More Information Regarding Kate Day 2012

Good afternoon,

Most of you know by now that Kate Day, the day we release our highly regarded Russian Imperial Stout, will take place at the Portsmouth Brewery on Monday, March 5, 2012. Up till now we haven't posted many details because, frankly, we hadn't worked them all out. I'm writing today to provide more information about this popular annual gathering, pointing out similarities and differences between the upcoming Kate Day and previous years' events. As in the past, I'll use a Q&A format (which will allow me to cut and paste shamelessly from my last year's post):

• When will Kate Day take Place in 2012?
Kate Day will take place on Monday, March 5, 2012.

• How much Kate the Great will be brewed?
Tod and Brian have brewed a somewhat larger batch than in years past: fourteen barrels, divided more or less equally between draught and bottles.

• I heard a rumor that you’ll be using different bottles this year. Is that true?
You heard right. We have decided to abandon the familiar 22-ounce “bomber” bottle and have chosen instead to use the classic “Steini,” a  bottle most commonly associated these days with beers such as Duvel and Piraat.

• But don't Steini bottles hold less beer than bombers?
I'm glad you asked. Yes they do - 11.16 ounces versus 22, to be precise.

• Does that mean you’ll be offering more bottles for sale?
Another great question! Yes. This year we will make 2,000 bottles available for sale. More than double the number from years past. (Yes, sometimes less truly is more.)

• How much will these new, smaller bottles of Kate cost?
Last year we raised the price of 22 ounce bottles to $15. This year we have pro-rated the price to account for the smaller bottle and will charge $8 apiece.

• Will growlers of Kate be available?
No.

• Last year you switched from using calendar pages to a lottery system using scratch tickets as a means of distributing bottled Kate. Do you plan to use scratch tickets again this year?
Understanding that no system is perfect, we really like the way the scratch tickets worked last year. It is an equitable way to distribute a limited number of bottles where demand greatly exceeds supply; it reduces the crowds forming on our doorstep and down the block on Kate Day, which keeps our neighbors and the local constabulary happy; and it enables us to raise a significant amount of money for local non-profits. Consequently, we WILL be using scratch tickets this year, as well. Here's how it will work:

- 15,000 tickets will be available, with 2,000 “winners” mixed randomly among them.
- These tickets will be sold at the Portsmouth Brewery for $2 apiece starting ABOUT three weeks prior to Kate Day, until they run out.
- 100% of the revenue generated by the sale of these scratch tickets will benefit five non-profits, including the Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire. (For the curious, the Portsmouth Brewery does not take a tax deduction for these funds.)
- Sale of scratch tickets will be limited to ten per person per day.
- Scratch tickets must be purchased in person at the Brewery. None will be sold by mail.

• If I don’t live near Portsmouth, how will I be able to purchase a ticket?
This is where you become resourceful and ask your Aunt Tillie in Kittery or your BA trading partners to help out and buy tickets for you.

• So I've got a winning scratch ticket, now what to I do?
A WINNING SCRATCH TICKET HAS NO CASH VALUE - it merely entitles the bearer to purchase a single bottle of Kate at his or her convenience any time from March 5 through April 15, 2012. An individual can purchase as many bottles of Kate as he or she has winning scratch tickets. Winning scratch tickets become invalid after April 15, 2012.  Any bottles of Kate remaining unsold after that date will be made available to the general public in our retail store.

• When and how will people be notified when scratch tickets go on sale?
We'll post on our Facebook page and send out a tweet the morning they go on sale, ABOUT three weeks before Kate Day.

• How is draft Kate going to be released?
We plan to use the system we employed last year: the Portsmouth Brewery will open its doors for business at 11:00 am on Kate Day. We will let people into the building in groups of 50, spaced 15 minutes apart, until the restaurant is fully seated. This is to assure that service (and beer) flows smoothly, enabling us to provide the best hospitality throughout the day. The official tapping of Kate will take place around 11:30 am.

• If I come with a large group of friends, will we all be able to sit together?
We'll do our very best to accommodate groups of all sizes on Kate Day, but we can't make any promises.

• Will we be seated with people we don’t know?
Perhaps. In order to make sure that all of our guests are seated and served as expeditiously as possible, a certain amount of communal seating is required. Kate Day is probably not ideally suited for a romantic date, but it is a great opportunity to make new friends!

We will provide more details over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Please keep in mind, the purpose of Kate Day is to have fun, to celebrate good beer and gather with friends, old and new. At the Brewery we try to do our best to deliver on that. We look forward to serving you. 

Cheers,

Peter Egelston
Proprietor

More Kate News, Not So Big This Time

It probably could go without saying, but before yesterday's post gets amplified and distorted (and separated in people's recollection from the 4/1/11 date of the post), let's set the record straight:

Happy April Fool's Day!

Most of you spotted the joke right away.  (Was it the image of Tod Mott hand stamping over seventy thousand labels, perhaps? Or Robby's Italian “people” leaning on hapless EU bureaucrats?)

A few of you took the bait, absurd as it was.  Don't feel too bad - I was awakened early yesterday morning by a call from the Eliot PD saying they'd found my truck, which I'd parked in my barn the night before, abandoned by the side of Route 236.  And yes, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker (though at that moment I was too sleepy to really care that much).  So there you have it.

Cheers,

P-

Big Kate the Great News!

For Immediate Release:  1 April 2011

Portsmouth Brewery Passes Kate the Great Production to Smuttynose;
Brews More but Only for Belgian Sales.

_________________________________________

The Portsmouth Brewery is excited to announce that 200 barrels of its popular Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout is currently aging at sister company Smuttynose Brewing Company and will be released one year from today, exclusively through the Struise Yeast Shop in West Flanders, Belgium.  All purchases must be made in person and buyers must complete a questionnaire before being allowed to buy the beer.

Head Brewer Tod Mott was exuberant that ownership finally capitulated to years of him begging for a break from brewing Kate.  “That beer ties up so much tank space in our small submarine of a brewery.   Now that it’s been contracted out, I can get back to brewing Cream Ale the way it should be brewed, with ale yeast and lager yeast.”  Mott also cited a desire to have Kate named the #1 Beer in the Planet in BeerAdvocate magazine as a prime motivation behind the decision.

Owner Peter Egelston said the decision came naturally after reflecting upon the 2011 Kate release.  “Everything ran so smoothly with the scratch ticket system; lines were well behaved and the beer ran out around 6pm like it always does.   We also need more tank space and have no good way to expand the brewery space at Portsmouth Brewery. This was clearly the best option.”  The growing European popularity of American craft beer was also a driver in the decision.

Brewing the Russian Imperial Stout at Smuttynose for export to Belgium was no small feat  Portsmouth Brewery had to file alternating premise paperwork with the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) who handles all licensing for alcoholic beverage production.   The beer’s prestige and acclaim made it easy to find a European importer (Mott had previously worked with Struise on the Kabert collaborations beer), but working through European Union paperwork proved very difficult until Egelston remembered Smuttynose’s National Accounts Manager, Robby Brondolo is from Italy and “knew a few people.”  After a few phone calls, everything was smooth sailing.

The beer will be packaged in 11.2 ounce bottles and the labels have all been hand-stamped by Mott himself.  While no small feat, it was worth it to the brewing legend who said he was just happy to get back to brewing “normal beers” again.

New 2011 Kate Day Information

Howdy, folks. Peter E. here. A lot of people have written us with questions and suggestions for 2011's Kate Day, the day we release our famous Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout. This year, we'll be managing the release differently than in years past, especially our procedure for bottle sales. 


Here are the highlights, in Q & A format:

• When will Kate Day take Place in 2011?
Kate Day will take place on Monday, March 7, 2011.

• How much Kate the Great will be brewed?
We will brew the same quantity as in years past: ten barrels, divided equally between draught and bottles. Approximately 900 bottles will be available for purchase.

• How much do bottles of Kate cost?
After holding the line on price for the last four years, in 2011 the price of 22-ounce bottles of Kate will increase to $15 apiece.

• Will growlers of Kate be available?
No.

• What time are you going to start passing out calendar pages to people who wish to purchase bottles?
We are not going to use calendar pages this year!

• WHAT? If you're not going to use calendar pages, how are you going to handle bottle sales?
We're glad you asked! This year, we are going to organize bottle sales using custom-printed scratch tickets. Ten thousand tickets will be available, with nine hundred "winners" mixed randomly among them. These tickets will be sold at the Portsmouth Brewery for $2 apiece starting six weeks prior to Kate Day, until they run out. All of the revenue generated by the sale of these scratch tickets will be donated to a non-profit of our choice. Sale of scratch tickets will be limited to ten per person per day. Scratch tickets must be purchased in person at the Brewery. None will be sold by mail.

• If I don't live near Portsmouth, how will I be able to purchase a ticket?
This is where you become resourceful and ask your Aunt Tillie in Kittery or your BA trading partners to help out and buy tickets for you.

• So I've bought a winning scratch ticket, now what to I do?
A winning scratch ticket has no cash value - it merely entitles the bearer to purchase a single bottle of Kate at his or her convenience any time from March 7 through April 15, 2011. An individual can purchase as many bottles of Kate as he or she has winning scratch tickets. Winning scratch tickets become invalid after April 15, 2011.  Any bottles of Kate remaining unsold after that date will be made available to the general public in our retail store.

• So no camping out on the sidewalk in front of the Brewery the night before?
Not for people wishing to buy bottles of Kate - that will no longer be necessary.

• How is draft Kate going to be released?
We've made some changes here, too, compared to years past. The Portsmouth Brewery will open its doors for business at eleven on Kate Day. We will let people into the building in groups of 50, spaced 15 minutes apart, until the restaurant is fully seated. This is to assure that service (and beer) flows smoothly, enabling us to provide the best hospitality throughout the day. The official tapping of Kate will take place around 12:30-ish.

So that's the general shape of our next Kate Day. We will provide more details over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Our Upcoming Beer Luminaries Dinner

Our second Beer Luminaries Dinner takes place next Tuesday, October 13th. The dinner will feature our friend Rob Tod of Allagash Brewing (as well as Rob's beers) and is a benefit for the Center for Wildlife, located in York, Maine. For details, including the evening's menu, as well as to purchase your tickets, click here. Seating for this event is very limited, so get your tickets now!

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