Did you miss out on tickets to the Veil’s Forever Summer festival? Or do you just want to kick off your celebration early?
If you answered yes to either question, you should head over to the Cask Cafe today Friday August 11th.. They will be tapping beers from some of the breweries featured at Saturday’s festival.
Here are the beers that will be pouring starting at 4pm:
Omnipollo Hilma — 8% IPA brewed with hamburger buns, fries and Magascan vanilla
Threes Brewing Kicking and Screaming — Foudre fermented Pilsner
Sante Adairius Rustic Ales Lady in Grey — oak fermented grisette
American Solera Little Foo
Half Acre Deep Space
Tired Hands Alien Church
Tired Hands Reptoid IPA
The Veil Master Shredder
The Veil Coconut Hornswoggler
Save for the Veil beers, none of these are scheduled to be tapped at the festival. Head over to the Facebook event for more details and updates.
How is your Virginia Craft Beer Month going so far? If you’re behind, Triple Crossing has plenty of chances for you to catch up this Friday August 11th. You will just have to go to both locations if you’re trying to get everything. Starting at noon, their Fulton location will see the release of four new beers. At the same time downtown, they will be releasing their first gose, Salinity, in crowlers along with some draft only variants.
Here is the rundown on each of the beers being offered:
For four years, those mad scientists at Strangeways Brewing have been stoking your curiosity with their wildly imaginative concoctions. Celebrate with them this weekend with their Wake Me Up Before You Gose and its variants (Hibiscus, Red Wine Barrel Aged & Ghost Pepper, Rum Barrel Aged).
Year Four of the Curious Pour!
Come celebrate our Four Year Anniversary Celebration July 29th, as we toast to four years of being Richmond’s purveyor of curiously delicious drafts. There will be CAKE and of course a plethora of BEER.
BEER RELEASE – BOTTLE + DRAFT
Wake Me Up Before You Gose and two variants!
Plus 36+ Brews to Choose from.
The sun being out this beautiful morning must be a sign of great things to come today Saturday May 27th. What is better than celebrating the anniversary or grand opening of a local brewery? How about celebrating a grand opening AND an anniversary?! That’s right, Richmond. Today is a twofer!!
First up, over in Powhatan, Fine Creek Brewing will open their doors to the public for the first time this weekend, May 27 -29, from noon to 7pm each day.
Fine Creek Brewing
2425 Robert E Lee Rd
Powhatan, VA 23139
Credit: Castleburg Brewery
Next up, Castleburg Brewery celebrates their one year anniversary today May 27th from 1 to 10:30pm with the release of their Queen’s Garde:
Robust and malty, this rich Biere de Garde, “a beer which has been kept and lagered”, is a traditional artisanal ale brewed in early spring and kept in cool cellars. The Queen’s Garde personifies this tradition with its toasty character and sweet caramel notes.
Richmond, it is once again time to celebrate American Craft Beer Week (May 15 – 21). Three Notch’d RVA Collab House will be have something in store each day of the week but tonight’s kickoff will be something else. 3NB has been saving up some of their favorite RVA collaboration beers and will tap them today May 15th starting at 4pm.
Here are the beers you can expect to be flowing this afternoon:
There Will Be Braggot Tripel (Black Heath Meadery)
Bloom Gose w/ Passionfruit and Guava (Stefan Original)
Three thirst-quenching radlers rolling out together in one release! Originally brewed in honor of the UCI Road World Championships in Richmond in 2015, this style has been dubbed a hammock beer, a lawnmower beer, and a porch-swinging beer thanks to it’s easy-drinking characteristics and low ABV. This is one brew you can enjoy all.day.long.
The Radler style was invented in the Roaring 20’s by Bavarian Franz Xaver Kugler. The story goes that Kugler had arranged for the construction of a twelve mile bike trail through the forest from Munich straight to his establishment, in an attempt to improve business by catering to a post WWI emerging movement of recreational cycling amongst the working class. A good problem/bad problem arose when 13,000 cyclists descended upon his beer garden on a fine Saturday in June of 1922. While Kugler counted heads, he quickly surmised that he did not have enough beer to quench the thirst of all his patrons. Being a sharp businessman, the quick-thinking entrepreneur remembered he had several thousand cases of lemon soda in his cellar, a beverage that had proven a tough sell to the beer-loving Bavarian public. To save the day, while at the same time liquidate some virtually useless inventory, Kugler mixed his lager beer with the lemon soda. To further entice the cyclists to try his new creation, he dubbed the drink the Radler, which is Bavarian dialect for the German word Radfahrer, or cyclist in English. He whimsically told his customers he had developed the mixture to keep them upright on their bikes during their journey back to the city. Needless to say, it became a lasting tradition that carries on to this day in Germany. Prost and ride on!
Head over to the Facebook event for more information and updates.
October? Yes, October. That was the last time I felt like putting any energy into this blog.
Why? It’s not really its fault but let’s blame 2016. For much of the year, it felt like talking about beer was silly considering there were much more important things than beer happening in the world. Honestly, I still feel that way sometimes. For six months, I have struggled with depression and let it stop me from sharing my love for Richmond, VA. It was all too easy to convince myself that the obstacles that kept me from writing were so insurmountable that it was better to quit all together. That was a mistake.
I’m going to do my best to change that today. Past readers should notice a new format to the site. What do you think? I’m not totally sold yet. There may be a few more changes down the line.
There is no telling what the future holds but for now here are some things to get you by.
Swine & Brine has moved to Saturday for its third year at Ardent. Ardent has done away with the previous years’ ticket costs and made this year free to enter. Food and beer tickets are $6 each though some food items may take multiple tickets. Check out this menu.
Goochland, Lickinghole Creek has you covered with a double release of Supreme Leader and Great Commander. Get over to the farm for these award winning beers.
Triple Crossing will celebrate the anniversary of their downtown location with a special edition of Clever Girl IPA double dry hopped with Citra and Mosaic. In addition to their own beers, TC will have a few guest taps flowing.
This listening party has me excited like nothing else before it. For one, taking on record collecting as a new hobby became a comfort when all I could feel was sad and angry. Of course, I was buying a lot of blues early on. Joining Vinyl Me, Please was the best decisions I’ve made so far. I’ve wanted to attend one of these listening sessions for past records-of-the-month but the closest location, Starr Hill Brewing, was just too far on a Thursday night. I’m ecstatic to see that Triple Crossing will start hosting these with the Gorillaz “Demon Days” reissue. They are even bringing back their Demon Days Hoppy Red Ale for this.
Oh yeah and the 27th also just so happens to be my 40th birthday. If that’s not a reason to celebrate then I don’t know. Let’s party, Richmond!
Sign up for the club and get $10 to use in their store through this link.
Thank you to my friends who have encouraged me even if they didn’t know how much I was hurting. Let’s just not call this a comeback….you know the rest.
Blue Bee Cider reopens in their new Summit Stables location in Scotts Addition with a grand opening weekend celebration starting on Saturday October 15th. You can get a preview Friday night with tickets to their soft opening event benefitting the EnRichmond Foundation’s beautification and maintenance of our city parks.
In addition to their normal lineup, Saturday will see the release of three new ciders:
Think that would be enough for an opening? You’d be wrong. This opening must be grand! To accomplish a grandness not often seen, Blue Bee went out to play with their other libation producing neighbors in Scotts Addition and came back with six collaborations that will be tapped at various times during the day:
Ardent Craft Ales made “Smokin’ Mower”, a session blonde ale fermented with smoked Winesap and Stayman juice. Cellar team brought a bin of apples to Ardent and smoked them whole in ZZQ’s smoker with help from ZZQ and the Ardent team. We also fermented the smoked juice with a champagne yeast to dry and created the 2nd batch in two years of our smoked cider.
Black Heath Meadery made “Scott’s Edition”, a cyser fermented with Gold Rush juice and Virginia wildflower honey, with a generous addition of Bosc pear juice and Black Mission figs.
The Veil Brewing Co, made “Boi Friendz”, a barrel-fermented Brett IPA with Mosaic and Citra hops fermented with 30% unpasteurized Gold Rush juice. One of the barrels previously held the Veil’s Jeune (single barrel spontaneously fermented ale) and the other was a first use Virginia red wine barrel.
Isley Brewing Co, made “Apple Brown Betty”, the return of our 2014 collaboration – an English brown ale fermented with Grimes Golden juice.
Reservoir Distillery provided one of their recently emptied barrels and helped us decide on what unique offering to age and which one of their barrels to use (rye, wheat, or bourbon). We chose our Harvest Ration (dessert cider fortified with brandy) in their rye whiskey barrel for over four months.
Three Notch’d Brewing Co.‘s RVA Collab House made “Farm to Stable”, a gose fermented with Gold Rush juice. The collaboration combines the tropical notes and high acidity from Gold Rush apples with a tart and salty gose base.
It’s the second Saturday in Virginia Craft Beer Month and things are rolling by so quickly August will be done before you know it. Here are a few things to keep you busy this weekend.
Contact me at rvabeermeister@gmail.com to send recommendations on beers to try, places with a beer selection I should check out, or upcoming beer events.
Blue Bee Cider
You can start celebrating Strangeways Brewing’s third anniversary today!
Richmond Beermeister 