Great Notion

This weeks version of the weekly newsletter, with interesting news (more so than normal I would say).

Happy Friday, Everyone! Welcome to our 3 Notion Friday’s newsletter, fresh for 5.25.18. Here we go:

1. We are sad. The federal government’s TTB division just shut down our new NW facility until further notice. The primary issue has to do with a missing wall on NW 28th Ave. We are under construction for our taproom / restaurant and instead have a barbed wire fence and security guard..but that doesn’t count in their eyes. Therefore, we cannot brew here right now which means aside from tomorrow - our Saturday 16 oz can sales will be on hold. Oh, and we have to dump a couple of batches of beer that aren’t done yet..again we cry .
2. Can Release Tomorrow, Saturday May 26th. We are still on for our can release!! We have Passion Fruit Mochi IPA cans tomorrow. $20/4 pack. More info here
3. Alberta St. Brewpub Beers. We have some dope new beers on tap at our Alberta brewpub! Come on out and enjoy this amazing weather in our beer garden! Try a Bubbly (Brut IPA), Passionfruit Mochi IPA, Orange Creamsicle (just tapped and tasting amazing!), or the dank and lovely Return to Space!

 

A bit later than normal, but here's this week's version of the Friday newsletter:

Welcome to our 3 Notion Friday’s newsletter, fresh for June. Damn it's June already!!! Wow time flies. 3 Notions comin' at ya!:

1. TTB: We are still not able to brew at NW 28th due to the TTB’s concern with our building structure and security. We are making headway on our wall, however, and if you’ve been watching our Instagram Stories (click on our logo for those who don't know how to check the 24-hrs-and-then-gone-Stories), you will see that we are 95% there with having a wall up! The plan is to submit an amendment to our Brewer’s Notice and hopefully be back up and running shortly. The problem we’ll need to overcome though is that they are currently 63 days on average from submission to approval right now . The goal is to expedite this as fast as possible though from a myriad of angles (like Dilated Peoples). Ideally we cut 2 months down to 2 weeks, but we might be dreaming...
2. Beer: We have some cool new beers on the horizon at Alberta for you, including Juice Invader, heavily dry-hopped with Mosaic and Galaxy. We also have Sunroom, a tart and refreshing Sour Ale fermented in stainless with our house culture and a Saison yeast for only 4 months. We're experimenting with packaging this beer at different ages, because older is not always better! On the horizon after that, we have a new batch of Mandela, as well as new Luminous and Mochi flavors!
3. Alberta Beer Shanty: We have a new beer shanty opening roughly mid-June in our Alberta Beer Garden. We will have a few beers on draft there to help ease lines at the bar. It will be a nice way for people that don’t want to wait for a table to just easily grab a beer and chill outside!
   
   
   
   Enjoy your weekend. Thank you for your support!!

 

Time for the current Friday afternoon update:

1. Beers: We’ve got some hotness coming at ya’ next week! Look out for Papaya Mochi IPA, the latest batch of Luminous with strawberries, apricots and guava, and then cross your fingers if they’ll be ready or not, but potentially also Mandella and Vanilla Latte! We also have a keg of the hazy IPA we did with Cloudburst on in the Beer Shanty as well as lots of other dope beers still on tap.
2. TTB Issues: You readers need your Great Notion fix. We know this. So, instead of waiting a few months for some folks to shuffle some papers around, we built a wall in 2.5 days and then called a guy. See, we know a know a guy who knows a guy, if you know what I mean. A little magic here, a little pixie dust there, yada yada yada and we’re back up and running. It was actually significantly harder and stressful than that, but what’s done is done and by the time you read this, we may have already made 3 batches of beer at NW 28th, including Peanut Brother and a couple of delectable, juicy IPAs. Please stay tuned for more info in the coming weeks, but we are trying our best to reinstate our can releases before the end of the month.
3. Events: You can catch some Great Notion’s hazy IPA’s and culinary-inspired sours and stouts at the following events this month:
   1. Portland Fruit Beer Festival this weekend at Burnside Brewing
   2. Masters of IPA at Ecliptic Brewing in Portland on June 15
   3. Dope & Dank @ Federal Bar in Los Angeles on June 21
   4. Weldwerks Invitational in Greely, CO on Sat., June 23

Other Half Green City festival in Brooklyn, NY on Sat., June 23

 

As far as I know, they still post the information on their website (on the current tap list page). The problem is that they almost never have any "available" crowlers for sale at the pub, as crowlers tend to sell out so quickly. That's largely a function of a very limited supply (200 crowlers per release is still fairly typical at this point I believe), and extremely high demand. As a result, unless they have an unannounced release (which happens sometimes), crowlers typically sell out in a few hours (or less).

As far as publicized releases, I think someone mentioned earlier in the thread that they'll sometimes provide crowler release information on instagram.

At this point it's really hard to keep track, as they seem to keep on changing their policy regarding crowler releases. At one time they had regular releases a couple times a week, and the information was posted on their Facebook page. More recently, they've sometimes posted the information in their weekly Friday newsletters, and as mentioned, apparently sometimes on instagram as well. Or sometimes they'll simply decide to do a crowler release at the pub and if you happen to be there when that happens, you can grab one (that's how I obtained the last crowler I got from them).

At this point your best bet is to contact the pub to find out if there are any crowlers available, and/or if there are any scheduled upcoming crowler releases.

good luck.

 

Was out of town on Friday and missed the weekly update. The only thing I saw in the newsletter that I thought would be of interest to folks is the following:

3) Can Releases: We are still aiming to have our first reinstated can release at NW 28th by the end of the month, on the 30th most likely. Peanut Brother will definitely be one of the beers dropped, though we are trying to also add a second can to the same release, either Blueberry Muffin, Juice Invader or Ripe.

 

From past experince, I think you're basically correct with all your assumptions. As @ChugChugPass mentioned, in the past the line has not lasted very long, and in fact cans have generally been available for a few days after the release. Crowlers are hit and miss, and I'm not sure if crowler releases are being posted on IG any more. Please see the post from @paulypringles above, who works at GN. I would rely on anything he posts on BA.

Good luck.

 

Time for the weekly, Friday update:

1. Beers on Now: In hop-land, we have awesome new batches of Ripe and Mandela on tap with Juice Jr and Juice Invader there as well. We have a bunch of rad adjunct IPAs as well, such as Vanilla Latte Mochi, Papaya Mochi, Luminous 03 and more. In sour world, we just added a fan fave from last summer - No Seeds, a watermelon gose, plus we have a ton of Blueberry Muffin. In dark beer land, we have 3 stouts on for you: Double Stack, Peanut Brother and Supple.
2. Beers on Soon: We are brewing an awesome multi-yeast strain blended experimental DIPA that is super juicy and hazy called Oblivion going on tap next week. We also have a new Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry stout coming on in a week or so as well.
3. Beers in 16-oz Cans: Hopefully you saw the cuvee video that we posted to IG and FB recently, but if not - then we hope to see you tomorrow, Saturday the 30th at 12 noon at our NW production brewery located at 2444 NW 28th Ave., Portland, OR 97210. We will have both Peanut Brother and Blueberry Muffin cans for sale. Who's making a PB&J mix this weekend?!? We sure are. See you tomorrow!

 

Time for the weekly update:

Beer Cans in PDX: Come to our NW location tomorrow, 7-7-18 at 12 noon pm at 2444 NW 28th Ave, Portland, OR 97210 if you’d like to take home 16 oz cans of Ripe and Juice Invader!

1. Beer Cans in NYC: Come to Other Half in Brooklyn tomorrow to buy cans of our collabo Economic Realities Coffee IPA (7.4%). This ode to the real economy of Portland is an all mosaic IPA conditioned on @mudhousecoffeeroasters Worka Ethiopian coffee that has a strong blueberry character. More info here

Beers on Tap Now/Soon: Come try Oblivion at Alberta right now! This double IPA was fermented with multiple strains of yeast, lending it tropical and stone fruit flavors and then generously dry hopped with Galaxy, Citra, Mosaic, & Simcoe hops. On tap soon will be Chocolate Covered Strawberry, and then brewed recently we have Mango & Sticky Rice, as well as MCA. MCA will be a beautiful tribute brew loaded with Motueka, Citra and Azacca to give mad love and vibes to the Bboys Gawd Adam Yauch!

 

Hopefully someone else can answer your question, but I'll tell you what I do know (which hopefully you'll find helpful).

I think this will only be GN's 5th or 6th can release, so at this point it's hard to know what qualifies as "standard." I think they've always imposed a one 4 pack per customer limit (not sure about this, but it's what I was told the times I purchased cans), and I don't believe they've ever run out of cans on release day (Saturday). As a result, I believe there have always been left over cans available the Monday after release day at the NE Alberta brewpub. How long cans have lasted there I'm not sure.

Good luck.

 

Exactly what I saw the Monday I stopped by to pick up cans of Peanut Brother.

Don't want to jump to any conclusions just yet, but I've always felt that a lot of the over the top clamoring/demand for GN crowlers was at least in part driven by artificial scarcity. I assumed that once that disappeared (the scarcity), it would only be a matter of time before we'd start to see both cans and crowlers available pretty much all the time at the brewpub.

 

Time for the weekly update:

1. Cans: Tomorrow (Saturday) at 12 noon at 2444 NW 28th Ave here in Party Portland we will be selling cases of Orange Creamsicle and Juice Jr in 16 oz cans. Orange Creamsicle tastes exactly like an orange creamsicle and Juice Jr is a super-easy drinking all-Mosaic IPA that won #1 Beer in Oregon in 2016. $18/4 pack for Juice Jr and $20/4 pack for Orange Creamsicle. Allocations TBD depending on the line tomorrow morning.
2. Draft Beer on Alberta: Come try our new Mango and Coconut Mochi beer. It tastes like the famous Thai desert, "khaoniao mamuang" aka Mango and Sticky Rice. We did not add lactose to this version of our Mochi beers. Sorcerer's Apprentice is back on for sours and we also have a sick lineup of 15 total beers on tap. Coming soon we have a new batch of Key Lime Pie, as well as Why Eat Me? A silly name for a silly rad beer featuring Wai-iti hops, which is a new hop variety to us that we have never used before!
3. The Heat is On!: Yeah dudes, it's forrreals super hot in PDX this weekend, so stay cool, fresh and fly. I think there's a big float-down-the-river thing going on, as well as lots of kiddie pools being broken out this weekend. Make sure to chug mad water along with those freshie cans of Orange Creamsicle!!!

 

Anyone who's been to the Saturday can releases have any idea how long GN typically stays open? I'm stuck at work until around 2:15, so likely wouldn't be able to get over there until 2:30 or so. Would really like to pick up some Orange Creamsicle.