Craft Beer News Roundup: Stone, Nectar Ales, North Coast, Deschutes, Saint Arnold

Here’s an East of the Mississippi edition of Craft Beer News Roundup.

Expand your mind with tidbits on Stone Brewing, Nectar Ales, North Coast Brewing, Deschutes Brewery and Saint Arnold. Cheers, TFP

Stone Brewing – Through some handy detective work, I found out Stone has ran a test batch of Ruination IPA with (Double?) Dry Hopped Citra and Centennial off of their new 500 ml. bottling line. This product will be on the market once they perfect the creation of this product. Click here to see the picture of this.

Nectar Ales – The oft forgotten label of Firestone Walker, Nectar Ales will be releasing batch 3 of Black Xantus this September.  About a year ago, Nectar Ales created a new name and label for their Hemp Ale, calling it Humboldt Brown Ale. Here in California, you could buy the beer sporting either label. This change was because Nectar Ales wants to sell this beer in all their markets, and anticipated the TTB not approving a beer with the word Hemp on it. They were right, and were given the official word. It will be packaged as Humboldt Brown going forward.

North Coast Brewing – From an interview with North Coast’s Doug Moody via Intuit Small Business Blog – “We’ve had 20 percent-plus growth in each of the last three years and we’re up over 30 percent in the first five months of 2011.” ” Our next expansion phase, currently in progress, is the addition of two new 650-barrel fermenters, as well as upgrades on our bottling line, boiler, and a few cosmetic tweaks so we can resume public tours. The new fermenters will allow us to produce approximately 65,000 barrels annually. We have also recently acquired an additional off-site 2,500-square foot building that we’ll be using exclusively for our barrel aging. We hope to have two or three barrel-aged beers each year going forward.”

Deschutes Brewery – Deschutes has a few new beers in the pipeline: “Conflux #2 White I.P.A(22-oz bottles and draft) set for a July 18th release The second beer in Deschutes Brewery’s new collaboration beers, called the Conflux Series, this White I.P.A is a convergence of groundbreaking genius. Fortunately, for everyone with taste buds, two esteemed brewmasters –  Boulevard Brewing’s Steven Pauwels and Deschutes Brewery‘s Larry Sidor  – have pioneered a never-before-seen style with practiced composure and sure vision. Conflux #2, a true collaboration ale, pairs Boulevard’s Belgian and wheat expertise with Deschutes Brewery’s hop mastery. Both breweries will separately bottle and sell this beer in their respective territories.  Where territories overlap, a unique chance to sample both brews side by side will be possible, as slight differences in brewing locations and raw ingredients guarantee distinct experiences.

Fresh Hop Mirror Pond Bond Street Series (22-oz bottles and draft) set for an Oct- Dec release window. We love fresh Willamette Valley hops so much that we decided to go the extra mile for this beauty.  Goschie Farms is growing an acre of heirloom Cascade hops just for us so we can release this fresh hop version of our Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Base Camp for beer fanatics just got a little more interesting. “

Saint Arnold – “Ho! Ho! Ho! Monday we packaged a single batch of Christmas Ale. Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Have we already run through all of our Summer Pils and Oktoberfest? No! It’s time for Christmas in July. Yes, pull out that sweater with a reindeer, put some festive lights up in your house and celebrate the middle of summer with a tasty Saint Arnold Christmas Ale! Six packs will be showing up in select stores right after July 1. When it’s gone, it’s gone. A few pubs will be holding special events. We will TwitFace those dates and locations. So no, this is not leftover beer from last year.”