The Friday Question
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the first Friday Question of 2010! There were some good guesses to last weeks question. I thought that it was a bit of a tricky one because it was a year unlike no other one for the brewery in recent times, with a lot of different factors coming in to play. Firstly of course the Wharf Rat /Pratt Street Ale House closed for 6 weeks for refurbishment back in January which was a major disruption for the brewery but the refurbished Ale House proved to be a great success with strong sales for our house brewed beers (though it would be nice if the Orioles could find some solid winning form!) Obviously the sluggish economy was a worry but was offset by our efforts, along with our distributor in the Summer to push out our brand to more outside accounts with new brewery design tap handles etc. We also recently started distributing to D.C. which has been a great outlet for us, especially for the cask beers. So, overall we had a pretty good year, a firm foundation upon which we hope to build in 2010. The final figure for the number of times we brewed in 2009 is …. drum roll …. 163 so congratulations go to Greg with his guess of 162. Greg wins growler fills of our upcoming 3 seasonal offerings, the Scottish Ale, Peeping Tom Porter and The Bishop’s Indulgence. Keep an eye on my posts to see when they go on tap. I’m going to stick with a seasonal theme as I’m happy to announce that we will soon be launching our “seasonal veterans club”. We will issue a passport of sorts that you get stamped the first time you try each of our new seasonal beers and rewards will be issued through the year as you accumulate more stamps. For example, if you have 5 seasonal stamps in your passport you’ll get a free beer, for 10 a free growler fill, 15 a limited edition t-shirt and so on. That first pint you buy of each seasonal will also be served in a 20oz pour for the price of a 16oz (obvious exclusions will apply to some of the higher alcohol beers which are served in 10oz snifters). Sound good? I think so! As soon as we get the the passports printed up I’ll post all of the details. I’m going to keep this weeks prize the same, growler fills of our upcoming 3 seasonal offerings. Here’s the question. How many different seasonal/ one-off offerings did I brew in 2009? I’m talking about individual brewing events here, not seasonal/ Brewer’s Choice casks. One entry per person only please posted via the comment section below. Good luck.
I tried the Bishop’s Indulgence from the conditioning tank yesterday and I’m very pleased with the results. It has pleasant notes of chocolate without them being overpowering and a smoothness from the vanilla. Some of the initial cocoa bitterness that I detected in fermentation samples has mellowed out so, all in all, I think that it is a well rounded beer. I estimate its alcohol content to be 8.2%.
Cheers
Steve
Tags: Growler, seasonal veterans club, the bishop's indulgence, the friday question
Happy New Year !
I will say 16.
Merry New Year! hoping to get down there and enjoy some more of that oak aged 3 Lions very soon.
…and I’m going to take a totaly random guess of 10 seasonal / one-offs. cheers!
27
19!
Lucky 13
Happy New Year. My resolution is to actually make it up the road and have many pints!
I’m guessing 8.
Going with 20 here.
18
32
Depends just how you define “seasonal”, of course, but I’ll throw a dart on the wall, say 21, and admit that I should be keeping better count of such things myself…….
I did specify seasonal/one off brews so it’s basically everything that isn’t a year round tap!