The Bruery Fruet Fourth Anniversary Ale – The Lowdown

The Bruery will be releasing Fruet, in honor of their 4th Anniversary next month.  Reserve Society 2012 get the first crack at purchasing this beer, but unlike the last 3 years, a drastic change has been made to the beer celebrating Orange County’s fastest rising craft brewery.

If you recall, at the Bruery’s 1 year mark, they released Papier, which was a monster Old Ale, partially blended with barrel aged Old Ale.  In addition to this, they offered a very limited run of 100% Barrel Aged variants of Papier, using Rye, Whiskey and Bourbon Whiskey Barrels.

For the Bruery’s 2nd and 3rd year anniversary, they released Coton and Cuir respectively, which were a continuation of the blending of fresh, aged and barrel aged Old Ale. These beers made it out of the brewery and into bottle distribution. Like the first year, The Bruery made a limited run of 100% Barrel Aged Old Ale, offering it largely to their reserve society, with a few bottles showing up at events and holiday sales.

When The Bruery announced the bottle sale of Fruet, the 4th Year Anniversary Ale, there was no mention of the tasty and sought after 100% Barrel Aged Old Ale.  Why? Because this is the first year The Bruery has had the capacity and resources to offer their Old Ale 100% barrel aged not only to the Reserve Society, but into distribution.  Here is the official word from The Bruery.

Fruet is 100% bourbon barrel aged.  That is the one and only version. It will hit limited distribution in bottles only, no draft (besides the anniversary events).

From here on out we plan on never releasing a partially barrel aged anniversary ale again and are hoping to accumulate some interesting barrels to do variations with it in the coming years, but for now it is all bourbon.