Gasp! The Friday Question!
Well, well, well … here we are again. It’s been a looooooong time, but I’m going to (try to) resurect the Friday Question! Tah dah! (or however you write that?)
Anyway, let me tell you about some stuff first. I hope that you already know that on December 8th The Pratt Street Ale House, in association with our good friends at The Brewer’s Art, will be hosting The Mid-Atlantic Holiday Beer Festival. All of our favorite local breweries will be there (and some not so local) as well as some amazing food from the combined talents of the chefs at the Ale House and the Brewer’s Art. All of this is available for $40 and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Maryland Food Bank. Details of the beer, food and ticket purchase information can be found at http://www.missiontix.com/events/product/15787/mid-atlantic-holiday-beer-festival. Get your tickets now because this will be a sell out!
The other big news of course is the forthcoming opening of the Ale House in Columbia. It’s been a long time coming and, let’s be frank about it, it’s taken a lot longer than we all thought it would but it’s so close we can almost taste it (and it tastes, oh, so good!). The site is what was the old Rocky Run Tap & Grill. I had never visited it but have had the misfortune of trying some of their beer at their location in Charles Village a few years ago. I am confident that we are going to offer something very different at that location as The Ale House. The problem that stalled our plans was that the building, which had been vacant for some time, was in a frightening state of disrepair and, very literally, had to be re-built from top to bottom, as illustrated from the picture below.
The long haul is almost over, the building is nearing completion, staff have been hired including an outstanding executive chef in Chef Juan Valdez (formally of District Chophouse) (check out the picture below)
There will be 3 bars, with 30 different draft offerings featuring all of our year round brews and 3 rotating seasonal brews and in addition 3 cask conditioned ales on state of the art beer engines imported from the UK. The remaining taps will feature a variety of our favorite craft beers with a heavy emphasis on regional brews from our friends at Brewer’s Art, DuClaw Brewing, Evolution, Flying Dog, Stillwater, Burley Oak, Union Brewing etc … it will be awesome! The main bar, pictured below, features 50 taps so that our most popular brews will be doubled up for speed of service. We will aim to feature regular release parties for our own brews as well as special releases/ pint nights for guest breweries.
The beautiful new beer engines, imported from the UK are pictured below. The first 3 beers to be featured will be 3 Lions Ale aged with French Oak, Draft Punk IPA dry hopped with Cascade and Sign Of The Southern Cross, a black ale generously hopped with NZ Southern Cross.
As with any venture of this type, it’s never open until it’s open, but we’re hoping for a soft opening around December 10th with a Grand Opening Party on the 14th. If you fancy attending the Grand Opening Party with a $50 bar tab on us then all you have to do is be the first to answer a simple question to our complete satisfaction! The winner will be announced next Friday. Here we go …. I’m getting old so, y’know, the memory isn’t what it used to be so please remind me, the Blonde Ale that I brewed today, what gyle (batch #) was that? Because it’s the Season of giving, I’ll be kind and give you a clue … we have brewed Gyle 3500 and we haven’t brewed gyle 4000. Have at it and join me in a couple of weeks to celebrate a new milestone in the history of Oliver breweries and the Ale House! Good luck!
C
3737
3550
3775
3854
3827
3772
3600
3637
3917
3535
3957
Totally gonna go check the brew sheets.
3501
3700
3911
3537
3626
3666
3654