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

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 

Firkin Friday is coming back...

Hey all,

So we just got word that Smuttynose is filling some firkins for us! Not this Friday but next Friday (9/9) we are going to have a firkin of Smuttynose Big A IPA getting tapped at noon. Then the following Friday we are getting some big beer love. On 9/16 we will have a firkin of Smuttynose Gravitation getting tapped at noon. For those if you who are still learning about the cask beer world, a firkin is an 11 gal cask, that will be sitting on the end of the bar. The beer is gravity poured, served a bit warmer and a bit less carbonation (both help the flavor of the beer come out). the best way to enjoy a beer!

Cheers,

Tyler

Cruising Crenshaw in my El Dorado...

Hey all,

So we got in a new hop variety the other day and we though we should make up a few casks. We Just had the Imp IPA dry hopped with El Dorado on. I didn't post about it because with all the different hops in the Imp IPA it was a little hard to see what aromatic/flavors were coming just from the dry hopping. So we decided that a Dirty Blonde would be a nice blank palette to see what the El Dorado's are really all about. The Dirty Blonde Cask dry hopped with the El Dorado just went on, and OMG, hop-a-lish! EL Dorado are a High alpha hop (16%) so they make their presents know. They give the very lightly hopped Dirty Blonde a huge floral aromatic. It smells like you are about to drink an IPA. then when the beer hits your lips the light body of the Blonde comes through and you get some very nice fruity/spicy flavors off the El Dorado with just enough hop resin left to let the beer hang on your tongue for a bit longer then the Blonde normally does. i don't know of a better cask for you to try to get you psyched for NERAX next week! Since we are sending our Whipper Snapper (aka American Mild) dry hopped with El Dorado to it!

For those of you who don't know what NERAX is, it is the New England Real Ale eXpo that happened in Summerville MA every year. It is one of the best collections of Cask beer you are going to find in the world.

Check out all the buzz here http://www.nerax.org and i hope to see you all down in Summerville next week/weekend.

Cheers,
Tyler