Avery Oud Floris hitting the stores?

Thanks for the awesome response Andy! I still would like to know the chances of releasing some of those great release taps in bottle form. Maybe a little Tweak???

 

Good to know. Can't wait to see this one on the shelves.

 

seconded... i've been wanting to get some meph addict, but castle rock is a long way away from avery.

 

At this point, there are no plans to bottle Tweak (aka the artist formerly known as Meph Addict). I've just been making a tiny side batch of it once a year and portioning it out until the next winter. I think it would be best in cans anyway... it might be the best shotgunning beer ever. At least if we can get it in tallboys.

We frequently try to save a couple of 5-gallon kegs of Tweak for the time around GABF, so keep an eye out in case we send one or two down to Denver. At least that's a bit closer to Castle Rock. Driving back and forth to Boulder to drink 16% abv beers pretty much requires a DD.

As for the rest of the beers on tap at the Oud Floris party... Whiskey Sour Reverend was a single barrel, Grapes of Wrath was a single barrel, Ross's Mom was a one-time blend of two barrels, and Bad Apple was two barrels. I might work on a slightly tweaked larger batch of Bad Apple and some variations of Grapes of Wrath, but you can never tell if something will end up in bottles until you've done some tastings over the years and absolutely love it. When you're dealing with barrel projects, you never want to bet on something being ready two years from when you make it. But that's also the fun part... embrace the chaos factor of these projects and roll with it

 

Tweak in cans?! Please say this might actually happen....!!!

 

Alas... no Tweak in cans. I should've put a smiley or something in there. Evidently I'm not so great at indicating sarcasm

We don't have any plans for Tweak outside of doing a small kegged batch each year, though we've been known to change our minds from time to time...

 

What's the next barrel release?

 

Andy, thanks for the replies. I actually thought the Sunday release was cool. I was set and ready to go but a sister in law had to go and have a baby

 

I figured it was sarcastic, but I can dream right?

Either way, keep up the good work over there!

 

ISO: Petition for Tweak...bottles or cans. Don't care. Top 5 beers ever.

 

(In my best Obiwankenobi voice) This isn't the distribution you're looking for. *passes hand in front of Andy's face
Move along.

 

would that be a whale?

 

And the threads come together

It only becomes a whale if we decide to make so little of it that it's difficult to get. I'll see if I can make one case of Tweak. Each can will be marked only with a skull and crossbones, then attached to a large helium balloon and released on a windy Colorado afternoon. If you can track down one of them, you can trade it for an actual whale.

Thanks for the kind words on Tweak... I'm a big fan of it, but I'm also more than a little biased. And just so you know, it's a killer morning beer. As long as you don't have anything you need to do that day. It's just too bad we couldn't use the name Meph Addict.

And good ol' Robot Chicken. Well played, sir. When it gets too hot out, the Avery crew has been known to sit in an air conditioned office and watch the Robot Chicken Star Wars episodes after work. "It's a trap!" gets yelled quite a bit.

And @Graviz... the next barrel release is currently unnamed, but will most likely be an 8%-ish barrel aged raspberry sour ale. Not too heavy on the raspberries, pretty heavy on lactic acid, only a trace of acetic. It's been aging in fresh Cab Sauv barrels for about a year and I'm currently making dozens of blends from the barrels for my blind tasting panel. I was hoping to have it out by August, but the tasting panels are taking longer than I'd anticipated. I was just hoping that all 28 barrels of it would blend together into the best beer, but that might not be the case this time. So I don't know the size of the batch yet, as it will all depend on which blend wins.

Then the second batch of Rumpkin should be out around September. It is a smaller batch this year, as we couldn't get any more rum barrels... unfortunately, very few rum distillers in the US are aging in oak. And just like always, there's no guarantee that I'll be able to use every barrel. Good ol' chaos factor. Hopefully it will be in the 250-350 case range.

And then there will be a couple more sour ales for the Tap Room... Eremita IV, and hopefully another batch of Bolder Weisse, depending on how those barrels are progressing.

Looks like I need to get to work

 

Thanks for all the hard work and wonderful beer. The Oud Floris release was the first release I've made it to and definitely not the last. Look forward to going down next time.

 

I missed the Bolder Weisse Would like to try that one out

 

I'm just glad I live in Boulder. I'll likely be buying an obscene amount of Rumpkin, my favorite beer ever. EVER!

 

Mebuzzard, it's not that rum distillers are aging their rum in a different wood, it's that most are not aged in wood at all. If they are, the barrels are generally not in the U.S., which can be a pretty big obstacle. I haven't done a ton of research, but it seems like shipping prices would be brutal. And I don't have a great way to verify that the barrels are actually in good enough shape to hold beer. If those barrels get held up in customs for a month or two, they could end up drying out and be unusable.

For example, I don't believe that Gosling's Black Seal Rum (very common $20-ish a bottle rum, usually used in Dark 'n' Stormys and such) ever sees barrel time. It's a delicious little rum, especially for the price, but I don't believe I taste any oak in there. Though I can't say I've seen their production facility or their recipe, so I can't say for sure. The barrels we get for Rumpkin are actually from Gosling's Old Rum, which is their barrel-aged tiny batch rum. They make a couple of dozen barrels a year, but that's about it. If we could get double the barrels from them, we would.
There are a few small distilleries locally that are aging rum in oak barrels (Montanya, Downslope, and I'm pretty sure there's at least one more), but they are currently on such a small scale that I haven't hunted them down too much. That might have to change in the near future, as we would have loved to have even another barrel or two of Rumpkin this year.

 

What about Puerto Rico? They have a number of rum distilleries, some large, some small. And since they are a US territory, seems like customs wouldn't be an issue? Bacardi, Don Q, Barrilito, others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Puerto_Rican_rums). Seems like at least some of them would barrel age.

 

Very true... I can't say I've done a ton of research, as we didn't know how well Rumpkin would take off. And since we couldn't get as many barrels as we wanted this year, I'm planning on trying to get a hold of just about any barrel-aged rum producers I can over the winter.

Puerto Rico is definitely the next place to look. And if it's a large producer, there are plenty of other brewers who are currently looking for rum barrels...

 

Man, Andy. That sound like such an incredible pain in the a$$. Your pain is my pain.

I have a million dollar idea...finish this last batch of Rumpkin, and next year replace that annual brew with...

wait for it...

TWEAK!!!!!!!!

(You are welcome. No fee required.)