with Smuttynose Old Brown Dog, Moroccan spices, chick peas and golden raisins, served over herbed cous-cous.  This also available meat-free.

Friday: House-Smoked Baby Back Ribs- dressed with homemade BBQ sauce and served with potato salad, coleslaw and cornbread.

Saturday: Portuguese Seafood Stew- A hearty tomato-ale stew full of linguica, littleneck clams, P.E.I. mussels and local pollack with a grilled baguette topped with roasted red pepper romesco sauce.

Sunday: Stout Meatloaf- Like Mom used to make, but with beer, locally-foraged mushroom gravy and a stout balsamic reduction.

New Cheaplies- best enjoyed in the Jimmy LaPanza Lounge.

Monday: Mushroom Gravy Cheese Fries- if this were a New Jersey diner, these would be called disco fries and they wouldn't be as good.  $1 per order

Tuesday: Dollar Tacos- Your choices of beef, chicken or poblano-black bean.

Wednesday: Sloppy Joe or Lentil Joe Sliders, $1 each

Thursday: Mini Cheesesteaks or Braised Tempeh Sliders, $2 each

Don't forget, every night at Portsmouth Brewery is Parking Violation Night.  Bring your  City of Portsmouth parking ticket and payment in and we'll send it to City Hall and give you a pint!  Civics never seemed so fun, did it?

New beer Friday as well....

Hey all,

With the fun Firkin going on for Firkin Friday I almost forgot about new beer Friday.  Today we are rolling out the 2013 Portsmouth Brewery home brew winner, Kate Rogers, beer... Cherrywood Smoked Porter.

We tweaked the beer slightly, since it was being release in the fall vs summer, by upping the ABV to 7% as well and increasing the body slightly.  But this beer wont disappoint.  It has some nice sweet smoke flavor that its almost immediately followed by some malt and Caco nib sweetness.  But as a good Porter should, this beer finishes quite clean, tempting you for another sip.

I couldn't have picked a better day to release the beer because today weekly special form the kitchen is Smoked Baby Back Ribs.  Talk about a food and beer pairing made in heaven...I know what i am getting for lunch!

Cheers,
Tyler

Firkin Friday...

Hey all,

We haven't had a  Firkin Friday in a while so i thought i would get one out there for you guys.  We have a fun firkin that i know you are going to want to try.  It is the Pumpkin Ale primed with cheesecake.  You heard right it has cheesecake in it from our friendly bakery across the square Popovers.  We did a cask of last year with the cheesecake in it and it turned out awesome.  you will get some vanilla note from the cheese cake itself as well as some nice gram cracker crust flavors in there.  All of them melding so nicely with the slightly spiced Portsmouth Brewery Pumpkin ale.

Dessert in a glass... Hope you enjoy.

 
Cheers,
Tyler 

Weekend Beer fest...

Hey all,

So, this Saturday is the NH Brewfest held out back at Redhook, that I am always excited to attend.

As the web site states, we will be bringing a pin of Oaked Imperial Pumpkin Porter for the VIP session, as well as our Oktoberfest, Portsmouth Pale Ale and Pumpkin Ale for the rest of the general sessions.  However, I have a 4-tap jockybox and I hate to leave a tap open. That's exactly why you should swing by our booth for a sneak peek of the Hop Harvest III, brewed with wet Mosaic hops.  The flavor profile of Mosaic is crazy.  The descriptions we've read cover everything from citrus, pine, earth, herbal, mint, bubblegum, blueberry, lime peel, and black pepper.  I am certainly excited to see what we get from it at Portsmouth Brewery and I hope you are too.

See you on Saturday!

Cheers,
Tyler

Pumpkin is on...

Hey all,

It's Friday so the new beer for today is our Pumpkin Ale.  All the pumpkin beer fans out there stand up and cheer all at once....ready...one...two...three....YES!

I wanted to talk a bit about the history of the pumpkin ale.  I know there is a larger company out there that pushes the Cinnamon/Sugar rim on the Pint of Pumpkin ale.  But like every beer we make, we make sure it is as true to style as possible.  The Pumpkin ale comes from the early settlers of our fine country.  They had been making beer like they had in the old country, with just malt, hops, water and yeast.  But in the early days we didn't have as many malt house across our country and most the the malt was still underneath European control.  So to stretch their malt supply as much as they can the used large quantity of local starchy ingredients to still get the alcohol they were looking for in their beers.  One of those local starchy ingredients was Pumpkin.  So by using a large percentage of Pumpkin in our beer we pay homage to the recipe of our forefathers as well as adding great mouth feel and giving it beautiful orange color.  We do spice it, but very lightly, allowing the spice note to complement the beer flavor of the beer.  I mean, i want my beer to taste like beer, don't you?

Since the original Pumpkin ale didn't have a cinnamon and sugar rim on it; I suggest you come on in and enjoy a pint of Pumpkin Ale like it should taste!

Cheers,
Tyler

Couldn't wait for Friday...

Hey all,

So if you have been noticing I have been doing "New Beer Fridays" for the past few weeks where i put on a new Portsmouth Brewery beer on tap every Friday.  But with the change of the weekly special of the Korean BBQ Tacos to Wednesday I really wanted to pair the Hop Harvest II with it.  So I decided that there is nothing wrong with New Beer Hump Day and put on the Hop Harvest II!

So all you hop heads out there get in here and try this beer.  Big...I mean big, citrus off of the 120# of wet Citras used in the brew. 

Cheers,
Tyler

Pumpkin time!

Hey all,

So, we got our pumpkins in!

 

Pumpkin Ale is in the fermenters as of today!

Cheers,

Tyler

Hop Harvest III...?

Hey all,

I just got the call.  Our wet Mosaics are on a plane and headding our way.  We will be brewing the HHIII Friday and Saturday!

Cheers,
Tyler

Fall is coming...

Hey all,

So with the cold bite in the air this morning, it is obvious that fall is coming soon.  As you can see from the "What's in the Works" section to the left we already have Octoberfest, Hop Harvest I and Hop Harvest II fermenting away.  I know that a lot of you have been drinking other pumpkin ales now for weeks, if not months, and that's what I want to talk to you about now.  I am not sure when the fall seasonal became such a huge seller for all large scale production breweries out there, but in order to capture more of the market the pumpkin ales and/or Oktoberfest bier have been coming out earlier and earlier every year.  I am pretty sure I saw a pumpkin beer display in August this year.  Crazy!

With this being said I wanted to let you guys know how we make our pumpkin beer at the Portsmouth Brewery and how that affects when we release it.  We use locally grown pumpkins from Blueberry Bay Farms in Stratham, NH.  We use 100 pounds of fresh, local pumpkins in each 7 barrel batch.  We think it's vital to use pumpkins that were grown the same year that we brew the beer.  Fresh and local is the best after all!  As you know farming is much like making a fine ale; you can't rush the process if you want to get good results

So long story short, I am making a Pumpkin Ale (as well as a double batch of the Imperial Pumpkin Porter) this year.  But the pumpkins still have a week or so before they hit their perfect ripeness.  So keep an eye out on the in the "What's in the Works" sidebar of this blog to see when our Pumpkin Ale is under way.  It will be worth the wait!

Cheers,
Tyler

Passport Event this weekend...

--> Hey all,
Wanted to see how many of you out there are making it to the Passport event held at the Strawbery Banke this weekend.  I will be there Pouring a Fruit Gruit cask.  Plus we will be having the new beer of the Kentucky Common Ale making it first look into the world.  This 4.5% abv light bodied brown ale is one of the few true American styles.  This beer stems from the American bourbon makers wanting to have something to drink while they wait for their bourbon to age.  You take a sour mash Rye whiskey malt bill and rather then just distilling it off, you boil it adding hops and ferment it out with an ale yeast.  This beer has hints of the soured malt flavor up front with a malty/spicy mouth feel from the Rye malt with hints of Oak that take over the flavor in the finish.

We will be serving it with some  Cheese puffs stuffed with Goat cheese mouse and topped with a stout/raspberry reduction.  Should be fun to see how the goat cheese flavor and the sour malt flavor play with each over all with the sweetness of the malt and the raspberry/stout reduction smooths it all out in the finish.  Yum.

Cheers,
Tyler 

Hop Harvest are right around the corner!

Hey all,

I wanted to let you know that we are changing the hopping slightly with the Hop Harvest 1 this year.  We got in contact with some fellow UNH Grads who are growing sustainably and spraying their hops organically.  The are growing down on their family owned farm down in Peconic, on the North Fork of Long Island.  Here is a picture of our Nuggets on the vine waiting to be picked.  We will be brewing HH1 on September 6th.

Cheers,
Tyler