Brewery news around the region, March 2018
March 16, 2018
We sleuthed some brewery news on several popular breweries from our region of the country while they were pouring beer at the recent Hunahpu’s Day festival in Tampa. Check these newsy-good updates.
Jackie O’s Brewery, Athens, OH
Brad Clark, head of brewery operations for Jackie O’s, says that they have their brand new bottling line up and running. The have already packaged some Oil of Aphrodite, Ella, Cuvée One, and a new Creature Comforts collab. They are lab testing them, and once they’re satisfied, you should see them released. After those, expect many more releases throughout this year.
“We have a slew of new barrel aged stuff,” Clark says, “both clean and sour, that will be coming out for the rest of the year.”
At Hunahpu’s Day, Jackie O’s poured its Apple Brandy Dark Apparition 2018 and The Ties That Bind, a wine barrel fermented wild ale aged for two years that was a collab with Crooked Stave in Denver.
Country Boy Brewing, Lexington, KY
The folks at Country Boy Brewing invite their West Virginia fans to come over and visit their facility in Georgetown, KY, which has been up and running for one year now. You’ll see their impressive 50-barrel brewhouse, 100-barrel fermenters, and a very nice taproom. Their original Lexington brewery is now specializing in barrel-aging and sour beer production.
With things cranking at the new brewery, they are beginning to expand distribution back into Tennessee. Current distribution footprint is all of Kentucky, a little bit of Indiana, all of West Virginia, and the Roanoke market in Virginia.
About hiring Huntingtonian Josh Holland as their WV market sales rep, Country Boy co-founder D.H. Harrison said Holland is “doing just a killer job in West Virginia.”
“I’ve known Josh for a long time. He’s a huge craft fan, extremely knowledgeable about the industry, not only what’s going on locally, but nationwide.”
At the Hunahpu’s festival they poured Kentucky Waterfall, a tart barrel-aged Belgian Strong Ale collaboration with Hidden Springs in Tampa, and their bourbon barrel aged Legend of the Wooly Swamp, a 12.5% Imperial Stout.
Triple Crossing Brewing, Richmond, VA
I don’t think any of us would argue with Triple Crossing’s co-owner Adam Worcester when he says: “We continue to make what I think is some of the better hoppy beer coming out in the entire country.”
What’s news, however, is his strong interest in expanding the envelope.
About IPAs: “We kind of made our name on those,” he said, “but now we’re trying to do some other things.”
“We’re also very interested and focused on doing stouts now. We’ve purchased some bourbon barrels and doing a lot of double mashed stouts in the brewery.”
Last year, the brewery invested heavily in its sour program. They bought some Spanish red wine barrels and some Virgina wine barrels too. And now the beers are aging in them.
“We did three coolship beers in October, November and December, so we’re going to let those age out for a couple of years,” Worcester said. He added that they have a Blood Orange Berliner Weisse release coming up too.
Speaking of Triple Crossing’s superb IPAs, Worcester was pouring a Cryonectar Double IPA at Hunahpu’s Day. It’s basically their Nectar at Night DIPA, but they used kryo-pellet hops instead of regular pellets of Mosaic and Simcoe. Kryo pellets let them hop the beer even more aggressively.
Cryo pellets are an ultra concentrated lupulin powder that has less astringent, vegetal matter and more concentrated lupulin than regular hop pellets. It gives a much greater aroma and flavor per pound and much less bitterness.
Birds Fly South, Greenville, SC
Birds Fly South, that brewery known for its beautiful, wild and funky farmhouse brews, is expanding its direction. Founder/brewer Shawn Johnson says they have added new equipment that is allowing more beer styles to be brewed. He just dropped in a new 20-barrel brewhouse that will be devoted to brewing clean beers. That will allow the original equipment to focus 100% on wild beer.
“Our 20 barrel system is going focus on bringing out some more IPAs, more stouts, more on the clean beer side,” Johnson said. He is excited to have expansion on both sides, clean and wild.
“So our sour program, our wild program, is not disappearing just because we want to focus on some clean beer as well. I always say we’re an ale project, we’re not a brewery. The reason why we do that is we love all kinds of beer, and we try to make all kinds and explore all beer all different ways.”
In the sour and wild program, he says they currently have about 380 barrels of beer aging or part of the solara program. They are also adding on two more 40-barrel foeders. This is a brewery on the move.
At Hunahpu’s Day, they poured False Face, a Bourbon-barrel aged sour stout, and Radio Silence, a hazy pale ale hopped with Centennial, Citra, and Styrian Wolf.
Ocelot Brewing, Sterling, VA
We love Ocelot Brewing for its great brews and because its owner and brewer are both WVU alumni. Coming up on April 21, you could surely have some fun at Ocelot Brewing as they hold their third anniversary party at the brewery.
“We’re going to release a triple IPA in cans,” said brewery founder/owner Adrien Widman about plans for the party.
The big news from Ocelot, though, is that head brewer Mike McCarthy, is leaving in June to start his own brewery in Winchester, Va. We’ll try to get more on that story soon.
Widman is on the board of the Loudoun County Brewers Association, which is helping host the upcoming national Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference this August. He wants to put their best foot forward.
“We are trying real hard figure out how to make that a great event for everybody and showcase the Loudoun County breweries as well as other local breweries in the D.C. area,” he says. He hopes to offer a festival-style reception that has beer from all the breweries in the county.
“There’s a lot of smaller breweries that are making great stuff in Loudoun County,” Adrien adds.
MadTree Brewing, Cincinnati, OH
Tasting Axis Mundi and Joon at Hunahpu’s Day tells me why MadTree Brewing is popular and growing fast. The brewery was pouring its coffee, vanilla, barrel-aged Axis Mundi Imperial Stout that was a big boozy brew aged 6-24 months in Kentucky bourbon barrels. Joon is a unique gin barrel aged product. Watershed Distillery in Columbus takes barrels first used to age bourbon, then ages gin in them. To make Joon, MadTree gets those barrels from Watershed and fills them with kölsch and adds juniper and ginger. Quite a nice beer.
MadTree co-owner Brady Duncan says if you haven’t been over to their new brewery and taproom, you need to get over there this spring. It is a large facility with an awesome dog-friendly patio, and they keep about 28 unique beers on tap. You’ll find plenty of taproom-only releases.
New things from the brewery include another run of Entropic Theory IPA, which will be out in force starting in April. A bunch of fun collabs are coming up too: One with Fatheads, Cleveland, and another with Jackalope, Nashville.
Nantahala Brewing, Bryson City, NC
Nantahala Brewing’s Noah Rooney, who works in cellaring and brewing, says you should definitely seek out some of their special brews out now or soon to be released.
“We just came out with our newest Judaculla barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout, brewed with sorghum molasses and aged in Jack Daniels barrels, and their Midnight Topher Espresso Stout,” he said. “This spring we’ve got our Trail Magic Series continuing with Trail Magic 19, a strawberry rhubarb sour. Also look for a spiced wit, and new recipe Little Tennessee Lager.”
At the festival they poured their classic, easy-drinking Dirty Girl Blonde and Noon Day IPA made with Simcoe and Citra.
Hoof Hearted Brewing, Marengo, OH
If there is a brewery having more fun than Hoof Hearted, I’d like to see it. Brayden Volk, who doubles as Hoof’s Yann Bandaña character, led the brewery’s second foray to Hunahpu’s Day and was having a ball. At the festival he was pouring Who’d Like To Hold My Clipboard, a dry-hopped frappè double IPA with apricot, blood orange, pineapple, and Konkey Dong 4Up, a fruity, juicy, triple IPA with two times the hops of regular Konkey Dong.
About Who’d Like To Hold My Clipboard, Volk said: “We wanted to kind of shake up the whole milkshake trend that was going on in brewing and throw caution out the window. So we made a Frappè DIPA as our way of being snarky and cute by putting a bunch of oats and lactose and vanilla in a beer. ”
You may not know that Who’d Like To Hold My Clipboard was originally developed as a collaboration with Vince Tursi, former head of brewing operations at Burial’s production brewery in Asheville, and who also brewed at Night Shift Brewing and Lord Hobo Brewing. (That’s a heck of a resume). Volk passed on the news that Tursi is involved with starting up a new brewery in Asheville called Dissolver.
Volk said look for all kinds of new stuff coming up at Hoof.
“We just shipped in 15 new bourbon barrels for some barrel aged Fitness Freak,” Volk said. “We just filled a couple of puncheons from our foeder, so we’re getting our sour program up and going. We just did a collab with Other Half out of Brooklyn, and we’re working on a collab with Mikeller and another with American Solera.”
Bhramari Brewing, Asheville, NC
Bhramari Brewing’s head brewer Gary Sernack invited West Virginians to stop in and see them when visiting Asheville.
“We have an ever evolving draft list and an amazing restaurant,” he said. “We have a very ambitious line up of bottle and can releases for 2018. We’re constantly rotating through small batches (in the taproom).”
Look for really creative, fun, whimsical, culinary inspired beers. Sernack was a professional chef for 17 years before he became head brewer.
As an example of that creativity, Sernack was pouring Black Gose and Cosmic Apotheosis. The gose was brewed with 100% Riverbend Malt, black malt, orange blossom, alderwood smoked sea salt and English flaked sea salt. The Cosmic Apotheosis is a triple IPA fermented and aged in Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels with Brett from White Labs and then dry hopped with Cryo Mosaic, Cryo Citra, Idaho 7, and Hallertauer Blanc hops, then bottle conditioned.
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