Second tasting of the month, still pouring great beers from the chocolate country brewers. While the pride of Hershey, PA is their cocoa processing plant, Troegs is definitely second. It’s always nice to have someone come and pour from them, but it makes it just a little bit special when we can offer up their newest and most popular seasonals. We will be pouring Nugget Nectar for the second time, as well as some other core and limited releases. It’s a good month when we can have a great brewery like Troegs bookend the tastings.
In preparation for the Hallmark holiday, we’re having a tasting with some beers that share the flavors of the usual Valentine’s day gifts. Lindeman’s makes some of the best fruit added sour/funky beers and has for centuries. We will have two of their berry varients, Kriek and Framboise. To go with the berries, we’ll have Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate stout. This stout has a Tootsie Roll style chocolate flavor that pairs well with deserts as well as fresh fruit. Come try them all along side of tasty food pairings to see if this is what your Valentine would like.
Night Shift has been making some of the best beer in the state for a while now, but they were always just out of reach of our shelves. Then, just before Christmas, that all changed. Since bringing them in to the store, we have had over 10 different beers from them. And you, the consumer, have been enjoying it. We run through dozens of cases a week and they just keep sending us fresh, hop forward cans as well as funky and sour bottles.
It took a little bit, but we are finally having the Everett brewers in for a tasting. If you have never tried Night Shift, come down. We know our beer and are constantly exploring what is out there, so please trust me when I say that they are one of the top breweries in Massachusetts. Their offerings change from week to week, depending on what they have just brewed, but know that what we are pouring will be fresh, flavorful, and well made.
Sunday is the Superbowl and our Patriots are on the march for another trophy and set of rings. And with football comes a few tasty drinks. And no Sunday necessitates fine libations more than the Superbowl. We have some great beer sales going on right now in honor of the games which you should come and check out, but while you are here on Sunday we will also have the knowledgeable Ken Zuckerman here to pour out some of the most unique ciders in the store.
Spain has two regions for cider, Asturias and Basque, both in the north. While Basque sidras have a good name in the United States, Asturias produces the bulk of the countries sidras. Ken will be pairing select sidras from Asturias with some delicious artisan chocolates. He will be pouring two sparkling sidras, Riesta Guzman and Angelon. You might remeber these from when he did a tasting last time. While made of apples, these can easily replace any sparkling wine. Diamantes de Hielo by Grusifas is ice cider with a deep amber color. A great desert drink. Finally we will do a fan favor Sidra de Pera from Angelon.
We did this back in October and it was a lot of fun. So much fun that we decided to do it all over again. December 2nd, starting at 6pm, we will be opening bottles of Sofie and Matilda from this year as well as bottles of Lolita, Juliet, Halia, Madame Rose, and Gillian all from 2015. With wild ales like these, we found that giving them a year to sit and mellow out was the right call, so we’re doing it again. Keep an eye out for an email in which you can RSVP to. This was a fun, relaxed tasting in which we had some fun with some very nice, rather expensive beers. It is a great opportunity to try a $30 bottle of fruit added sour ale without paying the $30 price tag. It does hurt that instead of one, we will be tasting five.
For the second year in a row we will host the Goose Island Black Friday Bourbon Country release. This was a huge success last year and we don’t see why it won’t be again. We will be opening our doors at 9am on Friday, November 25th. Once the doors open, we will be funneling people into our tasting room where we will have the Barleywine, Coffee, and Brand Stout. It will be first come, first serve, so I would recommend getting here early. To put it in perspective, the first people showed up last year around 5:30am. We will have a limit on the Brand Stout, but it will be over a case. We have not decided the limits on the Barleywine yet, but due to the lack of stock on Coffee, we will be limiting it to one bottle per person. We will also have previous years’ Barleywine and Brand Stout for sale as well.
While waiting in line and walking around the store, we will be pouring samples of the 2016 Brand Stout, 2014 Brand Stout and 2014 Barleywine as well as be handing out free pastries. Hopefully everyone will not eat so much the day before that they cannot wolf down a few sweet treats.
