It’s Thursday: huzzah! I’ll do my best to sound like Dan, but let’s face it: Dan’s the pro on that; I’m a rank amateur. Please bear with me… I just don’t have as much to say about halflings these days besides “Weren’t they just a way for Gary Gygax to get around the Tolkien estate and include hobbits as a PC race?” That’s what I always assumed.

As long as we’re on the topic, though, let’s start with the obvious- I am writing this week’s T.T. because Dan et familie have just +1’d. Congratulations, then, are on order for Dan, Elizabeth, Neil and Nora- the last of whom entered the world happy and healthy on Monday. Nora will be raised entirely on spent grain and beer, as are the children of brewers everywhere.

Has Landed

On to more beer-oriented announcements. First, as Dan mentioned last week: our new winter seasonal brew is out. The Soft Bulletin, a dark saison made with orange & tangerine peel, is available now at retail, and for Batch #1, only at retail. We wanted to give our growler-buying fans first dibs because we understand how quickly our debut beers can disappear and wanted to thank everyone who comes on down to 15 Lafayette Ave. Rest assured, we’re not done making this beer, and further brews of it will absolutely be hitting all your favorite on-premise locations. It has a wonderful nose–floral and a little citrusy–backed up by a wheaten base which includes a mere trace of roast, some chocolate notes, and a touch of biscuit. It’s an excellent choice for a dessert beer, would work great with a nutty, soft cheese, and no doubt would absolutely shine alongside a hearty stew or thick soup.

Speaking of retail, having been open Thu-Fri-Sat for a few months now we looked at the distribution of sales at different times–facilitated greatly by the Square register app’s awesome data-generating prowess–and determined that some of our retail hours aren’t really producing the returns we need to continue staffing them. For example, over 12 Saturdays, we have sold exactly 2 growlers between 10:00 and 11:00 am. So, maybe we can all sleep in just a bit! Similarly, Saturday between 7:00 and 8:00 hasn’t really been obviously worth staffing, either, based on sales. So! After this weekend, starting January 31st, our revised retail hours will be:

Thursday: 3:00-7:00

Friday: 3:00-8:00

Saturday: 11:00-7:00

We’ll keep on reminding you of this via all the usual channels, of course.

Did I say we had events on the horizon? No? Oh, well: We do! We’ve been selling De Maas to the Eagle House Tavern in Williamsville since late October, but we’ve only just now gotten around to planing an event there. If you’ve never been, you should know that this is one historic joint– they were established in 1827, so they know a few things about food and drink, clearly. We’re pretty stoked, therefore, to be on tap there. Please feel very much invited to join Rudy and Ethan there on Tuesday, January 29th (there = 5578 Main Street, parking in the rear). There’ll be specially prepared appetizers meant to pair with the beer, pint specials and of course we’ll bring some swag to give away as well. Oh, and remember how I said there’s not going to be any Soft Bulletin outside of retail until the next batch? Well, a rule is only as good as there are exceptions to it in our eyes: we’ll also be bringing a keg of the dark saison with us. Hope to see you there!

A final note for this Thursday… Rudy’s brewing The Whale today, but all the while he’s also been playing with our awesome brite tanks, which are completely ready-to-go now and simply need to be fully understood. Yesterday, Rudy filled them with water and switched on the glycol so we could figure out about how long it will take for them to get 3bbls of beer down to a good carbonating temperature, like 32 degrees. Turns out the answer is about 6 hours! Today’s lesson is carbonating: drop in for retail today and we’ll treat you to some fizzy water, perhaps. As soon as we feel like we won’t waste a precious batch of beer in them, we’ll add their capacity into the production schedule and not long thereafter… more beer! Who doesn’t want more beer? I know we do, and I bet you do, too. We aim to please!

Till next week, then: cheers!