The best bitter makes 10...

hey all,

We are putting on the Portsmouth Best Bitter today rounding out our tap lineup to all Portsmouth Brewery Beer.  This Best Bitter pay homage to the British tradition of ale making.  Bread malt flavor up front with linger soft earthy hop flavor that lingers on the tongue.  A nice quaffable pint with the big and full of flavored beer lineup of beers we have on at the moment.

Cheers,
Tyler

In the midst of Beer week, Royal Impy Stout hits the taps...

Hey all,

We have officially started Portsmouth beer week.  The weekend kick off brought many people into town walking and tasting beer all over this fine town.  One of the new beers that was put on today was the Royal Impy Stout.  This beer is available on draft and 11.3oz stubby bottles in the retail store.  Come give this new beer a try and let me know what you think.  It is big bold and a great beer to celebrate Portsmouth Craft beer.

To keep the beer flowing here at the Portsmouth Brewery is always a interesting (and fun!) juggling act.  For those of you who have been on the Tour here you know what a small space we have.  All that being said I have the taps almost full with Portsmouth Brewery beers!  I have replaced the bulk of the guest lines with the collaboration beers i have had in the "What's in the Works" side bar for the past couple of months.  Once the keg of Smuttynose Wheat Wine kicks we will be putting on the Portsmouth Best Bitter filling all 10 taps with beers made within these four walls!

Hope to see you all on Wednesday and Thursday night for the Collaboration Showcase/Meet the Brewer event in the Jimmy Lapanza Lounge.  Wednesday we have the brewers from Throwback and Flying Goose, showcasing the Holy Mole' Porter and Oatmeal Pale ale respectively.  Then come back the next night to meet the Brewers from Oxbow Brewing and Great Rhytum brewing.  We will be showcasing the Cirque de Citron and the Total Eclipse of the Stout, respectively.  There will be food and beer pairings as well as a possible special beer from the "guest" brewery.


Cheers,
Tyler

Portsmouth Beer Week starts on Saturday!

It's Beer Week time again!

Being the first brewery in Portsmouth since 1950, we're always a little extra excited for Portsmouth Beer Week to come around.  A lot has happened in the Seacoast Beer Scene since we opened in 1991, which means there's a lot to celebrate.  Back then, no one even brewed an IPA...

Since we don't sell beer off premise, all of our events are happening in the pub, which gives us a great chance to change things up a bit.

Wanna see our brewery?  You can take a brewery tour everyday at 3pm for the duration of beer week.  As always, the tours are free and all tour-goers get a coupon for a half-priced sampler paddle.

We're also excited to announce a Portsmouth Brewery Tap Takeover!  It will last all week and it's happening right in our own bar.  That's right, this is the one occasion when we can offer ten house-brewed beers; no guest taps.

The rest of our schedule is a bit different than past years.  Instead of releasing one beer at the end of the week; we've got FOUR different collaborations brews coming out over two days.  The beers will be available on tap when we open in the morning, but each collaborating brewer will join Tyler in the Jimmy LaPanza Lounge from 6pm-8pm to meet, greet and share samples of one of their own beers, as well as the collaboration.  There will also be Chef Todd-created food pairings for each beer. Check 'em out:

Wednesday, February 27 from 6pm-8pm
-Oatmeal Pale Ale, brewed with Rik Marley from Flying Goose Brew Pub. This golden-colored pale ale, gets a soft, yet full mouthfeel from oats in the mash, while healthy doses of Simcoe and Zythos hops add a hefty hop pop.  This beer tips the scales at a modest 5.5% and will be paired with cheddar and corn fritters.

-The first of two Seacoast collaborations was brewed with Annette Lee, co-owner and brewer at Throwback Brewery in Hampton.  Holy Molé Porter is a chocolate, molé-spiced porter made exclusively with regionally-grown and malted Valley Malts, cinnamon, cumin and locally-grown jalapeño peppers that were smoked at Throwback (a process we call chipotle-ization).  Chef Todd will be serving Molé-braised chicken taquitos alongside this 6.8% beer.

Thursday, February 28 from 6pm-8pm

-Cirque de Citron was brewed with Tim Adams from Maine's newest craft beer cool kid, Oxbow Brewing Company. This dark saison was brewed with buddha hand, citron (exotic citrus fruits) and chinese long pepper in the kettle plus lots of Amarillo hops in the hopback.  Tyler says this one is a bit more heavy, at 7.9%.  Imagine how tasty this will be alongside a a crispy springroll stuffed with Vietnamese-spiced tofu and veggies!  

-Last but not least, new-kid-on-the-Seacoast, Great Rhythm Brewing, teamed with Tyler to brew a wheat stout, named Total Eclipse of the Stout.  This 6%, black beauty is unusual in its broad use of wheat malt.  All the color and body in this beer comes from speciality wheats; which means no speciality barley malts were used in this beer.  Hazelnut brittle with chocolate-covered cacao nibs will accompany TEOTS.  

We hope you will join us in celebrating Portsmouth Beer Week 2013.  There's a lot going on, so come on out and lift a pint. 

We'll see you at the pub!

For more information about Smuttynose's Portsmouth Beer Week events, check out their blog post.  The rest of 2013's Portsmouth Beer Week events can be found on the official website: http://2beerguys.com/portsbeerweek/.  

Killer B...

Hey all,

no we are not rocking Wu Tang or being invade by some crazy African bees.  I wanted to let you know that the Killer B has hit the taps.  This is another old P-brew recipe that i resurrected and tweaked.  This beer is a Braggot style ale which is a beer/mead hybrid.  So it has some really nice honey sweetness up front of a mead and has just enough hops to balance everything out.  This one is another beer that will sneak up on you...it doesn't taste like it is 9.5% abv so be careful with this one.  You don't want the Killer B's to get you!

Cheers,
Tyler

Imp. IPA...

Hey all,

So we have our Imp. IPA on tap now.  If you are a hop head and havent tried it you need to get in here!  We added hops; in the mash, on the sparge, eight kettle addtions, used the hop back, dry hopped the fermenter and dry hopped the serving tank.  So needless to say it is a hop lovers dream!

Cheers,
Tyler

RyeBock

Hey all,

So the RyeBock hit the taps last night.  It is a new recipe that is loosely based off a Maibock recipe.  I changed the malt profile to include both Flaked Rye as well as Malted Rye.  They both add some very nice body up front to this German Lager.  Plus the natural spiciness of the Rye was enhanced with both White and Black pepper.  enjoy!

Cheers,
Tyler

Sour Brune is Retired on BeerAdvocate?

Hey all,

So for all of you Project X fans out there I am sorry to say that the X w/ Cascade is gone.  Hope you got some while it lasted.  Now to please the Sour Beer fans out there...

The Sour Brune has hit the taps!  We did a sour Kettle with this batch, similar to pHunkin but using different bugs.  With the pHunkin we used strictly Latco which gives you that great topical fruit aromatic with a big puckering sour.  For the Brune we used a blend of Lacto, Pedio and Brett and let it sour the kettle for longer then normal... and I'm loving the results.  The Tropical fruit of the lacto is still there, but there is other funky/earthy flavor and aromatics that the pHunkin didn't have. 

This beer is worth a try!

Cheers,
Tyler

The Holidaze is over...

Hey all,

They holiday season is always a crazy time for the Portsmouth brewery as well as me personally.  But with it all the shopping done, holiday party's attended and unwanted gifts most likely returned by now we can get back to the business of making some Beer!

Over the weekend we the British lost some hold on our tap line up.  Both the English Mild and the ESB kicked.  We have put on a great German Lager in the Munich Dunkel and the next iteration in the Project X series, this one has Cascade all the way through.

The Munich Dunkel is divine!  The crystal malt sweetness hits you first and almost takes over the tongue.  Then just when the thought of the beer becoming cloying almost develops you get some nice toasted cracker flavors reminisce of an Oktoberfest that finishes super clean and refreshing as a lager should.

The new Project X reminds me of a saying I heard a few years back about the thought of opening a brewpub in the 90's.  "All you need is a 7bbl system and cascade hops!"  Cascade is the O.G. Mother Hop of so many of the new huge alpha, west coast, IPA hops that everyone is using these days.  Some times its nice to remember the good old days.  This X come off with a great Grapefruit peel citrus notes with some slight spiciness.  The higher then normal Beta acids comes though with that little aggressive finish to the beer.

Hope you guys enjoy.

Cheers,
Tyler