The Bruery (2021)

Second half of the bottle tonight is fantastic. I don't need any more BT in the cellar, but hard to imagine not grabbing a couple more...

 

Opened up my first ever Reserve Society beer today - Baked on the Bayou. A little disappointed in this one, for the elaborate list of ingredients, it ultimately ends up tasting like cacao nibs/ dark chocolate. A bit sweet, but not too sweet. Not a bad beer by any means, I just expected more of the flavors to come through.

Will probably be awhile before I open up the Portified Black Tuesday due to its ABV, but I’m very excited about it. The bottle is cool too!

 

Remember because it's packaged still you can recork and enjoy over several days.

You may want to invest in a champagne-style bottle stopper though cause you're going to be getting larger and stronger bottles as the year on

 

Too hard to name my #1 Bruery beer, but Apfelsap is definitely top 5.

 

Spicy Island is my all time favorite! I drank my last bottle recently and am incredibly sad I likely won't be getting more

 

I have a champagne stopper! Never thought to use it on beer before...

 

Oh yeah, splitting these 750's over two nights is the only way to go if you're solo.

For the bottles with plastic wrap on the neck I'll usually peel that all the way off. Otherwise I've sometimes found the stopper slips off.

Also, if it's an older bottle with more dry wax that cracks, that can break the seal. Newer softer wax is great though because the stopper teeth can dig into it.

Or I guess I could look for a new stopper that locks closed Or get a rubber band.

 

My standard is a 12oz Growler with a swing top cap. Pour half in there for day 2 and drink the remainder day 1.

 

I've been using those silicone cone shaped bottle stoppers with the ribs on them (insert condom joke here). You can get a 2 pack from Bevmo for $4-5. They don't have a positive clamping mechanism, but they are friction fit and work fine. I think in 4 years I've only had 1 or 2 pop open in the fridge and I know for sure that one of them I didn't push it down far enough.

Hell, in a pinch, I've used saran wrap and a rubber band.

Early on I used to decant half a bottle into a Grolsch swing top. I'm not sure if the agitation released more co2 and oxygenated the beer more than just leaving the balance in the half filled bottle. So I stopped doing that myself.

 

Wouldn’t the act of pouring release c02 out of solution?

 

The higher ABV stouts aren't very heavily carbonated, so it shouldn't affect it too terribly much.

 

So, based on my "research" the reason I went with my approach was two fold:

1.) Because my growler was only 12 oz I could fill it up to the top (so little to no air) and still have over half to enjoy on Day 1.

2.) If I poured gently/slowly into the growler first I could then do a "harder" pour to drink my Day 1 beer. The fear was if I did a hard pour to drink my day 1 glass this would agitate the beer left in the bottle for Day 2.

About 90% of the time I have been able to pour with little to no head in the Growler.

I personally have not noticed any degradation on Day 2 this way but I have never attempted to leave it in the original bottle and use a stopper.

 

I know we're family in this thread - but you need an intervention / review of basic physics my brother - this is terrible advice.

Those cone shaped stoppers are for still wines, are less effective than just sticking the cork back in, and at the end of the day are pointless tchotchkes. As your story exhibits - if there is any amount of carbonation being captured, creating pressure - they WILL go flying. This inevitability has nothing to do with how far it was inserted. Not dangerous for beer (probably), but this could literally hurt someone or damage your refrigerator if you pulled such a stunt on a bottle of champagne with 6 atmospheres of pressure.

Saran Wrap + a rubber band. I guess it will keep the bugs out, but it will also do absolutely nothing to maintain carbonation, if it did the saran wrap would fill up like a balloon and then rip or pop a hole, probably knocking over the bottle in the process. Just "no" ... a thousand times "no".


If you've ever left a half full can of stout on the counter or fridge overnight, exposed to air, it will still taste okay the next day. The CO2 releasing creates a protection from oxidation for the matter of hours we are talking about, and this procedure would be equally as effective as your other two "tips"... not very.

 

Opened up Mai Zombie. I would describe it as falling in the Bruery sub-class of "does too good a job of mimicking the thing it's going for to the point it doesn't taste like beer anymore, so why don't I just drink the original thing." (Basically the same way I felt about Dodie and L'deracola. Although I really liked Geriatric Hipster Club.)

Surprisingly not overly sweet, and also not fruity, so basically unlike most tiki cocktails I find myself drinking. But, it does taste like a cocktail, and it is tasty in that regard.

Very rum forward on flavor, maybe a bit too ethanol upfront (er... it's rum, so I guess that's par), but really nice smooth warm finish.

The spicing they got dead on for a tiki cocktail. Lots of spices, all in subtle balance, nothing over-the-top-excessive, great flavor.

I am glad I got one more to keep tucked away, but if the allotment was higher I would decline additional bottles (even if this year didn't already look to have a lot of strong contenders coming).

 

If you have a whale shark or similar bottle opener that won't dent the cap, you can buy a $4 capping bell (like for home brews) and reseal with the same cap. Just pulling down by hand on the bell can produce a water tight seal and you can even get a real bottle capper if you want.

I've found that to be the best way to drink a bottle over a few days. You'll need an european style bell for Bruery bottles.

 

Speaking as someone who has drunk a lot of BT etc in the past, and who had a large dinner tonight... half a bottle of Mai Zombie is hitting REAL hard.

 

I had to reread your post a couple of times to try to detect a hint of sarcasm, but I think you're serious!?! You realize that this is a beer forum? While a fresh unopened bottle of champagne might be under 90 psi (or 6 atmospheres, as you so scientifically pointed out), a fresh beer, and much less a stout beer, is going to be well below 30 psi. Especially when it's fridge cold, which helps keep the co2 in solution. Then there's the resultant cause for needing to recap said beer which is the process of opening the beer the first time which releases a portion of the trapped co2. If you can calculate the residual pressure, power to you.

Having used your so called "tchotchkes" at least a couple of hundred times, I can tell you the stopper makes a satisfying, but not overly dramatic, pop on the second bottle opening. And only a slight bowing of the saran wrap has ever been witnessed.

Sorry Ralphie, but you won't shoot your eye out.

 

Finally was able to come down and try some of the beers. Mai Zombie was exactly as ernh said, it's no longer beer and is totally a bottled cocktail. After the one taster I was pretty much happy, that beer in a 375ml bottle would've been perfect.

 

A few years ago my wife was gifted, via her bridal shower, stoppers like these
https://www.amazon.com/Stoppers-Foo...s=beer+bottle+stoppers&qid=1612889563&sr=8-32

Started using them on 750ml bottles over the past couple of years and they've worked great, almost without incident. I gently pull to make sure there is a good seal. I've re-opened up to two days later with a nice sound of pressure release and without adverse effect on taste or carbonation. There was one time it did pop off of a non-Terreux sour after a little bit in the fridge (I heard it) but that's my bad as I accidently agitated the beer. I re-sealed it and it was fine the next day.

Oh, if I were to buy a stopper, I'd just get a champagne one like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZLSH5F...colid=FUCT3T5WK3ZX&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

 

Ooo, that second one looks pretty cool. I wonder if the clip expands enough to get around waxed bottle necks?

I have some similar to your first link but they haven't worked for me. Too small for the wider Bruery crown I think. I'm sure that varies by manufacturer though.