What’s Brewing Bergseth Bros.
Weekly Online Newsletter Vol.94
33 years ago, Jim Koch quit his desk job to follow his passion in brewing.
For those that have the guts, drive and perseverance to follow their own path, access to resources shouldn’t be what stands in the way. That’s why in 2008, we started our Brewing the American Dream program. The goal: Provide microloans, coaching, and other resources to people who are pursuing their unique craft.
The beers in our first ever Brewing the American Dream Variety Pack were brewed in collaboration with five rising-stars who participate in Brewing the American Dream. These breweries each have a story as unique as their beers, and we are excited to share them with you. We’ve also included Boston Lager, since this was the beer that started it all for us. And this beer doesn’t just taste good – it does good, too. All profits from the collaboration pack will be donated to program partner Accion to support future small business loans to food and beverage entrepreneurs across America.
Press Play Below – Brewing The American Dream
Boston Tea Party Saison
Brewed in collaboration with Jim Woods of Woods Beer Co.
from San Francisco, CA
Boston Tea Party Saison is a bi-coastal twist on the classic Belgian style, combining Woods’s yerba mate-infused saison with Sam Adams’ wild yeast blend, Kosmic Mother Funk. Mate’s earthy spice plays on the rippling, fruity haze of KMF’s funky bacteria, and gives a signature snap to the amber saison’s traditional dry finish.
ThreeNinety Bock
Brewed in collaboration with Chris Spinelli of Roc Brewing Co.
from Rochester, NY
ThreeNinety Bock is a slightly roasted Maibock with a sweet toffee and light caramel flavor, crafted from four hop varieties, combined with rye malt and oak smoked malt. Mosaic and Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops provide the balance that gives this dark golden bock a big, juicy character and slightly sweet and dry finish. ThreeNinety is a nod to the distance in miles between Boston and Rochester.
Time Hop Porter
Brewed in collaboration with Grant Fraley and Marta Jankowska of ChuckAlek Independent Brewers
from San Diego, CA
Driven by co-founders Grant Fraley and Marta Jankowska’s mission of creating “Old School Beers for New School Palates,” Time Hop Porter utilizes Zeus, Chinook, Cascade and Goldings hops and is 5.3% ABV. The hop character is balanced by three malt varieties: Sam Adams pale two-row blend, Crisp Brown, and Black malt. This porter has strong notes of citrus and pine that are balanced by a smooth, roasted malt character.
Oats McGoats
Brewed in collaboration with Rick Abitol of Brewery Rickoli
from Wheat Ridge, CO
Oats McGoats is an American stout brewed based on founder and brewer Rick Abitbol’s commitment to brewing full-flavored, gluten-reduced beers (if they didn’t say it, you wouldn’t know). At 6.5% ABV, the full-bodied, moderately carbonated beer is accented by earthy, spicy flavors and a hint of roasted coffee notes.
Desert Kaleidoscope
Brewed in Collaboration with Bosque Brewing
from Albuquerque, NM
Desert Kaleidoscope, pays homage to the Albuquerque balloon fiesta and features a mixture of flavors including citrus, tangerine, pine and honey malt to create a brew with a bold, hoppy aroma. With a 7.0% ABV, Desert Kaleidoscope is a deep amber, medium-bodied brew that leaves a clean touch of lingering bitterness on the palate.
Boston Lager
First Brewed by Jim Koch of Samuel Adams
from Boston, MA
Boston Lager is the original collaboration beer between Jim Koch and his father, using his great-great grandfather’s recipe – helping lead the American craft beer revolution and reviving a passion for full-flavored beer. Only the finest hand-selected ingredients are used to create this perfectly balanced and complex original brew, including two-row malted barley and Bavarian Noble hops. Boston Lager is full-flavored with a balance of malty sweetness contrasted by hop spiciness and a smooth finish.
What’s Brewing Bergseth Bros
Weekly Online Newsletter Vol.93
Tropically Hoppy. Light, yet Full-Bodied. Bright and Citrusy. Word.
The magical, mystical 12th of Never is a blend of Old and New School hops that play bright citrus, rich coconut, and papaya-esque flavors, all on a solid stage of English puffed wheat. Tropically hoppy. Light, yet full-bodied. Bright and citrusy. The 12th of Never Ale is everything we’ve learned about making hop-forward beer expressed in a moderate voice. Pale, cold, slightly alcoholic and bitter. It’s all we know.
These 12oz AND 19.2oz mini-kegs (AKA cans) are an exciting new option for us, and we are stoopid stoked at the opportunity for y’all to take us to all those new, nelophobic locations…
#Mouthfeels: 12th of Never
Lagunitas Lagunitas Can Can Dance Dance
CHEERS!
What’s Brewing Bergseth Bros.
Weekly Online Newsletter Vol.92
Some Great News from Brian Hoffman, VP of Sales & Co-Founder of Fulton Brewing Company:
Draft Magazine just published a list of their top 50 IPAs in America, and 300 was ranked as #20 in the country! The top 50 came from a total of 386 IPAs from all over the country, and “the IPAs were tasted blind (meaning the folks drinking them had no knowledge of what they were drinking) by our panel of judges, all of whom are either Certified Cicerones or Beer Judge Certification Program veterans with a certified, national or master ranking.”
One big takeaway for me from the article was: “According to market research group IRI, which tracks sales at grocery and convenience stores, sales of IPA have climbed from 8.9 percent of the total volume of Brewers Association-defined “craft” beer in 2011 to 25.2 percent in 2016. Get that? More than quarter of all the craft beer sold last year was IPA.” That means that for a segment of craft beer that makes up 25% of all craft sold, our IPA is better than all but 19, none of which are brewed/available in the Midwest.
“Ordinary guys (brewery owners) discussing Fulton’s 300 Mosaic IPA” on YouTube
Below is the full Draft Magazine Article and Fulton Brewing Company Excerpt:
The 50 best IPAs in America
We asked every brewer we know to send us their IPAs: 386 bottles, cans, crowlers and growlers later, we found our 50 favorites.
ZACH FOWLE , JUNE 27, 2017
http://draftmag.com/50-best-ipas-america/
CHEERS!
What’s Brewing Bergseth Bros.
Weekly Newsletter Vol.91
TOP 10 FACTS ABOUT JULY 4TH AND BEER
From the Founding Fathers to today, beer has a place in U.S. history and July 4th celebrations.
July 3, 2017
WASHINGTON – This year the 4th of July, a quintessentially American holiday, marks the United States’ 241st birthday. To help celebrate, the Beer Institute revealed its annual top 10 facts about July 4th, America’s founders and beer.
- In 1587, Virginia colonists used corn to brew the first recorded ale in the colony. Today, brewers use a number of grains to make beer, including barley, corn, millet, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat.
- The first shipment of beer arrived in the Virginia colony from England in 1607. Over 400 years later, Americans still love imported beer; in 2016, Americans consumed over 33 million barrels of beer imported to the United States from across the globe.
- Beer has been a job creator in the United States since its inception. In 1609, “Help Wanted” advertisements appeared in London seeking brewers for the Virginia colony. This tradition of beer being integral to America’s economy continues. The beer industry today supports more than 2.2 million jobs in the United States.
- George Washington not only drank beer himself and served it to his guests, but it was also one of the items provided for voters when he was a candidate for political office. It must have helped because when Washington was president he habitually “had a silver pint cup or mug of beer placed by his plate, which he drank while dining.”
- During his time in Philadelphia in 1774 to participate in the First Continental Congress, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, “I drink no Cyder [sic], but feast upon Phyladelphia [sic] Beer, and Porter.”
- Thomas Jefferson served beer during dinner at his Virginia estate, Monticello. Jefferson’s earliest designs for his plantation included spaces for brewing and the storage of beer. Today, there are 238 permitted breweries in Virginia, and Virginia’s beer industry contributes more than $9.35 billion annually to the state’s economy.
- During the Revolutionary War, beer was a part of soldiers’ daily lives. On June 10, 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Council set the daily ration for its troops in Boston to include one quart of good spruce or malt beer.
- In 1862, President Lincoln signed legislation to tax beer to help finance the government during the Civil War. That same year 37 civic-minded New York breweries formed the United States Brewers Association for “ensuring safe and prompt collection” of the federal excise tax on beer.
- According to WalletHub, Americans spent $1 billion on beer over the 4th of July weekend in 2015, making it is the most popular holiday for beer sales.
- Last year AAA projected nearly 43 million Americans traveled during the Independence Day Holiday.
“From being the beverage that John Adams wrote home about while he was at the Continental Congress to being on hand for picnics and barbecues, beer is a staple of both American history and our economy,” said Jim McGreevy, president and CEO of the Beer Institute. “Early colonists recruited brewers to come to the New World, and today the American beer industry creates over 2.2 million jobs. Many Americans will enjoy a beer as they join neighbors, family and friends to celebrate July 4th, and I hope people take time to enjoy the pride and tradition that goes into every pour of beer and choose to drink responsibly this holiday and every day of the year.”
Have a Safe and Memorable 4th of July!
CHEERS!
What’s Brewing Bergseth Bros.
Weekly Online Newsletter Vol.90
This week we are releasing an all-new Continental Pilsner, simply titled “PILS.” PILS will be available year-round on draft and in six packs of 12 oz bottles. Why a Pilsner? Simply put, most of us at the brewery love this style of beer. It’s usually the first beer we seek out when we visit a new town or another brewery. Whenever the ageless “desert island beer” conversation comes up, one Pilsner or another gets an impassioned debate. The only problem was, Fulton had never brewed a Pils. So, we set out to make a great one. Ours is built on a base of Minnesota-malted Rahr Pilsner. It features a smooth, well-rounded bitterness provided by German Perle, and a pleasantly floral aroma provided by the style’s hallmark Saaz hops. Pilsner yeast punctuates the beer with a beautifully clean finish. At 5.3% ABV and 30 IBU, this is a beer that leaves your senses wanting for nothing – except another.
It’s always exciting to add a new beer to our repertoire. In the 10 years since we started homebrewing in a one car South Minneapolis garage, we have come to appreciate and enjoy nearly every style of beer. To us, a large part of what drew us to homebrewing was the ability to create any beer, with our imaginations being pretty much the only limitation. As the number of styles and substyles of beer continues to grow and evolve, and the quality and diversity of ingredients available to brew with grows as well, the permutations and combinations of recipe possibilities approaches infinity—or at least a number way higher than we can count. But as a production brewery, the unfortunate reality is that there is a finite number of tap handles and shelf spots in the world; we can’t brew every beer we want, all the time.
So begins the long process of narrowing down the world of endless choice to perhaps a couple dozen beers that will appear in our lineup over the period of a year. Many are small releases of only a few hundred cases and a few dozen kegs. Some are draft only, and some never even make it out of our taproom. A handful make it into our year-round lineup. If you’ve ever drank a Fulton, you’d had one of these. For the first five years of Fulton’s existence, we had only two Core beers – Lonely Blonde and Sweet Child of Vine. We were unusual in that way; most breweries have four or five year-round beers the first day they open for business. We chose to do fewer because we believed investing our efforts in perfecting just a couple beers rather than a half dozen or more made long term sense, in terms of quality of beer and of building brand recognition. Meanwhile we quenched our fans’—and our own—thirst for variety by releasing a growing number of seasonals. First came Worthy Adversary, then Libertine. Later on, it was Expat, Randonneur, and many many more. In 2014, after years of it being a taproom favorite, we added The Ringer to our year-round lineup. Last year, we increased our Core lineup to 5 beers, with the addition of 300 IPA and Standard Lager. In total, we brewed about 25 beers in 2016, with 16 of those making it out in both draft and package formats.
So we have finally have a full calendar of year-round and seasonal beers, and it took just seven years to build. What to do now? Tear it up, of course! Well, not entirely…but substantially. In the name of creative destruction, we’ve re-worked much of our lineup this year. We’re introducing some all-new beers, making some familiar favorites into taproom exclusives, and even retiring a few.
That gets us back to where we started—brewing what we want, when we want. At any given moment, we generally have 20-24 beers available in the taproom. The lineup changes on an almost weekly basis. Keep an eye on the taproom page of our website; we keep the taps listed there as fresh as the beer. Of course you can always find our perennial favorites on tap, and every limited release visits the taproom as well. Drop by for a beer sometime soo, and meanwhile, pick up a six pack of Pils next time you’re in the liquor store – it just might become your desert island beer.
Please check with your Bergseth Bros. Representative on Availability and Pricing (Some products not available in certain markets)
CHEERS!