Good Beer News From East End Brewing

Happy November GOOD BEER Fans!

Welcome to the latest, and rather late edition of the GOOD BEER News. This month, we’re coming to you live from our newly constructed Completely Ridiculous Artwork Production facilities (aka C.R.A.P.) at East End Brewing, where our crack squad of label writers are busy working night and day, churning out a continuous stream of possible new keg labels for our Coffee Porter.

Dealing with C.R.A.P. like this has all but taken over my days here, leaving little focus for beer making. But it’s important work. Because we still hope that one day, the Federal Authorities will smile down on us, and tell us that we’ve got just the right name for our Coffee Porter, so that you consumers out there will be protected from the likes of me. …And we can leave all this C.R.A.P. behind and get back to brewing some GOOD BEER.

We’ll get to the dazzling conclusion of our ongoing action-adventure/ comedy-drama/farce entitled, “Adventures in Labeling”, and the rest of the GOOD BEER News in just a bit. But first, we have a very special keg return to tell you about – and it’s coming up soon!

THE END OF PEDAL PALE ALE 2009:
By now, you’ve probably heard about the way we like to roll out (ahem) our Summer Seasonal, Pedal Pale Ale each Spring. Namely – by bicycle, and this past summer 500 of you managed to play a part in our delivery ride, pulling 3 half barrels from the Brewery over to the S. Side’s Over The Bar Bicycle Cafe (OTB). Well, now that Summer is clearly gone (I think?) and the last stores of Pedal Pale Ale are starting to dwindle, I’ve decided that we’re going to send it off in style this year – with another bike ride of course!

REVERSE KEG RIDE – SATURDAY NOV 21st:
“This ride is so much fun – You really need to do this more than once a year!” If I had a beer for every time I heard that after the last keg ride…well I’d have a lot of beer. And you know what? I actually do have a lot of beer, so you know I’m not lying.

Since we’ve already delivered the beer, we’ve got something slightly different in mind for this ride: We’ll start right where we left off last time, at OTB on E. Carson St. and follow the EMPTY kegs back home to East End Brewing, officially closing out Pedal Pale Ale season for the year. At the same time, we’ll reluctantly welcome winter’s chill with the official debut of this year’s first batch of Snow Melt Winter Ale! (Yea, I know Fall usually replaces Summer, but we all know that Harvest is still in the mix, and that we run our seasonal beers for 2 seasons around here. So don’t start getting picky with me now, or so help me, I’ll turn this tandem around RIGHT NOW and you can just walk the rest of the…. a-hem.)

So, like the “Regular Keg Ride”, the “Reverse Keg Ride” will be a slow, meandering tour of the greater East End, partly on trails, partly on city streets, and hopefully not too much cooler than the Spring ride. When WE get to the brewery (no riding ahead folks!), we’ll put the empties up on keg washer, and tap a fresh FULL keg of Snow Melt Winter Ale. And the first round is on me! Actually, it’s the ONLY round since we still can’t sell pints. But you can always get a Growler of it to go.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT THIS TIME?
Aside from the directional changes, and cooler weather, and the release of a different beer, there’s one more BIG difference. We’re not just doing it for the beer this time. We’re doing it for charity. We’re asking for a donation of $5-10 per rider, and all the proceeds will be split evenly between our two charities: Bike-Pgh – working to make our streets more bike friendly every day, and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank – working to put food on the tables of people who need it the most!

And the best part is that since this is an all-volunteer run event, there’s ZERO overhead and administrative costs to deduct, so everything we raise flows straight through to these worthwhile organizations.

So I hope you’ll join us. It’s a great way to help the city we live in be a better place, a great excuse to get out on your bike with some friends, and have a bit of fun at the same time. All of the details for the ride, and our list of Celebrity Keg Pullers can be found here, so spread the word, and be sure to bring a couple hundred GOOD FRIENDs along: http://www.eastendbrewing.com/node/733

And if you can’t join us, but would like to donate to these organizations directly, you can do that on their websites.
Bike-Pgh: http://bike-pgh.org/get_involved/become-a-member/
Pgh Food Bank: http://www.pittsburghfoodbank.org/donate/

FAT GARY GOES TO SCHOOL… BEER SCHOOL:
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is again showing how Trust-worthy they really are, this time with Beer Culture. Beer School is back, and the subject is “Session Ales”, one that’s near and dear to my heart. Tony “the beer man” Knipling and beerwriter Lew Bryson are our guest instructors, and Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale has just been added to the curriculum. (Maybe you didn’t know that Fat Gary was once a mere Session Ale, and the only beer from our Session Ale Series to make it to the big time and land a spot in our year-round lineup.) You can enroll in Beer School by going to: http://www.pgharts.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=19484

ADVENTURES IN LABELING…THE FINAL CHAPTER:
Bad news. I just got the word this morning as I write this, that we’ve gotten the green light on the label for our beer, formerly known as “Eye Opener Coffee Porter”. So we’ll be downsizing this entire C.R.A.P. facility, and my thanks go out to the entire staff (the old joke lives on!) who has been so diligently submitting labels for this beer only to have their hopes shattered with another refusal. Just look at this list, and some of the reasons for rejection:

• “Eye Opener Coffee Porter” (rejected: health related claim)
• “iOpener Coffee Porter” (apologies to Steve Jobs, rejected: health related claim)
• “This Beer Will Not Effect Your Eyes… Porter” (rejected: health related claim)
• “This is Not a Health Related Claim…Porter” (rejected: health related claim!!!)
• “Rachel Carson Coffee Porter” (rejected: unspecified reason)
• “Big Pour Porter”
• “Rejection Coffee Porter”
• “I Hope! Ender Coffee Porter” (get it? Eye Opener…I Hope Ender?)
• “Adventures in labeling coffee porter (rejected: unspecified reason. can’t take a joke?)
• “You’ve got to be kidding me coffee porter”

AND THE WINNER IS…
“Literally Just a Coffee Porter” finally made the cut, so we’ll leave it at that and quietly MOVE ON. You’ll probably never see the label on the keg anyway, but around here, if you call it by this or any other name – illegal or not, we’ll probably be able to figure out what you mean.

EXPANDED FRIDAY GROWLER HOURS COMING THIS MONTH!
Our Friday Growler Hours have steadily grown to be the second biggest beer day of the week around here, and we should have seen it coming all along. So in order to spread the crowd out a bit, and make those Friday afternoon/evening beer runs a little easier to hit, we’re DOUBLING our Friday Growler Hours, every single week, starting in a little over a week, and continuing on. So, starting on 11/20, we’ll be open every Friday from 4-8pm. That should make things easier, no?

GOOD BEER EVENTS:
11/14 – Hoyt Institute 3rd Annual Brew-Fest
11/20 – Extended Friday Growler Hours begin – 4-8pm every week
11/21 – REVERSE KEG RIDE/Snow Melt Winter Ale Debut
11/21 – Venture Outdoors Brewery Hike

HOLIDAY GROWLER HOURS:
11/25 Special Wed Night Thanksgiving Growler Hours 4-7pm
11/26 CLOSED for Thanksgiving Day
11/27 First day of Regular Extended Friday Growler Hours 4-8pm
12/23 Special Wed Night (Christmas Eve-Eve) Growler Hours 4-7pm
12/24 CLOSED for Christmas Eve
12/25 CLOSED for Christmas Day
12/26 Regular Saturday Growler Hours 12-5pm
12/31Special Extended (NYE) Thursday Growler Hours 4-7pm
1/1 CLOSED for New Year’s Day (Friday)
1/2 Regular Growler Hours resume, until about this time next year…

GOOD BEER IN THE NEWS:
I’ve been slacking when it comes to telling you about East End Brewing in the news lately, but it’s not because I don’t like the attention, or giving attention to those that give us attention. It’s just hard to keep track sometimes. Here’s a nice piece on Big Bottles from Joe Six Pack – who managed to get a hold of some Gratitude: http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/bottles-88043-beer-brown.html

GRATITUDE UPDATE:
Speaking of Gratitude, our primary stash of Gratitude 2008 has sold out, leaving only the 2007 model behind to hold us over. But the holdover shouldn’t be too long, as we’re bottling the 2009 stuff this weekend. With printing, labeling, waxing (blue this year), signing, and numbering to go, there’s actually a decent chance we’ll see the 2009 Gratitude on the bar in 2009! Will the wonders of beer never cease?

That’s all for this time – and this should be PLENTY. Watch our Twitter feed and www.EastEndBrewing.com for the latest on some of our upcoming releases that are still in the works – including among other things, a CIDER.

See you on the Reverse Keg Ride, in a little over a week!
—
Cheers,
Scott

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