Aslin Beer Co. (2019)

100% agree. How is it that Bringing Sexy Back hasn't been released in forever? I do enjoy getting the 15% ABV stouts.....so I can ship them to Boston in exchange for Trillium IPAs.

 

They moved all the large-scale production equipment to Alexandria but haven't started brewing there.

 

They have moved most of their brewing equipment to the new location. Last I heard they haven’t started brewing there yet. A drop in production for a few weeks.

 

When is the anni party roughly? Would be in the DMV around 9/10-9/11

 

I'd suggest just emailing them or I guess you could look at IG and see when it was last year.

 

9/14

 

I just checked Top New Beers and was surprised to see that I haven't had any of them. I checked to see what I might have access to so I checked what Aslin beers are on there. All of the Aslin beers are these big stouts. Their recognition as a brewery has completely tilted this way, I guess. Good for them, bad for me, I guess.

 

Initially, Aslin's big draw was their NE-style IPAs. Master of Karate, Orange Starfish, and the like put asses in seats, including mine. In my opinion, which I will admit was not vocally shared on this site, their early stouts and barleywines were pretty underwhelming.

As they scaled up, some of that IPA magic got lost. Nearly all of the repeat and new IPAs took an undesirable malty twist in term of the hop/malt balance, at least to my taste, and I took a break from their IPAs for a while accordingly. Their megastout game simultaneously started nailing it, and that kept my business.

Fast forwarding, and as we approach the halfway point of 2019, I'm just now recognizing that Aslin is straight up hitting their stride. I usually dislike TIPAs, but Jenerik and Mom Jeans were damn near superlative for the style. Many of their barrel-aged stouts strike me as being on par with some of the mostly highly regarded market leaders. Their fruited milk sugar sours have been friggin' divine. Needless to say, I've been liking what they're doing.

And this is the only thing that gives me pause regarding their ever-approaching move to Alexandria. The new spot will be exceedingly accessible for me, which sounds great, but the fact that they're brewing on different equipment means the beer might not taste the same. They've shown a great talent for tweaking recipes, and I hope that can carry over to the new spot, but I'm in cautiously optimistic mode until we get confirmation.

 

If they are moving the equipment from Herndon to Alexandria, then aren't hey going to be brewing on the same equipment??

 

Different water and chemistry is a key piece here. I would assume there will be some upgraded equipment which will be more efficient and will require recipe tweaks. NEED TO HAVE QC ON POINT!!!!

 

They aren't exactly posting a detailed inventory of their assets for the public, so there's some degree of speculation involved, but Instagram posts by their owners strongly suggest at least some of the equipment is new.

 

Considering their growing pains in the past, I would probably give them some time to work out the kinks at the new facility.

 

The problem, for me, is that I don’t care for “megastouts” or triple IPAs. I don’t really like playing the high ABV game so many of their beers at the moment are a non-starter. I also try to stay away from lactose beers for the most part. So in terms of “available production,” Aslin doesn’t have a lot for me. I have had some of their tried and tried stuff more recently and they were still good for me, but I haven’t had them consistently like some people (possibly you). I have experienced the QC issues first hand as I used to go before I moved down here, so I am a little wary even when I order their stuff at a bar.

 

Well they finally released Bringing Sexy Back. Here’s hoping it tastes the same!

 

Really going for the old hop forward favorites this week with BSB, Laser Raptors, and a OS variant.

 

I can report back that it hits the spot. Definitely a great one! Too bad it sold out.

 

Hey all,

I'm thinking about making a stop at Aslin on my way to RVA on Saturday. Does anyone have insight in to how bad the lines are for their BA stout releases? I'm assuming this one will be one of the worst due to the amount of bottles and what they're releasing. Are we talking hours in line or does that not typically happen at Aslin?

 

If you show up before or at opening, you're probably looking at 2+ hours in line. Many of the recent bottle releases have carried over until the next day, and, if that's the case with this one, you probably wouldn't encounter any line in the mid-afternoon or later. No clue on bottle count, and 4 bottles per person is unusually high, so I'm not even going to try to speculate on how long bottles last.

 

They added a wine barrel aged sour conditioned on raspberries for Saturday. Have they released a lot of these sours? How have they been?

 

The only other wine barred aged sours I recall were Twinkle and Glint, but the one for this weekend will probably be fairly different from them given that it has nearly twice the ABV. Their non-BA fruit/lactose sours (e.g., Totally Cannon, Ticklish and Insecure, Next Beer Due 4/19) have generally been pretty tasty, but the description for tomorrow's bottle reads very differently than the fruit/lactose ones, so I doubt those are instructive either. You might try checking Untappd tonight to see if anyone rates it, because I think Mug Club generally gets these a day early.