The Bruery (2025)

Holy shit how has it been a year already

 

Next to beer, Madeira is my favorite drink. Are the Madeira barrel aged beers available to the general public or just members. Do you guys like them?

 

Pour list added to BT Party page … who all is going? I’m up in the air at the moment. Listing looks great but $150 is a steep ticket (plus hotel for the night) the same month that next year’s membership dues are being charged. https://www.thebruery.com/products/2025-black-tuesday-release-party

 

Thanks for the info. I didn’t see any Madeira barrel beers on their website, but they have so many different beers, I thought I might have missed it.

Do they still make Oude Tart? It’s been a couple of years since it was last reviewed.

 

I didn’t realize that they don’t repeat many beers outside of Black Tuesday, which must be very profitable. I bought their beers almost weekly when they first came out, but many of them seemed infected or just off, I’m kind of surprised at how popular they’ve become, but it seems like they are pretty focused on spirit barrel aged beers, which they weren’t making as much of early on.

I was inspired to buy a bottle of Blandy’s Madeira this afternoon, it’s been a while for me, but it’s a really interesting drink if you’ve never had it.

 

Last time I was at the tasting room I tried a taster of Gray Monday and it was OK. Nothing stellar. But tonight, I opened a bottle and the hazelnut is on point. In fact, you can see tiny hazelnut particles around the inside of the bottleneck. Probably the best hazelnut stout I have had. Not sure if this is just a factor of bottling versus kegging, or lucky bottle. But either way, I’ll be on the lookout for another couple to pick up the next time I’m shopping.

 

I was surprised by this as well, plus I think they recently had a Hoarder's Cuvee on there (and maybe BT Grand Reserve?). I would guess the Bruery had to promise some recent premium releases in order to liquidate some of their older stuff through the Tavour network...

I'm most likely in. Barry sent out an update recently and as someone else noted, the 2025 hoarders page has 2026 offerings on it now, and it seems like the Societies will definitely be getting more Barrel Aged stuff (I guess they heard the complaints or at least the low ratings about the inclusion of non-BA stuff this year), and I'm seeing a decent mix of returning stuff and new stuff...

New barrel aged Barleywine base called Musket? Sounds great. A couple other barleywines in the list as well, which is nice. Plus what looks like a BIL adjacent bba quad and bba belgian strong dark and praline anny ale variant.

The return of Rye Black Tuesday is welcome, and I don't mind the return of distiller box offerings like Forgotten Lore and Malt Mill.

BBA Autumn Maple sounds nice, and the Curieux clone could be interesting. Vanilla Villain with cacao seems like a good idea.

I've only ever had mushrooms in a beer once, and it was a sour that didn't really evoke mushrooms at all, except for maybe general background earthiness (that probably would have been there anyway). No idea what to make of that one. And there's some other out there offerings, as there always are. Seems like a decent enough year...

The ability to add cellar beers to free shipping will come in handy at least twice. The 375 size definitely helps as well... All in all, seems like the value proposition is better next year, but I guess we'll see...

 

Many years ago I was a member at Hoarder tier and I loved all the choices I had but was stock piling beer faster than I could drink it. I dropped down to Reserve but realized I didn't have access to things I wanted (hoarders boxes) and was stuck with a decent amount of items I wasn't interested in (beer/wine hybrids). After a few years off I just received an email about re-joining Reserve and was wondering if it would be worth it again.

Can someone tell me which items listed in the email would actually be available at the Reserve tier?
The list includes
Dream Bar
Breakfast club small batch
Bottle Logic #3
BA Churriosity
Creme Bruelay
BBA Begian Tripel
Date Shake
Vanilla Villain CV
Black Tuesday Oreo
My primary interest is the Small Batch box,

 

You can use the link ernh posted above to click each one individually to confirm but seems they (your list) are all reserve level

 

As far as I can tell the hoarder’s exclusives are:
Candy Cap Mushroom Barleywine
Brazillian BT
Hoarder’s Cuvée
Praline Anniversary Ale
Barrel aged Belgian Dark Strong
BBA Barleywine with Vanilla
BBA Peppermint Bark

 

I am on the fence about renewing for 2026 in what would be my 15th year of RS/HS membership.

-The free cellar shipping with $200 order is a positive, but might mean that I get my beers less frequently until there is a release month that merits that much spending. If I was local I would love the 375ml format, but when you ship it has literally meant your shipping costs were directly doubled vs 750ml format for same amount of beer.

-Looks like HS is back to ALL barrel aged beers which is a big plus. Paying for some of these non-BA bottles and then shipping on top in 2025 has been a bummer.

-I am also glad to see very few of the included beers appear to be "trying too hard" to be interesting (cocktail beers, unusual adjuncts, meads/braggots) as those bottes tend to languish in my cellar until they can be shared. I understand the desire to be unique but I mainly enjoy the BA stouts, barleywines, Belgians with more obvious adjuncts.

Overall, I think the potential for free cellar shipping combined with return to all-BA lineup pushes me to renewing again.

 

Wasn't expecting much from this but woah, good amount of coconut in this with no signs of orange, no typical Bruery tang, and great mouthful.