Archive: Month: November 2015

The first Roasted Coffee Ale can off the line at the Ball facility in Indiana

As you can see above, we now have Roasted Coffee Ale cans! They were printed on Tuesday at the Ball facility in Monticello Indiana, and will be arriving in Minnesota on Wednesday morning, along with a shipment of Pyro cans. We will start canning Roasted next week, with it hopefully hitting stores, restaurants and bars soon after.

Ask the Brewer

We took the time to ask ourselves what we, as a business, are thankful for, and this is what we came up with!

First and foremost, we are thankful for our customers. The comments we receive, through our distributors, liquor buyers, store owners, and directly on social media or in person make our endeavors worthwhile. Every time someone says “Wow! This is really good beer, and gluten-free too?” we smile inside. Every time we hear of someone getting to have a beer with friends after years of drinking wine or cider, we get warm fuzzies. Each e-mail, tweet or post we get asking where can I buy your beer, I live in (pick a state), we are thrilled, and wish we could expand as fast as people are hearing about us. All of you have made our deciding to leap from home brewers to professional brewers worthwhile, and we thank you!

We are thankful for the retail establishments that carry our beer. Whether you have it in cans or on tap, are a restaurant, a bar, a pub or a liquor store, you carry our beer, and work to promote it. Without your support and assistance, we wouldn’t have grown nearly so fast, reaching so many people. Every time you recommend our beer to those who are looking for a local or Midwestern brew, or something gluten-free, you help people to discover us. We couldn’t do this without you, so, thank you!

We are also thankful for our distributors and our vendors. Without your support, things would be so much harder! You make helpful suggestions, you identify potential avenues of exploration, and you are tolerant of the vagaries and struggles of a start-up small business.  Your assistance and willingness to work with us has been invaluable, so we thank you, as well!

We hope that all of you have a lovely Thanksgiving, irregardless of how you celebrate it, and get some time to spend with friends and family, and the chance to reflect on all you have to be thankful for.

Taproom Tidings

This fourth weekend of November continues our tradition of food on Fridays, and hopefully Saturday. Unfortunately, the Crepe & Cake truck will not be joining us this weekend. Rusty Taco graciously agreed to step in at the last minute, and will be with us from 6 to 8 on Friday, and if they can make it work, Saturday as well. So, take a well deserved break from the Christmas shopping and stop in for a “brewers choice” beer and tacos!

With Thanksgiving happening on Thursday, we have changed our taproom hours for this week. We are open Wednesday from 4 to 8PM, closed Thursday (Thanksgiving), and then open Friday from 2PM until 10PM. Saturday and Sunday are back to the regular hours, with growler and grumbler fills available all of the days we are open.

• Thirsty Thursdays will be on hiatus this week due to the holiday, but we are extending the offer to this Wednesday with your chance for $1 off pints and $2 off growler fills (Remember, St. Paul doesn’t let us fill growlers after 8pm on Thursdays, so get here early)
• Tantalize your taste buds with our seasonal offering of Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes from Groundswell. Pumpkin cake with cheesecake filling and cinnamon whipped cream
• Tap selection includes Pyro APA, Roasted Coffee Ale, Fused Orange Blossom Honey, Cranberry Shandy and Raj-Agni IPA, with the “brewer’s choice” of a Minnesota Mild getting tapped on Friday.

Final Thoughts

Forget the Mall. The best way to spend Black Friday is with great friends and your favorite craft brews at the Harley-Davidson Museum^® in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From 4 to 7PM the Black Friday Beer Fest will sample a variety of beers from IPAs to ciders from many of the Midwest’s best craft breweries, including Burning Brothers. We hope to see you there!

As always, if you have questions, drop us a note via Email, Facebook, Pensieve, Twitter or Google+.

Cheers!

Dane dumping beer in the early days of recipe development

Locations in South Dakota and Wisconsin have started ordering kegs so they can offer Burning Brothers beer on tap. As always, you can check the “Find” link on our website to see where our beer is – The red beer stein icon is for locations with taps. Prost!

Ask the Brewer

Does every batch of beer turn out the way you want it to?

The short answer to this question is no. However, sometimes the way a beer turns out is an unexpected surprise, other times it is a huge disappointment. There are also times when you are brewing a tried and true recipe, and it just doesn’t work. Whether you are developing a new recipe, or working with one you’ve used before, there are enough variables in brewing that each batch is it’s own creation.

When creating a new recipe, you have many options in the grains, hop varieties, and flavorings that you can use. You can also vary boil times and the timing of various ingredients additions. On top of that, you can use any one of many different strains of yeast, depending on what you are creating. With all of theses different factors, you can end up with something very different from what you were trying to create, yet still delicious, something that is right on the mark, or something that is completely undrinkable – see the picture above! When the beer is undrinkable, it is always a little heartbreaking.

When you are working with a tried and true recipe, even in a commercial brewery, you can have things go wrong that cause the beer to go off. If there is an equipment malfunction, such as a chiller blockage or a fermenter thermostat failure, you can have beer that is left too hot for too long after the brewing process, or fermented at the wrong temperature, either impeding or accelerating fermentation, sometimes with poor results. Yeast, as a living organism, can be very particular about the temperatures it performs best at. While the large breweries can do much more than home brewers can to control the environment the beer is in, and replicate successful recipes exactly, there are still times when things go wrong. In those instances, the brewers grit their teeth, and send barrels of beer down the drain.

With all of this being said, we are sad to say that the initial fresh-hopped IPA made for the brewer’s choice offerings has gone to the beer trolls that live in the trench drains. While they were very happy about it, the rest of us wept a little. We have now recovered from that disappointment though, and are ready to try again.

Taproom Tidings

This third weekend of November continues our tradition of food on Fridays and Saturdays. The fine folks with the Tatanka Truck, winner of Outstanding Food Truck at this years Charlie Awards will be here on Friday. Saturday brings us something new with the arrival of the Signature on Wheels truck, bringing locally inspired chef favorites to our taproom.

The taproom is open its regular hours all weekend with growler and grumbler fills available all of the days we are open.

• Thirsty Thursdays is your chance for $1 off pints and $2 off growler fills (Remember, St. Paul doesn’t let us fill growlers after 8pm on Thursdays, so get here early)
• Tantalize your taste buds with our seasonal offering of Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes from Groundswell. Pumpkin cake with cheesecake filling and cinnamon whipped cream
• Tap selection includes Pyro APA, Roasted Coffee Ale, Fused Orange Blossom Honey, Cranberry Shandy and Raj-Agni IPA

Final Thoughts

Join us and sample the best that Minnesota’s local brewers and winemakers have to offer at “Raise a Glass – A Toast to PACER,” a beer and wine tasting event this Friday, Nov. 20, at 6 pm at Muse Event Center, located at 107 3rd Ave N, in Minneapolis.

As always, if you have questions, drop us a note via Email, Facebook, Language of Flavor, Twitter or Google+.

Cheers!

Humulus Lupulus (AKA Hops!)

This week we saw two loads of kegged beer head out the brewery doors! One batch is destined for South Dakota and the other for Wisconsin. Now you will be able to get Burning Brothers beer on tap in states besides Minnesota. Prost!

Ask the Brewer

Are hops used for anything besides beer?

While the first documented use of hops in beer dates back to the 9th century, hops actually have a long history of being used for a variety of reasons with some references going as far back as Roman times (Pliny the Elder in 23-79 AD). At that time, hops grew wild and the fresh spring shoots would be consumed much the same way we eat asparagus today. By the 14th century, hops were regularly being used in the Netherlands for ales.

Medicinally, hops have historically been known to help with both stomach issues and to address trouble sleeping. Today, they are also being investigated for their antibacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-cancer properties.

• The oils that make hops bitter also make them an effective tonic for stomach issues as they help to improve appetite and cure indigestion.
• Since hops are a member of the Cannabaceae family, it should also come as no surprise that they can have a sedative effect. In fact, they are often found in sleep aids along with Valerian, another herb known to promote the Z’s.
• The antibacterial and anti-fungal properties in hops are due to the bitter acids contained within the flowers. India Pale Ales came about because English brewers needed to add extra hops to the beer being shipped to India during the late 1800’s. Without the additional hops, the beer would spoil before reaching it’s final destination.
• Hops bittering agents are also being evaluated as a cancer preventative with initial research indicating that they can reduce the size and number of some cancerous lesions.

And here we thought that hops in beer was just an indulgence!

Taproom Tidings

This second weekend of November continues our new tradition of food on Saturdays. The fine folks with the Tatanka Truck will be here on both Friday and Saturday, as well as the following Friday (11/20) slinging their Native American deliciousness. The Saturday following (11/21) brings us something new with the arrival of the Signature on Wheels truck bringing locally inspired chef favorites to this taproom.

The taproom is open its regular hours all weekend with growler and grumbler fills available all of the days we are open.

• Thirsty Thursdays is your chance for $1 off pints and $2 off growler fills (Remember, St. Paul doesn’t let us fill growlers after 8pm on Thursdays, so get here early)
• Tantalize your taste buds with our seasonal offering of Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes from Groundswell. Pumpkin cake with cheesecake filling and cinnamon whipped cream
• Tap selection includes Pyro APA, Roasted Coffee Ale, Fused Orange Blossom Honey, Cranberry Shandy and Raj-Agni IPA

Final Thoughts

For those of you who don’t fear the winter (and love good beer), the tickets for the Winter Beer Dabbler have just gone on sale. This is by far our favorite beer festival but isn’t for the faint of heart (you try keeping the beer flowing when it’s below zero!). February 6th from 3:30 – 7:30pm at the MN State Fairgrounds, it includes samples from 120+ local, regional, and national craft breweries, live music, and fun winter activities. You can find tickets at the Beer Dabbler website.

As always, if you have questions, drop us a note via Email, Facebook, Genome Sequencing, Twitter or Google+.

Cheers!

Beer moves that can land you in the clinker?

We have received our can proofs for both the re-work on the Pyro cans (updated logo and such) and the initial run of Roasted cans. Next steps in the process are the creation of the printing plates and then the scheduling of our can production run at the Ball manufacturing facility in Monticello, Indiana. Needless to say, we are eager to keep the ball rolling!

We are also happy to announce that the TTB approved our formula for Roasted and Raj-Agni, so that means we can sell them across state lines. That means Coffee ale and IPA will be available for all the states we are distributed in!

Ask the Brewer

So, some beer laws are a bit strange, what are some of the weirdest?

We were able to find some pretty odd beer laws, most are courtesy of the Thrillist Food & Drink website. While their list is comprehensive towards all forms of alcohol, we chose to focus on the beer related laws (because…. BEER!).

In Oklahoma, beer that is more than 4% alcohol cannot be sold chilled. It has to be sold at room temperature. While this may be a great serving temperature for some beer, it’s not so great for the shelf life of many others. In particular, craft beer, which in most cases is unpasteurized.

In Georgia, individual cities get to set their own open container laws (say what?!). So, while you can drink publicly in Georgia, any slurring, stumbling or other inebriated behavior could land you in the clinker.

Texans are only allowed to have three sips of beer if they are drinking while standing. If they actually want to finish the beer, they have to sit down.

In Alaska, it is illegal to give beer to a moose (“Hey Rocky, pass me a Pyro…”). This actually makes a person wonder what happened, that a law like this had to be put on the books!

And, in Colorado, you can’t drink and ride a horse, or drink while riding a horse. It seems a horse is still considered a vehicle in Colorado, making you subject to DUI laws if caught.

Taproom Tidings

The taproom is open its regular hours all weekend. Growler and grumbler fills available all of the days we are open.

This first weekend of November also starts our food on Saturdays!  Rusty Taco this weekend, Tatanka next weekend.

Other highlights include:

• Thirsty Thursdays is your chance for $1 off pints and $2 off growler fills (Remember, St. Paul doesn’t let us fill growlers after 8pm on Thursdays, so get here early)
• Food on Fridays (FoF) brings us delicious tacos. Rusty Taco is back with their mouth-watering selection of tacos, on both Friday and Saturday!
• You can also tantalize your taste buds with Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes from Groundswell. Pumpkin cake with cheesecake filling and cinnamon whipped cream
• Tap selection includes Pyro APA, Roasted Coffee Ale, Fused Orange Blossom Honey, Cranberry Shandy and Raj-Agni IPA

Final Thoughts

If you did not get a chance to see it, the Pioneer Press put out a premium section on October 22nd celebrating St. Paul’s history with beer. This publication is exhaustive and entertaining, so if you get a chance, check it out!

As always, if you have questions, drop us a note via Email, Facebook, Dead Languages, Twitter or Google+.

Cheers!