In other news, our craft beer crowd in the southern end of the state may rejoice, because the first two pallets left the brewery en route to Beauchamp Distributing Co. yesterday. Look for cans of Twin, Golden, and Porter to start popping up on shelves in the Los Angeles area in the next few weeks.

We didn’t make it into the 3rd round of the Beer Madness bracket being hosted by the Washington Post, but can’t complain about losing to last year’s champion. We’ll be hoping to be back in the competition next year.

Cheers.

cheers,

It’s quite a list. We’re up against the Ommegang Three Philosophers in the first round. Keep your fingers crossed.

cheers,

It’s time to deliver on those promises. We just finished up 257 cases of Bacon Brown Ale, which will start shipping out of the brewery tomorrow morning. Expect sightings in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, as well as in our regular accounts around the SF Bay Area.

We’re quite delighted with this batch. The pork is smooth and subtle, as intended. This isn’t a pork fetish product. It’s just a tasty brown ale with a smooth bacon finish.

SF Beer Week just concluded. Many thanks to all those who hosted events, and to all those who came out and enjoyed the offerings. The festival season is just getting going, though. Look for Uncommon Brewers this weekend up in Sacramento at the Capital Beerfest taking place from 3-6:30pm at the Cal Expo center.

cheers

Two technical service calls later everything was back up and mostly running, and dragging on. The brite tank seemed bottomless. We kept going, on and on. In all of the rushing about fixing equipment none of us paid much attention to the unlikelihood of being able to fill a barrel of beer into cans every twelve minutes, but only seeing a quarter of a barrel drawn down on the brite tank gauge. It was like getting free beer. Sure we were running slower than we should have been, but it was beer from nowhere.

We finished up the planned pallet of cans, enough for the 25 barrels that we started with, but somehow still had 8 barrels registering in the seemingly bottomless brite tank. There was a few minutes pause to get another pallet got dragged downstairs and the rest of the canning line reset to keep going for another few hours. Everyone got to their places, the line started up, and shot nothing but air into the cans.

The sight gauge was only cracked open. The tank was emptied with five cans left from the first pallet. It hadn’t been registering accurately since sometime after lunch. Apparently there really is no such thing as free beer.

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In other news, uncommon beer drinkers out in New Jersey should start keeping an eye out on shelves, because Regal Wine and Beer Imports has started carrying us in the Garden State. The early buzz is that we’re a hit in Jersey.

Halfway back across the country, we’ll be entering the Chicago area market on February 6th when River North Sales and Service launches with cans and kegs of Siamese Twin Ale, Golden State Ale, and a little bit of Baltic Porter. Also keep an eye out for a few kegs of Bacon Brown Ale.

Oh yes, the Bacon Brown Ale. It’s finally going to be entering our regular lineup. The Bacon Brown cans arrived last week, along with a new label for the Siamese Twin Ale. We’ll start shipping the first 200 cases of Bacon Brown within the next 2-3 weeks.

If you’re up in the Boston area in early February, our Brewmaster will be bringing some fun new projects to share at the Extreme Beer Fest. Then it’s on to Chicago to help launch the Uncommon takeover of Chicago.

Still covered in beer…

cheers

A little closer to the horizon, anyone with the urge to visit Reno this weekend had better not pass up the 3rd Annual Canfest, Reno’s International Canned Beer Festival. It’ll be happening at the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino this coming Saturday the 12th of November. The VIP event starts at 5pm, and general admission an hour later at 6pm.

More equipment delays have us, once again, pushing back the release of our new can labels. Our head brewer doesn’t remember ever having a day of smashing mirrors while walking with black cats under ladders, but it’s getting harder to discount that one happened.

On the upside, we’re happy to announce that we’ve reached an agreement with Atlantic Importing Company to carry our beers in Massachusetts. The first cans of Siamese Twin Ale, Golden State Ale, and Baltic Porter should start turning up on store shelves later this month.

We’ll also be down at the San Jose Biocenter for a special event this coming Wednesday. Check out the link for a special event discount. Dr. Charlie Bamforth, the UC Davis God of All Beer Knowledge will be speaking… and we’ll be pouring our finest beers of course.

A lot of people have been in touch with us about the beer, asking where they can find it, and if we ship it out of state. We’ll be doing our best to get back to everyone who wrote, but in the meantime:

1. Yes, it does exist. Our Bacon Brown Ale is a CCOF Certified Organic beer that’s brewed with bacon and buckwheat.

2. For the near term the Bacon Brown is only available on draft at a few select locations in Santa Cruz, California. We’ll be brewing another batch in the coming weeks. Assuming that all the labels get through the approval process smoothly, there will be 16oz cans of Bacon Brown Ale joining the rest of our lineup before the end of the year.

3. Keep an eye out for our beers, and definitely ask for them if you don’t see them, in Whole Foods, BevMo, and other quality markets and liquor stores around the Bay Area. We’ll be starting up distribution in the Sacramento and I-80 corridor in the coming weeks. Further afield, it’s possible to find our beers in Oregon, Nevada, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. As soon as the Bacon Brown cans are finished we’ll be doing a big push with our distributors in those states to get it out in draft and onto store shelves.

cheers,
alec

A quick update: We have expanded distribution through Virginia. Talk to the fine folks at Hop and Vine if you’re looking for our beer outside of the Richmond area.

We’re doing great throughout Ohio, and just added Nevada to the list as well.

Local vidoegrapher Keith Wells just posted a short interview featuring our Head Brewer up on Vimeo.

We’re finishing up work on the new lineup of cans, featuring updated artwork for the current beers as well as adding three new labels to our retail selection. Yes, there will be Bacon Brown in cans coming soon.

There should be news about Northern Virginia in the coming weeks, and we’ve started the paperwork for Ohio.

The news about Northern California is even bigger. We’re delighted to announce that Geyser Beverage Company will be carrying our three flagship labels across a wide range of Northern California, from the coast to the Sierras, Central Valley, and greater Bay Area.

The brewery continues to be a work in progress. It’s a good week when only one piece of major equipment goes haywire. Thanks to a stuck solenoid valve there’ll be a limited supply of Siamese Twin Ale for the next few weeks while we resuscitate the poor cold yeast.

Regular fans of the beer may have noticed that we’re running a bit light (damn near flat) on carbonation. That’s thanks to a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum: beer not getting cold enough. A few modifications to the existing equipment should have our brite tanks down to proper temperatures in the next week or so. Fortunately the beer is still quite tasty. We hope that you’ll bear with us as we get though the unanticipated hurdles of growing a craft brewery.

May also marks the start of the summer festival season. We’ll be out on the road nearly every weekend until the end of August, bringing Uncommon beer to the thirsty public.

Some of our crew will be pouring up in Anderson Valley at their annual festival this coming Saturday. Our Head Brewer will meanwhile be exiled to Kahului for Maui Brewing’s annual festival on that same Saturday the 14th of May.

There will be a more detailed post about our American Craft Beer Week events coming soon. That week will finish up on the 21st with another double header, with a tap takeover here in Santa Cruz at Burger, and a return to the West Coast Beer Festival in Sacramento.