Just so you know, we added cherries to our current barrel of Cherry Dubbel today…start the countdown to the next batch. This is the beer that won a Silver Medal at last year’s (2008) Great American Beer Festival and we are making another batch of it again right now. People have offered kidneys for this stuff…and thought I’m not into the organ trade I totally understand. It rocks. Here’s a shot Shawn Ferraro gettin’ some sweet cherry into the barrel. He came in to help us brew some American Brown Ale and got to ‘touch the hem’. I don’t think he realized what a big deal it was unil about half of our staff came running into the brewery to see what he was doing to ‘THE BARREL’ (everyone knows where we keep the Cherry Dubbel).
If you can’t wait until the fall for a taste of this sweet, sweet love get yourself on over to Iron Hill West Chester this coming Saturday for the Belgium comes to West Chester event. It’ll be on tap. Now I’m not sure when Chris will be serving the keg. I’ll post the schedule whenever I can lay my hands on it. The Event starts at 1:00pm and there is a bus full (literally) of beer holligans coming from Philadelphia to clean out the list of killer beers the WC guys will have on tap. I’ll be there on Saturday so stop on by.
Less than on week until Pumpkin Fest 2008! This Saturday October 25th 2008 will be the first ever Pumpkin Ale Fest here at North Wales. We will be tapping a Pumpkin full of Ichabod Imperial Belgian Pumpkin Ale at 5:00 p.m. (Yes, beer from a pumpkin) The Wizards in the kitchen have put together a full menu of pumpkin love and we’ll have pumpkin beer from other breweries including The Pumpkin Ale from IHB West Chester, Dark O’ the Moon Pumpkin Stout from our friends at Elysian in Seattle (full description below) and a bit of the Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale. We sent some Ichabod Imperial Pumpkin out to Elysian in exchange for their beer and the folks out there when crazy for it. There is even a great review on Rate Beer from their Pumpkin Fest, check it out.
For those of you doing Big Brew at Keystone Homebrew, Doug and I are planning on being there too… so you should be able to do both. We will be going straight from homebrewing to North Wales to tap the pumpkin.
Since his year’s pumpkin ICHABOD ALE is Imperial Belgian Pumpkin Ale, hat means it’s big. At 10% ABV it’s actually really, REALLY, big. We had a bunch of help brewing it from a couple of our staff members, Pete and Lacey. The brew day came of without a hitch and we had a blast adding tons of brewing sugar, over 100 pounds of pumpkin, lots of spice, and our House Belgian ale yeast. It took two mashes to fill the kettle so we could get all of the extract we needed. Here’s a little video clip of Doug adding the very last of the pumpkin meat to the mash.
On tap from Elysian will be Dark o’ the Moon Pumpkin Stout
Spookily smooth and chocolatey.
A perennial favorite – brewed with Organic Pale, Crisp 77° Crystal, Munich, Cara-Vienne, roasted, chocolate and Special B malts with roasted pumpkin seeds in the mash. Pumpkin in the mash, kettle and fermenter. Bittered with Magnum and finished with Saaz and crushed cinnamon. Starting gravity 16.6°Plato (1.068 SG), alcohol 5.35% by weight, 6.4% by volume. Brewed at Elysian Fields, next to Qwest Field in Seattle
Stop in and join us for a pint or 3. Should be a good time.
This Friday October the 3rd is First Friday. Yeah, I know that is obvious but it means that we will be tapping something from the SUPER SECRET STASH. Yes, there really is a super secret stash. At 5:00pm we will be serving five gallons of Cherry Dubbel. We have a pinot noir barrel from a winery in New Jersey. Yes there are wineries in New Jersey. We’ve mostly been using the barrel as a home for the special strains of bacteria that make sour beers like Lambic so special. These bugs love to live in wood and our barrel is home to some great tasting stuff. We’ve rotated lots of great beer through it including tripel, quad, and a blend of Braggott and fruit. Anyway, about three months ago Doug spiked the barrel with fast fermenting Dubbel wort and FORTY POUNDS of dark sweet cherries. The beer fermented out nicely and has tons of wine like character including oak, esters, sweet fruity notes. Oh, and it’s very, very strong. Needless to say we have a super limited supply of the stuff but we are parting with five gallons this Friday. It’ll go fast so don’t be late.
In a related bit of news we were recently featured in the New Brewer magazine for this very barrel! My boss, Mark Edelson, called me a couple of months ago gathering info about how we were using the barrel and he also asked for a photo if it. Now, being the shameless self promoter that I am I put myself in the picture! Doug took the picture and it is on proud display in the current issue deep in a story about barrel aging. Hte mag is for Super Beer Nerds who make beer for a living. Like us…anyway I included the pic here on the blog just in case your subscription ran out! No photo credit for Doug, but I told him to put it on his resume anyway! (This guy can do just about anything FYI).
I’m on the road to Michigan this week to do some work, but Super Doug will be here to shake hands and kiss babies. Stop by for a glass and give him a pat on the back…the beer was his idea and it is KILLER.
Just so you know, we added cherries to our current barrel of Cherry Dubbel today…start the countdown to the next batch. This is the beer that won a Silver Medal at last year’s (2008) Great American Beer Festival and we are making another batch of it again right now. People have offered kidneys for this stuff…and thought I’m not into the organ trade I totally understand. It rocks. Here’s a shot Shawn Ferraro gettin’ some sweet cherry into the barrel. He came in to help us brew some American Brown Ale and got to ‘touch the hem’. I don’t think he realized what a big deal it was unil about half of our staff came running into the brewery to see what he was doing to ‘THE BARREL’ (everyone knows where we keep the Cherry Dubbel).
