March Brewery Update

It’s a lovely rainy March day in Santa Cruz. We need a lot more of these! The brewery rolls onward. We’ll be getting more active again over the hill with a new Bay Area distributor starting (most likely) in April. There’ll be a big push into our old accounts and a new major retailer happening then. If you’re a buyer, keep an eye out for Mindful Distribution’s reps in the coming weeks.

The first local permit submittals for the tasting room happened two days ago. We have a plan set into the county’s Environmental Health Services for plan check and review. This also means that we have a final plan set for construction.

Fortunately while we’re waiting for that building permit to happen we’re not stalled out. The collection of redwood slabs we’ve collected is getting sanded down, revealing the grain so that we can select which pieces will be tables or bar top.

They're looking really lovely. This section is destined to be part of the bar.

We'll have a limited release of 60 cases of Tramp getting canned up this week, too. Our annual collaboration with High Water and Bison is tasting lovely with a few extra weeks of conditioning time. Look for those cans to start hitting local shelves, and maybe an appearance at the High Water taproom, starting next week.

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January 2016 update

Check it out! A brewery blog post! It’s been literally ages!  

We’ve been keeping busy heading into the start of 2016. The long-anticipated tasting room will finally, after eight years, be opening later this year.

 

The Oasis is a partnership between Uncommon Brewers and Santa Cruz’s favorite butcher shop, el Salchichiero. Their Matambre kitchen will be serving up sausages and other culinary delights behind our 34’ foot redwood bar.

 

While we don’t have a scheduled opening date for the tasting room, please join us for a preview event on the 29th of January on the deck at 415 River St in Santa Cruz from 4-8pm. There will be six of our beers on tap and freshly grilled sausages.

 

And as for what’ll be on tap, we have some some fun new beers coming out this week.

 

Our newest canned beer is the Japonica Pils. It’s a Czech-style pilsner brewed with ginger and fresh wasabi root. We hit a delicious balance between the pilsner malt body, grassy Bohemian hops, and the subtle mustard heat of wasabi on the finish. Look for it in local stores starting next week.

 

And with tomorrow marking the start to SF Beer Week, we’re happy to announce the release of this year’s collaboration with The Band of Gypsies. Our friends from High Water and Bison Brewing joined us for a redux of the 2014 Tramp. This year’s version is a Belgian-style Trippel like the original, but with double the dose of sticky ripe persimmons and a blend of macadamia and spring wildflower honeys for conditioning. It’ll be headed out on tap in Santa Cruz county starting next week.

 

Both of those beers will be available for sampling tomorrow at the SF Beer Week Opening Gala at Pier 35 in San Francisco, at our Oasis preview event on the 29th, and at the Twisted Tasting on January 30th.

 

Keep an eye out for more updates on our social media feeds @uncommonbeer

cheers!

Uncommon Brewers

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Naming the Tramp

We've had a few weeks to watch our massive collaboration beer develop. Naming is a difficult thing. It takes a certain type of prescience to look into the future of something and assign it a name, the right name. The consensus, weeks before this beer was brewed, was that it would be called The Belgian Tramp. We had no idea how accurate that name would become. This beer is a shameless floozy, brashly Belgian-inspired with bright phenols on the nose, deep fruit character on the body, and a surprisingly clean finish.

We'll be kegging her up on the 5th, just in time for SF Beer Week.

Two videos were shot the day of the brew.

Carlo at The Beer Channel put a mic in front of me and asked for details about The Tramp. The result is an exercise in... um... how to... uh... not speak... um... clearly. It gets better once the double shot of espresso kicked in later on during the interview.

It's possible to see a bit more of the brewers in attendance at Brewpublic, where Angelo did a nice job of catching the spirit of the day.

Look for Uncommon up at the Winter Beers Festival this Saturday up in Concord.

We have a batch of Scotty K NA in the baby brite, chilled down and waiting for lab results back on alcohol content. It's tasting lovely. If we hit our targets, it'll be the first official commercial release of that beer. Prepare yourselves for a non-alcoholic wee heavy.

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