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:

• Rocky Ridge Reserve
• Orchard Potluck: Saison — Gold Rush apple juice with Saison yeast
• Smoked Winesap

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:

1. 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 2^nd batch in two years of our smoked cider.
2.  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.
3. 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.
4. Isley Brewing Co, made “Apple Brown Betty”, the return of our 2014 collaboration – an English brown ale fermented with Grimes Golden juice.
5. 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.
6. 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.

The collaborations will be tapped at the following times:

1PM — Reservoir Distillery

2PM — Ardent Craft Ales

3PM — Black Heath Meadery
4PM — The Veil Brewing Co.

5PM — Three Notch’d Brewing Company RVA Collab House

6PM — Isley Brewing Company

Head over to the Facebook event for more details and updates on Blue Bee’s Grand Opening Weekend.

Blue Bee Cider
1320 Summit Avenue
Richmond, VA