Portsmouth Beer Week 2013 Announcement

Many of you have been asking any special events we might have planned for Portsmouth Beer Week 2013. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, here's Head Brewer, Tyler Jones:

Do You Know Where Our Fish Comes From?

The fillets in our fish sandwiches are locally caught, harvested from sustainable fish stocks and incredibly tasty.  If you've eaten one in the last four months, you might enjoy learning a bit more about where it came from.  If you haven't, you might enjoy your next one a bit more after watching this video, which features our celebrity Executive Chef, Todd Sweet.

Thanks to Seaport Fish and New Hampshire Seafood!

Doing Good While Drinking Well with Portsmouth Brewery and 3S Artspace

As many of you know, we custom-print scratch tickets to manage our annual Kate the Great bottle distribution.  All of the proceeds from the ticket sales are donated to local non-profit organizations that are selected by our staff.  We think it's a great way to do some good for the local community.

We want to take a little bit of time to introduce the non-profits to you, one at a time, through the magic of video.  We'll begin the series with Christ Greiner of 3S Artspace. 

For those of you who were able to participate in the scratch tickets, we thank you for your part in "Doing Good While Drinking Well."  

If you didn't get any scratch tickets, you've still got a chance to serve the community.   We're hosting another blood drive, on May 11 at Middle Street Baptist Church in Portsmouth.  The same "Give a Pint, Get a Pint" promotion is in effect.  If you donate, you'll get a coupon for a free pint of beer on us (but in the interest of your health, you can't use it until May 12).

Also, every Tuesday is Community Pint Day at the Brewery. For each beer you buy, we donate 25¢ to a charity of your choice.  It’s easy - on your way out the door, just place the tokens you’ve received in the yellow wooden box mounted next to our front door.  We’ll take care of the rest!


See you at the pub!

11.11.11

Meet The Krempels Center

Our July 26th beer social features beers from five great breweries and delicious food from the kitchen of Chef Todd Sweet. The five breweries who's beers will be featured have also sent along their executive brewers, including Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione. Proceeds raised by all this star power, will be donated to the Krempels Center. We thought you might wnt to know a bit more about the reipeint of these much-needed funds, so we spoke with Carol Davis, Senior Program Director.

Something International is Brewing in the Pub!

Juergen Buhrmann, Plant Manager of Weyermann Malting Company in Bamberg, Germany, joined Tod and Tyler on June 8, 2011 to brew an all-German Oatmeal Stout. Oats aren't legal beer ingredients according to the Reinheitsgebot beer purity law, though Germany still has an old tradition of brewing with oats. Thankfully, raconteur and German beer expert Horst Dornbusch was on hand to drop some knowledge for you good people.

Look for this beer on tap in early July.

Brewer Roll Call!

Part of the numerology of our 20th Anniversary Beer was to have 20 brewers add 20 different hops during the two brew days. With some luck and proper planning, we had alumni brewers on the first day and current brewers from all over the world on the second one.

Needless to say, it was fun. Old friends who hadn't seen each other in years were able to reconnect. New contacts were made and a few beers were consumed. Frankly, I could do this every week.

We want to thank all of these brewers, past and present, for being a part of this landmark brew.

For you impatient folk, here's a list of names. It's convenient, but you'd really be better off watching them do what they do best--brewing beer.

1) Tod Mott- Portsmouth Brewery
2) Tyler Jones- Portsmouth Brewery
3) Tyson Demurs- Portsmouth Brewery
4) Peter Egelston- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Smuttynose Brewing Company/Northampton Brewery
5) Chuck Doughty- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Smuttynose
6) Paul Murphy- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Smuttynose
7) Sean Navish- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery
8) Keith Gosselin- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Smuttynose
9) JT Thompson- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Smuttynose
10) Charlie Ireland- Smuttynose
11) Chris Kluun- Smuttynose
12) Tom Ostromecky- Smuttynose
13) Zach Boda- Alumni Portsmouth Brewery/Current Allagash
14) Jason Perkins- Allagash
15) Andy Schwartz- Craft Brewers Alliance
16) Jim Sipp- Craft Brewers Alliance
17) Alex Kopf- Craft Brewers Alliance
18) Will Meyers- Cambridge Brewing Company
19) Greg Oulette- Martha's Exchange
20) Steve Schmidt- Meantime Brewing Company
21) Yvan de Baets- Brasserie de la Senne
22) Paul Davis- Prodigal Brewing Company


This first video is a repeat of Part 1 (for the sake of continuity)




Part 2 introduces you to brewers who both added hops and currently work for either Portsmouth or Portsmouth Brewery.




And finally, the third installment showcases brewer friends who took time to celebrate (I hesitate to use the word party) with us and throw some hops in our boiling kettle.




Thanks again to everyone who has walked through our doors, eaten our chowder, brewed our beer, grilled your burgers, and helped out in any other way over the last 20 years. We appreciate your efforts and we're happy to share our celebration with you.

Cheers,

The Staff of the Portsmouth Brewery

Dear Leader's Story Time, Episode #1

Today is our 20th Anniversary and over the last twenty years, we've brewed thousands of batches of beer. Here's the story of the dangerous first brew, as told by our first brewer, co-founder and co-owner Peter Egelston.

Please join us today for the first of three 20th Anniversary celebrations. We're having cake and ice cream, tapping our Anniversary Beer, and showing off some spiffy new anniversary gear. Everything starts when we open at 11:30 for lunch.  A birthday cake ceremony will be taking place at 5:30pm.

20th Anniversary Brewday Part 1

So Tod's already told you about our 20th Anniversary Beer (that was yesterday's post). It sounds pretty tasty, huh? Well luckily, we recorded the brews as well and all the footage has yielded five or six clips and you'll see footage of a lot of brewers and lots of steamy, hopping action.



You can get your first taste of the 20th Anniversary Beer at our birthday party on June 1. The pub will be decorated in a birthday theme and we'll be blowing out candles and sharing a celebratory toast at 5:30 pm that day.

The rest of our anniversary events are going up on our Brewers' Notes blog because that's the one I've got access to.

We hope you'll be able to join us in celebration of two great decades of serving honest food and award winning beer to all of you wonderful people out there.

Tod Talks Anniversary Beer

Portsmouth Brewery Head Brewer and 20-year New England brewing veteran Tod Mott has brewed a 20th Anniversary Beer with the help of a horde of brewer friends. We'll be releasing the double batch brew at our birthday party on June 1 and we hope you'll be there to join us.

Hello From West Flanders

My trip to Belgium covered two purposes; one was to visit my wife's sister and brother-in-law in Paris and the other was to brew Kate the Great with Urbain at De Struise Brouwers, home of Black Albert.

Paris was a great place to start out mini vacation. We flew into Charles de Gaulle airport and then went into Paris via bus. In addition to our family time, we were able to visit the Musee d'Orsay, which houses large collections of modern painting from Delacroix to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The museum is housed in the old Gare d'Orsay train station, a beautiful Beaux Arts structure made obsolete by its short platforms.

After many pain au chocolate, tasse du cafe au creme and croque monsieurs we made our way to the TGV ( high speed train) and up to Lille, France, where Urbain Couttreau picked us up. From there we were off to West Flanders via Wally's Bar and Grill, a Belgo-American road house in Poperinge, the heart of Belgium's hop growing region.  West Flanders is also home to De Struise's ostrich farm.  The farmhouse has about 6 apartments is home to both Urbain and Phil.  From here its about 10 miles to the new Struise brewery/yeast shop/education facility at the "School" and about 15 miles to Deca brewery where all of the De Struise beer is brewed, fermented, conditioned, kegged and bottled.  Urbain plans to augment some of the beer production with the new "School" facilities.

As you saw in the video the Deca brewery is quite old ( pre WW1) and uses the original mash-tun and kettle. The rest of the equipment has been updated...... although there is some "purple snake" hose that looks like it's been around since WW2!! I was able to brew a batch of Belgian-style Kate the Great at Deca with Urbain and he then put in a batch of Black Albert to keep KtG company during the long lonely fermentation!  This video will give you a glimpse at our adventures in Flanders.  We had a blast and the De Struise folks are incredible hosts, though we'll be sure to book our next trip during warmer months.

Cheers,

Tod M.

Kate the Great Tickets Are on Sale Now!

Kate's Comments on Her Day

Mott's Angry Pin

Tod has a reputation among the brewers at Smuttynose for making supremely active cask conditioned beer. He's showered a representative from Sprecher Brewing Company with Black Cat Stout at a Beer Advocate festival. He's showered himself too many times to keep track of, but at least he's consistent.

Dave Yarrington, Smuttynose's DoBrO, captured this little clip on his Palm Pre at the Brattleboro Brewers Fest on May 22.

Warning: If you've been up front at Gallagher shows, you may experience a flashback....

Tyler is Back!

Tyler just had his knee rebuilt. While he was out, he developed a new talent.

Sound System!

Brennen Rumble shares some background on the new audio system at Portsmouth Brewery.

The Rest of Hop Harvest #2

Things happen quickly at the Portsmouth Brewery.  Since the last post, 2 beers have run out (Gose and Whipper Snapper) and 2 medals have been won at Great American Beer Festival (Rye Not took silver and Milk Stout took bronze). 

My plan was to space out the video clips until Hop harvest #2 came out.  Well, the beer went on this morning and I still had a few clips left.   That being the case, here are the rest of them.  If you've got any questions, ask Tod and Tyler.  Mostly though, you should just go drink some delicious Hop Harvest Beer-both are now on tap exclusively at the Portsmouth Brewery.

One more thing- Clip #5 won't make it up.  It's resting patiently for our clips and outtakes post, which will probably take place in about four years.

Hop Harvest Clip #3

Tyler explains the hopback and what it's used for.  Look at all those sticky green buds!  Tod said yesterday that both Hop Harvest beers in are conditioning and will enter the final cooling stage today.  We're getting closer!

Hop Harvest Clip #2

Tod Mott, Head Brewer, explains Citra hops in their wet form.  It's quick but informative.

Hop Harvest #2 with Fresh Citra

Tod and Tyler brewed Hop Harvest #2 with fresh Citra hops on September 9, 2010.  This video is the first of several shorts that we'll post leading up to the release.

Wet-hopped beers are a once-a-year occurrence, because these beers can only be brewed in conjunction with the hop harvest that takes place in the late summer.  Hops are very volatile commodities.  They are normally picked, dried, vacuum-packed, and put in cold storage.  Around this time of year, some brewers will use wet hops right off the vine.  Luckily, the Portsmouth Brewery has been brewing a wet-hop harvest ale for at least the last 5 years.

Everything begins with this goofy skit.