Beer Drinking

February 20, 2012 2:00 AM

Portsmouth has a rich history of brewing beer that dates back to Frank Jones in the mid-1800s, and a mix of modern-day brewers has reinvented the tradition, putting the Seacoast and state back on the map in this industry.

For example, the Portsmouth Brewery is about to release its latest batch of Kate the Great, a Russian imperial stout, that is fast becoming world renowned. The Redhook Ale Brewery is a craft brewer already with a national profile, and it brews many of its beloved beers right here in Portsmouth.

The business leaders who brought these breweries to the city were visionary entrepreneurs out in front of the craze for craft and micro-brews. At no point was it easy for them to break into the market and grow while facing corporate beers that have the advantage of huge advertising campaigns.

We recently learned small brewers in New Hampshire face a series of laws that make continued success and growth all the more difficult. Some of them were called “just silly” by Redhook brewer Andy Schwartz, who spoke to about a dozen New Hampshire legislators at an event at Redhook on Feb. 11.

“There are going to be some things that we could use your help with,” Schwartz told the assembled legislators.

The fact that Redhook hosted a contingent of lawmakers at the brewery was a stroke of genius. The venue, which included tours of the operation, personalized their role in the industry and showed lawmakers just how serious the business of brewing is. Lawmakers also got a chance to sample the outstanding products.

It has been said that beer saved civilization, but on a more regional and economic level, lawmakers can seemingly take some small steps to help this industry grow. And its growth can mean more jobs, more tax revenue and more fairness. Already, the beer industry in New Hampshire is a $1.2 billion effort, which employs more than 5,000 people. Redhook recently invested $4 million in its Portsmouth brewery to increase production by 50 percent.

The brewers contend that New Hampshire regulates the beer industry more strictly than the federal government. The state doesn’t allow for higher alcohol use, which is rather outdated considering the rise in wine and liquor sales. But further, the state bans the use of unique ingredients, some as simple as sugar, fruits and spices. Redhook also reported it is mandated to use a cardboard cutout to hold every two 12-bottle packages created, per state regulations for transport, which costs 28 cents apiece.

It would seem these regulations are perhaps leftover from a time gone by, and while relaxing regulations isn’t as grand as a massive new tax revenue, it would help this industry continue to grow. The role of government regulation is more about painting with fine lines than with broad strokes, and listening to these industry leaders to reform regulations is a perfect example of that.

Rep. Fred Rice, R-Hampton, who attended the brew summit, said he was surprised he hadn’t heard of the issues before. And he said of possible reforms, “Some of these seem to be slam dunks.”

To that we say “Cheers.”

MARQUETTE — The Ore Dock Brewery is one step closer to opening after receiving some very important equipment on Thursday.

Workers unloaded the vats for storing and brewing beer down on Spring Street on Thursday afternoon.  The thousand pound vats had to be negotiated down a narrow alley in order to load them into the brewery.

Brewmaster Nick VanCourt is excited to use the new equipment to perfect his brews.

“We’re going to, sort of, do a mix of things and brew a whole bunch of recipes I have ready, but on top of that, of course, we’re going to do quite a bit of seasonal stuff and playing around and having fun,” said VanCourt.

VanCourt went on to say that he will also be able to make homemade wine and unique flavored beers as well.

The Ore Dock Brewery still has to have the equipment installed and inspected, but they are planning to be open sometime in April.

MARQUETTE — The Ore Dock Brewery is one step closer to opening after receiving some very important equipment on Thursday.

Workers unloaded the vats for storing and brewing beer down on Spring Street on Thursday afternoon.  The thousand pound vats had to be negotiated down a narrow alley in order to load them into the brewery.

Brewmaster Nick VanCourt is excited to use the new equipment to perfect his brews.

“We’re going to, sort of, do a mix of things and brew a whole bunch of recipes I have ready, but on top of that of course, we’re going to do quite a bit of seasonal stuff and playing around and having fun,” said VanCourt.

VanCourt went on to say that he will also be able to make homemade wine and unique flavored beers as well.

The Ore Dock Brewery still has to have the equipment installed and inspected, but they are planning to be open sometime in April.

It is called Senate Resolution 216 and it’s designed to look at the impact that brewers like Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, have on our state. That impact is huge and it’s growing.

Most people may not realize this, but at 1.5 million barrels a year, Pennsylvania produces more microbrews than any other state in the nation except for California. Plus, the two largest American-owned brewers, Yuengling and Samuel Adams are located in our state.

From glass, to grain, to yeast, to cardboard it’s a product that is built from the bottom up. The owner of ABC Brewing says 80 to 90 percent of their product comes from in-state. Resolution 216 is looking to tap into that aspect of the economy and help it grow.

So why does PA have good beer?
“The history and tradition of brewing in this state goes way back,” stated Artie Tafoya from ABC. “The quality of the water and the quality of brewers we have in this state. You look at the different small brewers, the craft brewers, and they’ve all been very successful.”

Brewing is not just about the products that goes into the beer, but also what comes out. At ABC, their waste product which is called “spent grain” is shipped to northern Dauphin County to feed cattle, again helping fuel the economy.

Brewing beer is, in theory, fairly simple. A small farmer can grow all the barley and the hops needed on a little plot of land—it’s easier to grow than corn. And a microbrewery can pump out a few humble barrels of finished beer in anything from a spare room to sprawling warehouse.

But a step in the middle can stand in the way. Malting the barley—soaking, drying and then heating the grains to turn their starches into simple sugar ready to ferment—is more complicated. In fact, it can be something of a bottleneck for brewers like Dustin Brau, CEO of Brau Brothers Brewery in tiny Lucan, Minnesota.

“There aren’t a lot of maltsters, so what you get is a lot of breweries buying from a relatively [small] number of maltsters worldwide,” he says.

That homogenizes the final product, which is not a compliment from a booster of microbrews. Malting also drives up the carbon footprint needed to make the beer—and the limited number of malt suppliers ramps up the price, with Brau estimating that about 75 percent of his costs come in shipping and processing malt.

But Brau hopes that his brewery will rely less on the malting process in the future. His company has completed the first test batch of malt-less beer to prove they don’t need a costly middle-man for a great tasting brew. The small batch of a few hundred cases of Bohemian Soup beer, an Eastern European-style pilsner, went on sale around Minnesota and at brewers’ conventions.

The secret to making the raw barley beer is an enzyme additive called Ondea Pro. Normally, brewers rely on malting to produce natural enzymes that help turn starch in the grain into sugar, which the yeast is then able to chomp on during the all-important fermentation process—when the beer becomes beer. Ondea Pro allows brewers to skip malting (and the expense and energy costs that come with it) to make beer with unmalted grains.

“Even for a very efficient malting process, brewing with unmalted barley reduced the overall carbon footprint of beer production by eight percent,” says Adam Monroe, President of Novozymes North America, the company that makes Ondea Pro. “We also documented a seven percent reduction in the amount of barley required to produce the same amount of beer, thereby improving land utilization and earnings.”

This isn’t going to close the hole in the ozone layer, but incremental efficiency should be recognized. The company estimates that if 10 percent of global beer production is converted to unmalted barley—a pie-in-the-sky dream at this point—the potential savings could equal more than 350,000 tons of CO2, about the same as taking 85,000 cars off the road.

For Brau, it’s less C02 savings than local flavor that drew him to drop the malting process.

“One thing that intrigued us about raw barley beer,” Braus says, was “being able to pull barely straight from field and cut out the middle man.”

Typically, farmers to sell barley en masse to a maltster, who refines the product and sells it to brewers. Instead, Brau wants to buy direct from the farmers, saving money, reducing shipping costs, and ideally finding a few new flavors in the process. Absent the homogenizing influence of bulk-bought barley and centralized malting, each region’s unique barley would increase the variety of beers available.

One obstacle standing in the way: The farmers near Brau Brewing don’t grow much barley now, so Brau is growing it himself right next door, enough for a few hundred barrels next growing season. His production capacity for Bohemian Soup is limited largely by the dearth of local grains.

 “We need to convince some local farmers to grow it, then we can expand,” he says.

That’s why he’s showing off his beer at brewing conventions and touting the process in the media. He needs other breweries to follow his lead and create enough demand that farmers have an incentive to switch from corn or other crops to beer grains. There’s a good financial reason for him to expect success.

“It could potentially make beer cheaper,” he says. Grain prices rose as much as thirty percent last year. “You’ve already seen [the price of beer] go up and you will probably see it going up even more.”

Brau makes a good case, pun intended.

Photo courtesy of Brau Brothers Brewing Company.

Andris Veidis never thought he’d end up brewing beer for a living. Though he experimented with homebrewing during his college years, the Canton resident entered the corporate world after earning a business degree from Northeastern in 1989.

But his market-research job just wasn’t for him, and he soon embarked on a series of beer-based jobs that started with an internship at Harpoon Brewery in South Boston. He honed his skills in a University of California-Davis brewing program, and spent about six years setting up brew pubs around the country for Diversified Metal Engineering, a Canadian manufacturer of brewing equipment.

Now Veidis, 45, is the CEO and brewmaster of Blue Hills Brewery, the Canton company he founded with four other partners in 2008. That ownership group includes his father, Mikelis, and 5-year-old son, Talis.

In 2011, the brewery’s third production year, Blue Hills nearly tripled its initial output of 650 barrels, and Veidis has plans for even more growth. He’s working with his landlord to expand the size of his brewery from 3,000 to 5,000 square feet, he said, and the company has its sights set on greater distribution in western Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Why has craft beer become so popular, especially in Massachusetts?

In the ’90s … any home brewer who thought he could pick up enough money, and he thought he had a great recipe, would open up a brew pub or a brewery. … But all of a sudden it thinned out, and there was a glut of used equipment on the market. And then (in the) early 2000s, it started back on the upswing again.

And why, currently, we’re enjoying it? Again, it’s all a lot of market forces. It can be tied to 2008, when we started. The big bank crisis, or whatever you call that, the crash. And then people seeing that Miller and Coors are in cahoots, and they’re owned by the same company that owns … Molson, and they’re owned by (London-based) SABMiller, South African Breweries. … It’s a global company. (A few) years ago, Budweiser was bought by InBev, a European company. It’s a combination of going anti-big companies, and then seeing that actually those big companies aren’t even American-owned anymore.

Even though it’s still made in the same plants in the U.S., but people were just like, “You’re owned by a bunch of Europeans” or whatever. When Uncle Fred (has) been drinking Budweiser since forever, and now he’s like, “This is owned by some crazy company over in Holland or something? Get out of here!” So they stop drinking it.

But (it’s) between that and, I think, the general education of the populace. … You’re going to pay more than Bud, but hell – you go out to liquor stores, a six-pack of Bud in bottles, in longnecks, is anywhere from $6 to $7.50 or $8.

And most craft brews – I know ours is targeted to be under $10, and (at) some places it’s right around $8. … If you’re looking at regular, old Budweiser, or you’re looking at a full-flavored Sam Adams or Blue Hills, or whoever it is – a craft beer – people will be like, “I’ll throw down the extra buck to get a beer with full body, full flavor.”

What’s your geographic footprint now, and where are you looking to expand?

Our strongest market is Boston and the South Shore. Last summer, we did a pretty good job down on Cape Cod and on the South Coast, which we’ve kept up and we hope to … double, triple that amount from last year.

And where we want to go? We just signed with a distributor up on the North Shore, Merrimack Valley Distribution (in Danvers), for the North Shore to handle our product. And we will be looking into a distributor to do work out (in) western Mass. for us. Right now, we are self-distributed, which means I own the van. The driver works for me. We distribute our product, except for, like I said, Merrimack Valley. So they come down once a month with their truck, pick up whatever they order, and they distribute it up there in that territory.

Why go with distributors?

We’ve grown considerably in the first three years. We’ve already got accounts out in Springfield, Worcester, Greenfield. Up in that area, there’s some big liquor stores, some big outlets. But basically, we just tell them … “Because of the trip and everything, we request that your minimum order be around $500.” They’ve got no problem doing that, and they understand, because we’re just like, “We’re only going out there once a month, out to Springfield.”

To send the truck out there with three tickets on it, each with, like, $200 worth of beer – so you’re sending out $600 worth of beer – forget about what the profit margin might be on it. Just the cost of the driver and the diesel going out there – that’s half my profits, or a third, or more than half. I don’t know, but that’s a lot compared to when he goes out in Boston, or the South Shore down here.

He’s gone out with as much as $5,500 worth of beer on the truck one day, and he has to come back – because it’s so loaded up, he has to come back and reload. Now that’s a good day. Sending $600 out to Springfield – I’m not so excited about that.

Do you mostly sell to bars or liquor stores?

At last check, it usually hovers around 60-40: 60 percent retail, 40 percent on-premises (40 percent bars, restaurants).

How much of the beer is brewed in Canton?

We brew about 70 percent of the beer here. We brew all the beer that we have in 22 (ounce bottles) and in growlers, those big half-gallon jugs … and kegs. The only thing that is brewed off-site, which is called contract brewing, is our six-packs – the IPA and the Black Hops, and those are brewed at Mercury Brewing up in Ipswich.

Alex Spanko may be reached at aspanko@ledger.com.

Vermont Pub and Brewery owner Steve Polewacyk easily remembers when Burlington wasn’t a haven for specialty beers.

“In 1988 no one understood what craft beer was,” he said last week.

But Polewacyk and his friend, business partner and pioneering craft brewer Greg Noonan did understand — and the duo believed in Burlington’s potential to support a local brewery.

“We were the original brewers, with me assisting Greg. But no one knew what it was all about back then. We made the beer and we had to educate the bartenders and the servers about what was involved, and then they educated the customers,” Polewacyk said.

And as their customers learned what they liked, business grew, and those loyal drinkers educated the establishment, too.

“Eventually we had created a problem by developing so many beers with mainstream appeal.”

Their relatively small space didn’t allow them to stock the many flavors that had developed loyal fans, so they cut back — or tried to.

“We took Dogbite Bitter off the menu,” he said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe how people acted and how mad they were. What could we do? It went back on.” (It remains on the menu today.)

But Polewacyk remembers that Noonan wasn’t content to just produce good, small-batch beers that had a popular following.

“In 2007 Greg stepped things out of the box again … He made things like Blue Nile beer with actual lotus flowers and the ‘spicy and floral’ Ambergris.”

But in 2009, while working on a research project about Irish history — one of many pet projects that kept his attention while he wasn’t in the brewery — Noonan told his partner that he had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. He died in October of that year.

“We had been friends for 41 years, and business partners for 21 of them. All of a sudden I had lost my best friend, and I had to do everything I had been doing, plus everything he had been doing too. We had 60 employees, all impacted by losing him,” Polewacyk recalls. “It took nine months for all of us to turn the corner, just to keep things at a status quo.”

(Page 2 of 2)

But the business has gone on to find new ways to satisfy Vermont’s locals and visitors, and to keep themselves and their customers engaged, too. It has started “Experimental Mondays” where the staff and guest brewers create small batches of whatever suits their fancy, with flavors like Lake Champlain Chocolatestout(which took three tries to get just right), Blueberry Muffin Hefeweisen, and Peppermint Blonde. They’ve had such success (and, he admits, lots of fun) with the interesting flavors, and with reaching out to other brewers and businesses as partners, that they’ve bought a special “pilot brewery,” a small-batch brewing apparatus that they’ve nicknamed “Amelia” (as in Earhart) to give them additional space to keep it going.

And their new flavors are attracting some serious attention in the world of beer. Vermont Pub and Brewery won three medals at the January 2012 World Championship of Beer in Chicago, a silver medal for its Chocolate Doctor Milk Stout (the top score in that category), and a bronze each for Noonan’s Strong Ale and Vermont Smoked Porter.

In February, the brewers are welcoming in local female brewers to add their creations to the Experimental Mondays line up. Look for a Snow Helles by Vermont Pub and Brewery staffer Tara Vasi, an Almond Milk Porter by Lindsay Jaworek, a Passionfruit Wit by Ruth Miller, and a Pre-Prohibition Lager by Anne Whyte of Vermont Homebrew Supply. In the spring and summer they’ll be introducing food pairings along with the new brews.

Polewacyk nods and smiles as he describes what’s ahead.

“We’ve been along that leading edge for 23 years, and we’re still there. I just go home and ask myself, ‘What would Greg do?’ I’m the gatekeeper of his legacy here now.”

By John Hutchinson

Last updated at 9:58 PM on 1st February 2012

Bargain: A pint of ale for 11p may sound good to many a drinker

An 1825 formula for brewing beer using treacle – which was lost for centuries but has been rediscovered among historic documents – could deliver ale at 11p a pint for drinkers.

But whilst people may take more than a little interest in such a cheap pint, they will have to stomach the strange ingredients.

The secret recipe was discovered in a notebook kept by 19th century handyman Thomas Denton who was determined not to pay pub prices for his favourite tipple of London Porter.

Ale enthusiasts aiming to follow the full instructions to produce 72 pints will also need to lay their hands on a nine gallon cask, a tub, and a sack.

East Riding of Yorkshire council bosses believe the stout – which Thomas promised would be just as potent as London Porter but cheaper – could enjoy a new lease of life as drinkers tighten their belts.

After adding a peck of barley, 4oz of hops, 7lbs of the special ingredient treacle and the boiling of several gallons of water, the home brewer is promised a strong dark beer as good as anything he could get in the pub.

The total cost for his 72 pints would have been a knockdown three shillings and three pence – about £8.05 in today’s money, or 11p a pint.

Top find: An 1825 formula for brewing beer from treacle was lost for centuries – but has just been rediscovered among a stack of legal documents

But Sam Bartle, collections officer for East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service, warned no one knows how strong it will be.

He added: ‘The instructions are quite simple but anyone wanting to try out the recipe would have to do so at their own risk.

‘Following the recipe would produce a huge amount of beer, 72 pints, and it actually recommends a nine gallon cask for brewing.

‘For it to be tried in most modern homes it would probably require some scaling down of the quantities.”

Thomas jotted down his ‘Recipe for Cheap Beer” over three pages in his small leather bound notebook.

Read this: The recipe was designed to save ale-drinkers a fortune on pub prices

The ale lover from Goole, East Yorkshire, was a jack of all trades, working as a plumber and joiner and selling ploughs to local farmers.

The recipe was in his book of accounts towards the back and ended up being deposited with his family records with a local solicitor.

When the solicitors had a clear-out all the papers were handed over to the council archives stored at The Treasure House, Beverley, East Yorkshire.

For years they sat in a section reserved for solicitors’ documents until the recipe was spotted while the stack of legal papers was being catalogued.

Experts say adding treacle as the special ingredient may have been to darken it or make it taste sweeter.

A council spokesman said: ‘In the current economic climate, people are always looking to find a cheap alternative to everyday things that are purchased.

‘Food and drink are two of the main sources of spending that have felt the squeeze in recent years, with beer amongst those expenses that most are trying to curb.

‘To cut spending whilst still enjoying the pleasures of life, many are abandoning the pub to drink beer in the home, but even this can be an expensive activity.

‘Hard-up beer drinkers needn’t despair though now that this alternative to buying branded beer has appeared in the most unlikely of places.’

Recipe for cheap beer (circa 1825)

Brew your own: The nineteenth century recipe was designed to help people save on pub prices of London Porter

Put one peck of barley or of oats into an oven just after baking, or into a frying pan first to steam off the moisture, and dry it well, but on no account to burn the grain then grind or bruise it roughly.

Boil two gallons of water and pour it into a tub and when it has stood 10 minutes (say a heat of 175 degrees, or so hot as to pain the finger sharply) put in the grain; mash it well, and let it stand three hours: then drain it off.

Boil two gallons more water, which power [pour] on the grains, rather hotter than before but not boiling, say 196 degrees, and mash them well and let it stand two hours and draw it off. Mash the grains again well with two gallons more water, and in 1 1/2 hours draw it off. The three worts will be about five gallons.

Then mix 7lbs of treacle in five gallons of water, and boil the whole 10 gallons with 4oz of Hopes for 1 1/2 hours, taking care to stir it so long as the Hops float off the top.

Let it cool and when about milk warm take a good teacupful of yeast; and stir it well together beginning with about a gallon of the wort at a time.

Let it ferment for 18 Hours in a tub covered with a sack: put it into a nine gallon cask and keep it well filled: bung it up in three days, and in 14 days it will be good sound fine beer equal to London Porter.

The nine gallons of beer thus brewed will cost as follows -

1 Peck of Barley 1s 3d
7lbs of Treacle 1s 9d
4oz of Hops 3d

Cost 3s 3d

If you cannot get Treacle take 5lbs of the cheapest and darkest sugar you can get; this is better for your purpose than finer

Mix 14lbs of Treacle and 11 gallons of water well together, and boil them for two hours with 6oz of hops.

When quite cool; add a teacupful of yeast and stir it well, by a gallon or two at a time;

Let it ferment for 16 hours in a tub covered with a sack: then put it into a nine gallon cask, and keep it well filled up.

Bung it down in two days – and in seven days it will be fit to drink; and will be stronger beer than London Porter.

This is the simplest as it requires no skill: a washing copper or tea kettle are the only requisites: and nine gallons of beer can be obtained at the following cost -

14lb of Treacle 3s 6d
6oz of Hopes 4d

Cost 3s 10d

Back Forty recently started brewing its beer in downtown Gadsden, one block off Broad Street, after contract brewing its beers at another facility for the past two years.

“Gadsden was always our first choice (and) we found this building at a pretty opportune time,” said Back Forty’s director of operations, Tripp Collins.

Back Forty hangs its hat on being an Alabama company producing an Alabama product. Its Gadsden location is important to founder Jason Wilson, who grew up in Southside, and the rest of the employees.

Wilson started the brewery in 2006, but it took until 2012 for its full vision to be realized.

“We have a lot of faith and belief in Gadsden as a whole,” Collins said. “We really think this town is moving in a positive direction, and we hope that we can shed some light on that . … There are lot of people that drive back and forth between Birmingham and Chattanooga, two really cool towns, and there’s a really cool one right in between.”

Collins described the process as “about nine months of literally blood sweat and tears.”

The five-person crew at Back Forty undertook a monumental task in transforming a historic building on North Sixth Street downtown, previously the Puckett building and also a Sears and Roebuck facility, into a modern craft beer production facility capable of making 3,000 barrels of beer a year, which is more than 90,000 gallons. “It’s been a pretty crazy two-and-half, almost three years, but we are finally where we thought we were going to be,” Collins said.

Back Forty’s expansion into its own facility has allowed brew master Jamie Ray to double the number of beers in the company’s line. New additions Kudzu Porter and Freckle Belly India Pale Ale join Naked Pig Pale Ale and Truck Stop Honey Brown Ale in the lineup. The new additions will be sure to interest beer connoisseurs as they are bigger, bolder, more flavorful, higher alcohol styles that allow brewers to showcase their talents.

Local production enables the best possible quality production and also the freshest beer to local craft beer drinkers. Back Forty’s newest facility addition, a taproom, will let fans get even closer to the beer. “People get to come in here, to see, taste, smell and feel what they drink at home, at the bar, at a restaurant,” Collins said. “It adds a whole new element to the experience, and that’s what it really is about.”

The taproom, which will open Feb. 4, will have limited hours, but will enable devotees to sample beers and even meet some of the people behind the ale.

“It’s not just drinking a beer at a bar, it’s being able to see the grains, smell the hops, meet the people behind the beer,” Collins said. “(You) see where the beer is being made and when you are sitting in the taproom, you are drinking the freshest beer available anywhere.”

In addition to brewing its beers, Back Forty is contract brewing beer with Old Black Bear Brewing Co. from Huntsville. “Contract brewing is a way for us to increase efficiency by being able to brew every day as opposed to crank everything up on Monday, shut it down and crank everything up on Wednesday,” Collins said.

In this parallel relationship, the Back Forty team is helping Old Black Bear begin production in a similar fashion to how Lazy Magnolia first helped the Gadsden brewery.

“It’s a way for us to give back the opportunity that was given to us,” Collins said. “We hope that anyone who comes in here, that we brew for, does just as well as we are able to do when we started out.”

While Back Forty hopes Gadsden residents will drink its locally produced product, its furthering a local mindset throughout its operations. Truck Stop Honey, the silver medal winning beer, uses regionally produced honey; spent grains from the brewing process are picked up by a local farmer for animal feed; and some seasonal beers in the planning stages likely will highlight local or regional products.

“Without saying too much, we’d like to be able to use some locally grown, Alabama products for that, maybe something from Chilton County,” Collins said. “We’re really excited and people will have to stay tuned to keep up with what’s going on.”

The beers

NAKED PIG PALE ALE: A basic American pale ale, lighter in color and body, it’s a little bit on the hoppier side. It still pales in comparison to its more powerful sibling, India Pale Ale. It was Back Forty’s first offering that debuted at the Magic City Beer Festival in 2009.

TRUCK STOP HONEY BROWN ALE: An English brown ale base with local wildflower honey to give it a sweeter smooth taste. Back Forty’s best seller. (Silver medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival.)

KUDZU PORTER: Porter is one of the oldest beer styles. A bit of a twist on the style, it’s a bit hoppier than most porters. It is dark and robust with caramel and toffee notes, with a bit of a hop character to it. One of Back Forty’s new releases, it is the darkest offering and one chock full of rich and complex flavors.

FRECKLE BELLY INDIA PALE ALE: The style that began as a method for preserving traditional British Pale Ales on the long journey to India this version is sure to appeal to the seasoned craft beer fan. Freckle Belly is Back Forty’s hop bomb with 6 different varieties of hops. At 7 percent alcohol by volume, it’s a stronger beer. Hop forward, it is full of citrusy, piney aromas, but is balanced with a solid malt backbone. It’s the Naked Pig stepped up about three times.