Brothers Craft Brewing Shares 2017 Outlook
(Harrisonburg, VA) – Ah, where has the time gone? Brothers Craft Brewing opened in December of 2012, we’re coming up on our four year anniversary, and we’ve worked through an incredible amount of hurdles and delivered some great beers. We know though that “perfection is a moving target” and true to that, we are always working towards that ultimate goal. 2016 saw a more stable production line-up of beers and some really interesting one-off hoppy (and not) releases. We switched our house yeast and have spent the year fine tuning how it behaves and learning just what we can make it do. The same yeast produced 2015 Resolute (and 2016) and Foreign Waters! We’ve been able tweak a bunch of our processes and are continuing to learn more from titans of the craft industry and our fellow local brewers.
What do we think we’ve gotten good at? Well, stouts and malty beers are our wheelhouse but we think we’ve put out some really good hoppy beers as well and want to continue growing both of those areas. We want to learn more about farmhouse style ales and really dig into the details of each and every recipe and process we have and see what we can improve.
As many of you know, we launched taproom only bottles in 2016, beers such as Cutting Teeth, Foreign Waters and Gaffer all hit the taproom in 12oz bottles. We do this because there is a great amount of versatility in the bottles and well, because we have a bottling line. We got many (MANY) complaints about no Drift cans though and to be completely honest, we missed them as well. Each of these items made us think about what we wanted to do in 2017 and we’ve really tried put a solid plan together thats going to excite the customer and deliver just incredible variety and quality beers to you all throughout the year. So, heres the plan…
In 2017 we’ll have our flagships; Great Outdoors, Lil’Hellion, Hoptimization and The Admiral. We’ll also still be releasing our Now and Agains; Elementary, Good AdWeiss, PilsNerd, and Fairgrounds Fall ale. Each of these brands will be available in draft options (1/6 and 1/2 BBL) and 12oz bottles. We have our 2017 Horizon beers which are going to keep us busy and are a look at what the brewery is working on. The big announcement and focus for 2017 variety is our Weekenders series. These will be predominately collaboration releases that will occur every 6-8(ish) weeks and feature a release event with a limited run of 16oz cans of two varieties that will correspond to Horizon releases. The great part for this is that you’ll be able to have some ultra rare beers from Horizon Society on draft for the release event and take home 4 packs of 16oz cans made in collaboration with some incredible breweries. So of course, whats that look like? Well, listed below is the tentative release dates, breweries, and if already decided, the styles of beers we’ll be brewing.
Weekend of January 23 – Ocelot Collaboration (IPA) / Brothers Craft Brewing (Coconut Stout)
Weekend of March 6 (Daylight Cravings release)- NODA Brewing Collaboration (IPA) / Crooked Run Collaboration (Cocktail inspired)
Weekend of April 3 – Heist Collaboration (DIPA with Citra/Mosaic/Galaxy) / J. Wakefield Brewing Collaboration (TBD)
Weekend of May 22 – Stone Brewing Collaboration (Rye IPA w/Simcoe and Amarillo) / Trophy Brewing Collaboration (Gose with Local fruit)
Weekend of June 26 – TBD (Hoppy) / Starr Hill Collaboration (Dry hopped Wit with fruit)
Weekend of August 7 – TBD Collab / Hardywood collaboration (TBD)
Weekend of September 11 – Aslin Collaboration (IPA) / Haw River Collaboration (Farmhouse ale)
Weekend of November 13 (Resolute weekend!) – The Answer Collaboration (IPA) / TBD Collaboration
Each collaboration will be packaged in 16oz cans limited volume (estimating starting around 50 cases per beer, can increase for following releases as needed) and sold only at the taproom. Limited volume may make its way into distribution but we’re unsure until after the first couple releases. For Horizon members, you’ll love this because we’re combining these releases with various Horizon releases throughout the year!
We hope you’ll take the time to make it up to visit us a couple times a year for releases and a celebration of collaboration with these great breweries and the people that worked hard to bring them to you. A portion of the proceeds from each release day will go to charity in addition to our normal charitable giving. For more information about our vision for 2017 for how we can impact our community, check out this page (Clicking Here).
