It’s been less than a month since we announced our first beer hitting the market and things have been moving at lightning speed ever since.  After putting 16 bbl of beer into wine barrels as the start of our cellaring program, we packaged a little more than 15 bbl of beer (1 bbl = 31 us gal).  Most of the beer went into kegs and has been distributed to bars and restaurants located around the state (don’t forget to check our map!)

Before I get into the actual announcement and tell you why we are so excited about our second batch of beer, let me say that it has been great to make it to the establishments that I would otherwise not have the time to visit.  As a rural business, it is hard to peel away and drive long distances so to have the ability to sit and have lunch at a bar with so many great CT breweries on tap that otherwise don’t distribute to my neck of the woods is just plain cool and makes us all the more proud to be in the community.

On to the beer!

Embracing the history of farmhouse brewing means many things.  I’ll save the farm and local politics for conversations at a bar or when people ask if we can sell beer at farmers markets, and go directly to the biggest reason.  We want to take those flavor profiles, brewing techniques, “styles” and bring them to new places.  Particularly CT.

In thinking about our first farmhouse ale, Field Beer, we wanted to do do something distinctly local and unique.  Going full bore and brewing a 30 bbl batch of beer on our “first day” is a daring proposition, but we were so happy with the results we decided to take Field Beer a step further and add a bit of complexity to it that we find makes it an even better beer.

 

SO.  We introduced our house souring culture to the brewing process in order to produce a distinct yet approachable tartness and mild acidity, similar to the character that traditional farmhouse ales developed, which enhanced their drinkability as excellent field beers for workers.

Most other characteristics of the beer will remain the same, certainly the ABV and dryness.

The bottles from the first batch (approximately 30 cases in total) flew out of our cold room and off of the local bottle shops’ shelves so we have continued to make improvements to our bottling rig so that we can increase our packaging ability.  In the next two weeks you can expect to see bottles of batch 2 on the shelves in greater quantity.  Stay tuned and in the mean time, you can seek out the batch on draft by checking our map.