Pratt Street Ale House » Growler

The Friday Question

Steve — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:22:32 +0000

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

the sort of friday question

Steve — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:49:29 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope that your day is starting out better than mine … 6.30am start in the brewery with the added frustration of discovering that one of the door seals on a conditioning tank had developed a leak overnight. I guess it’s a good job that I came in today though, it wouldn’t have been a happy scene if I’d have discovered it after the holiday! It’s fixed now without too much loss (though of course any beer loss is heartbreaking for the brewer). I’ve just got a few hours work to do before my holiday officially starts. I’m making up a solution of isinglass finings at the moment with which I shall fine out a batch of Ironman Pale Ale that I’ll be transferring from FV to conditioning tank. Then I have to crash cool and skim yeast from the Irish Red fermenting in FV8 and I’m done.

So, on to the important stuff! In last weeks Friday Question I asked how many songs I currently have on my i-pod. I thought that this would be a good way of having a “level playing field” as it were … no advantage for the beer geeks (and I use that term with the utmost respect) but of course to no avail. Despite a record number of entries, Mr. Alexander D. Mitchell IV won again! I’m beginning to wonder if Sandy has planted some sort of surveillance equipment in the brewery during one of his visits? Congratulations Sandy, your guess of 23,456 was pretty darn close to the actual figure of 23, 164 (at the time the question was posted). I hasten to add that I don’t sit around all day downloading songs, in fact only 2 of the songs on there are downloads, the rest have been laboriously ripped from my cd and vinyl collection over the last few years and it is still a work in progress!

I’m going to stick with the i-pod song number theme this week, again, in the eternal hope that somebody else may have a chance of winning! So the question is this …. one of my favorite bands is Blur, whose music I’ve been collecting since they released their first single (“She’s So High”) many years ago. How many Blur songs are on my i-pod? As this question will take us into December the prize will be a growler of our Merry Ole Ale which goes on tap next week and a couple of random bottles of English Christmas ales that I’ll pick up over the weekend. Sound good, then guess away my friends, guess away. As usual please enter one guess per person via the comment section below, closest answer wins.

Have a safe and happy holiday.

Steve

Friday Brewery Competition

Steve — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:06:24 +0000

So, every Friday we’re going to post a random question on our site and the first person to e-mail the answer (or a close approximation of it) to me by the following Wednesday wins a prize (to be determined). You’ll have to pick up the prize from the Pratt Street Ale House, fair enough? Our decision is final, you must be 21 or over, show proof of id to collect your prize etc. etc.
An important part of our brewing day is having music playing while we work (thank you i-pod!) so the question is this … how many songs are there on my i-pod? Good luck.
Have a happy and safe 4th of July!
Steve