The Hourglass Brewery Announces New Brewers

Longwood, Florida, August 27, 2015 – The Hourglass Brewery announces the departure of founding brewer, Sky Conley, and the elevation of Michael Delancett and Matthew Gemmell as co-brewers.
The change in brewers is part of The Hourglass Brewery’s plans to grow the distribution of its beers, first in Central Florida, and then throughout the state. “We’ve always had our sights set on distributing quality beer,” said co-founder, Brett Mason. In July 2015, The Hourglass Brewery began distributing its beer in Seminole and Orange Counties through Republic National Distributing Company. “Today’s personnel change is aimed at meeting the growing demands of our distribution while ensuring that a large variety of Hourglass beer remains available in our taproom,” according co-founder and manager, Lance Butterfield.
Sky Conley, who co-founded The Hourglass Brewery, helped to launch the brewery in 2012 with a three-barrel brewing system in its former Longwood location. Conley established a strong reputation for concocting a wide variety of unique and interesting beers. Said Butterfield: “We could not have launched a brewery without Sky’s brewing talent and creativity. We appreciate all his efforts.”
Taking charge of brewing operations at The Hourglass Brewery are Michael Delancett and Matthew Gemmell. Both Dalancet and Gemmell have been working on the brewery’s ten-barrel system since the new location opened its doors in October 2014. According to Mason: “Matt and Michael have worked hard to learn this system and what it takes to produce high-quality beer. They’re doing a great job.”
For more information about The Hourglass Brewery, contact Lance Butterfield. Lance.Butterfield@gmail.com
407-466-5706

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Bob Kenney to Lead Upland Sales Team

Upland Brewing Company is pleased to announce Bob Kenney as our Vice President of Sales. Most recently Bob was the Senior Director of  Anheuser-Busch INBEV’s sales team responsible for selling Goose Island’s specialty, Belgian-inspired beers, such as Sophie, Matilda and Lolita, on a  national basis. Previously, Bob served as Vice President of Sales at Goose Island Brewing Company, where he built and led a sales team that doubled  sales to 150,000 BBLs in a short number of years.

Doug Dayhoff, Upland’s President, said, “Bob’s experience and acumen are a perfect pairing with  Upland. We aim to build strong distributor relationships throughout the Midwest to capitalize on the momentum of our core beers like Dragonfly,   Champagne Velvet, Campside and Teddy Bear Kisses. We have a terrific sales team, and Bob’s leadership and training will make us even better.”

Jon Leetz, President of Indiana Beverage, remarked, “Our Upland sales have doubled in two years, and this hire demonstrates their on-going investment in  great leadership to support their great beers. We’ve worked with Bob for a long time, and think the world of him.”

Upland recently completed an   expansion to its production brewery cellar, which doubled its capacity to 75,000 BBLs. The company is also finalizing plans to expand its original brewery, which now focuses exclusively on artisan Belgian-style sour ales. In the last year alone, Upland has introduced 16 new beers, including new canned and bottled beers. In the coming year fans can expect more innovation and artisanship from the brewing team and a fifth Tap House featuring locally sourced foods and their signature beers.

Bob begins work effective immediately, and he can be reached at Bob@uplandbeer.com.

About Upland

Upland Brewing Co has brewed award-winning ales and lagers in Bloomington, Indiana since 1998. Our brewery name reflects the term geologists gave the area around Bloomington, which was never overrun by the glaciers that flattened much of Indiana’s landscape. The adversity of the land bred  independent thinkers who had strong wills, a connection to the land, and a wry sense of humor about life. Upland’s approach to brewing beer honors  the spirit of these people and this place. Annually Upland’s brewers release over 30 different beers, which are distributed in Indiana, Illinois,  Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky. Its nationally recognized sour ales are fermented in wood barrels and tanks for 1-3 years, and blended in different  combinations and with whole fruits to achieve unique, multi-dimensional beers. Brewery tours are available every weekend, and special limited edition  beers are released via on-line public lotteries several times each year.

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Brewery Vivant’s 5th Annual Wood-Aged Beer Fest: A Beer Lover’s Paradise

Grand Rapids, MI — Brewery Vivant celebrates the art and science of barrel-aging beer with its 5th Annual Wood-Aged Beer Festival (WABF) Saturday, September 19th in the parking lot behind the Brewery. Vivant will hold two tasting sessions: Afternoon (1-4p) and Evening (5-8p) to allow for more people to enjoy 20+ limited, rare, and exclusive beers in an intimate beer-centric environment. The Vivant scratch-kitchen will have festival foods available should hunger arise. Tickets are $35 and include 10 tokens, a collector’s edition tasting glass, and access to some incredible beer. Limited tickets available online at http://ift.tt/XI20J0 or directly through wabf15.brownpapertickets.com.

Fittingly, this will be the “Wooden anniversary” (as per Victorian tradition) of WABF at Brewery Vivant as they celebrate their 5th festival and 5th year in business in the East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids. Opening the festival up for two identical sessions will give more beer drinkers a chance to enjoy all that the festival has to offer, particularly more beer tasting. “We’re hoping with more tokens in your glass from the start, less people on the grounds at once, and a map to guide you, this year’s festival will be the best one yet,” says Kate Avery, Abbess of Beer and Director of Sales & Marketing, “The brewers have been plotting for this unveiling since last November. It’s their big party with big flavors. We’re glad to share it with more enthusiasts by offering two sessions this year.”

Wood-aging beers harkens back to the earliest beer brewing traditions when vessels were all made of wood and brewers worked to blend flavors into drinkable liquid. Unique flavor profiles arise in the already flavor-forward craft beers when aged in wood. Brewery Vivant will be hauling out old favorites from the vault, as well as new never-before-tasted experiments. Love Shadow, the bourbon barrel-aged Imperial stout makes a triumphant return to tap handles, as well as a cellared Wizard Burial Ground (2014 vintage bourbon barrel-aged quadrupel).

Get your tickets early as this event is the highlight of the Fall beer season and will sell out. Not to be missed. The Pub will be open for business as usual on Saturday, 11am-midnight. The festival grounds are separate.

About Brewery Vivant

The brewery is located in the East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids, in a renovated funeral chapel built in the early 1900’s. Their staff of around 50 employees specialize in Belgian/French inspired beers and fare in a completely unique setting. Husband and wife partners Jason and Kris Spaulding opened the doors for business in December of 2010. They are the first commercial brewery in the nation to receive Silver LEED Certification from the USGBC. Additionally they are 100% renewable powered, a silver-level Bicycle Friendly Business, and are a certified B Corporation. Beer the Change®!

 Brewery Vivant | 925 Cherry St. SE | Grand Rapids, MI 49506

More info can be found at www.breweryviant.com, or by visiting our Facebook page.

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Grab Your Beach Cruiser & Bathing Suit for the SanTan Company Labor Day Weekend Brews Cruise in Scottsdale

Chandler, Arizona (August 18, 2015)— It’s that time of year again, SanTan Brewing Company will invade the streets of Old Town Scottsdale with their annual Labor Day Weekend Bathing Suit Brews Cruise. This year, taking place on Sunday, September 6, 2015 – the ride will begin at Grimaldi’s at 1 p.m. with pizza plus an ice cold SanTan beer.

Grab your beach cruisers, tricycles or 10 speeds, don your best bathing suit, scuba gear or speedos and let the fun begin! After parking it at Grimaldi’s for a spell, it’s time to ride on over to Brat Haus where you can take a ride on the giant inflatable water slide and enjoy a second SanTan brew. From there it’s off to Oregano’s Pizza Bistro and then the finale, live music, a dunk tank and water guns at Boondocks.

Admission for the Labor Day Weekend Bathing Suit Brews is $25 if purchased at SanTan Brewing Company or online, in advance. Day of admission will be $30. Admission includes a slice of pizza at Grimaldi’s, a SanTan beer at each stop, live music, a dunk tank, a water slide and a water gun battle. This is sure to be a super fun and super soaked day with friends and brews in Scottsdale. Visit http://ift.tt/1asGWNO for more information and to purchase tickets.

About SanTan Brewing Company

Open since 2007 under the leadership of founder and brewmaster, Anthony Canecchia, SanTan Brewing Company has established a strong reputation as one of Arizona’s favorite craft breweries. In addition to brewing, SanTan features a friendly neighborhood brewpub in Downtown Chandler, which has quickly become one of the top local food and beer destinations in the Phoenix metro area.

All SanTan Brewing Company craft beers are Southwestern Style Ales. SanTan’s brews are fermented to completion and carbonated higher than traditional American beers for a more effervescent, crisp and refreshing hand crafted beer – perfect for quenching your thirst in the hot Arizona sun and throughout the southwestern region of the US.

In 2009, SanTan Brewing began distributing their Southwestern Style Ales throughout the state of Arizona, operating with a mission to pair craft beer with craft food that would inspire great conversation and good times. 2014 marks the beginning of taking this journey throughout the Southwest and California.

SanTan beers have won numerous national and statewide awards including two medals at the US Open Beer Championship: bronze in 2013 and gold in 2011. SanTan Brewing also took home a silver medal at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival and won Best Brewery in Arizona, selected by the Phoenix New Times and the Arizona Republic, in 2013 and 2011.

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Re-Introducing Jester King Ambrée

When our tasting room opened on July 31st, we released two new beers: our Bière de Syrah and our third batch of Ambrée Farmhouse Amber Ale. Ambrée may have gotten a little lost in the excitement over a new wine grape refermentation, but at Jester King, we’re just as enthusiastic about this new simplified, scaled-down batch of Ambrée.

To be perfectly honest, Ambrée started out bearing the fingerprints of our early days as homebrewers. Back then, we attributed complexity largely to the sheer number of ingredients in a beer. If you want to make a beer complex and interesting, load it up with a bunch of different ingredients is what we believed. This mentality led to Ambrée being brewed with EIGHT different malts! It contained Munich, Two-Row, Pilsner, Carared, Amber, Crisp C-120, Melanoidin, and Roasted Barley.

As time has progressed here at Jester King, we’ve come to very much appreciate and subscribe to the principles of subtlety, simplicity, and restraint. We’ve found that some of the most beautiful and enjoyable beers really subscribe to these principles. More specifically, we’ve discarded the mentality that more specialty malts necessarily equate to complexity of flavor. In the culinary world, a few simple ingredients prepared well can be just as complex and elegant a dish made using a ton of specialty ingredients. We wanted Ambrée to reflect the same kind of refinement and balance.

Our initial inspiration for Ambrée came from some of our favorite farmhouse ales from French Flanders, notably the beers brewed by Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq, France. But for the third batch, we looked much closer to home for inspiration: Live Oak Brewing Company in Austin. We’ve gotten to learn much from Live Oak during the last year or so while collaborating with them. Live Oak makes beautiful wort using very simple ingredients. For instance, for Kollaborationsbier they took one malt and worked with it using a technique called a decoction mash to create some of the richest, most delicious wort we’ve ever tasted. Decoction mashing involves separating out a portion of the mash, boiling it in the kettle, and then returning it to the mash tun.

For our third batch of Ambrée, we took inspiration from Live Oak and appreciation for subtlety, simplicity, and restraint to create a simple, amber farmhouse ale. We brewed it with three malts (Pilsner, Munich, and Vienna) instead of eight using a decoction mash. The wort was then fermented with our mixed culture of brewer’s yeast and native yeast and bacteria harvested from the air and wildflowers around our brewery. We also scaled down the gravity of Ambrée, which resulted in a lower alcohol by volume. Our third batch of Ambrée is 4.5% ABV, whereas before it was in the 7% range. We think this has lead to a more drinkable, enjoyable beer. We also believe Ambrée now has some nice symmetry as a middle ground between Le Petit Prince Farmhouse Table Beer and Commercial Suicide Farmhouse Mild.

Ambrée Batch 3 was brewed with Hill Country well water, barley, and hops. It was fermented in stainless steel for five weeks with our mixed culture, then naturally conditioned through refermentation in the serving vessel for another four weeks prior to release. It is unfiltered and unpasteurized. At the time of bottling, it had a finishing gravity of 1.002, a pH of 4.39, and was 25 IBUs. Ambrée is available on draught in our tasting room and in 750ml bottles, both in our tasting room and in stores throughout Texas.

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MSU Denver taps Tivoli Brewing Company’s new facility for hands-on beer industry education

DENVER – Metropolitan State University of Denver has added four new beer courses for fall 2015 and named a new faculty coordinator for its growing Beer Industry Operations program to facilitate a real-world, hands-on educational experience, including use of Tivoli Brewing Company’s new $7 million campus operation.

New classes begin today, and include Brewery Operations, Fermentation Science, Beverage Sales and Marketing, and Cooking with Beer. Instructor Scott Kerkmans is the new coordinator of the Beer Industry Program within the Department of Hospitality, Tourism and Events. As a former brewer at Alaska Brewing and one of the first five Certified Cicerones in the world, Kerkmans is a leading professional educator for beer distributors, retailers and brewers.

A unique aspect of the program is students will learn all elements of beer industry operations and management in a historic facility that has the brewing capacity to be among the top 20 craft breweries in the state. The Tivoli Brewery will be the first full production brewery in the country on a college campus. In 2012, a group of native Coloradans formed the Tivoli Distributing Company and ending the 45-year hiatus and once again began brewing Tivoli beer after more than 100 years as one of the largest breweries in the state.

To celebrate, a grand opening of the Tivoli Brewery and Tap House is scheduled on Aug. 22 at 4 p.m. in the historic Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus. The brewery and academic program will add to the economic impact of the industry in Colorado, already valued at more than $10.3 billion and employing more than 24,000, according to a recent report by the Beer Institute.

“Our faculty’s rapid response to industry need, including the Tivoli Brewing Company, in creating new curriculum demonstrates MSU Denver’s impact on Colorado’s workforce,” said MSU Denver President Stephen Jordan.

For more than 14 years, MSU Denver’s Hospitality, Tourism and Events program has been teaching students the fundamentals of beverage management with a special emphasis in service integration within restaurant and hotel environments. A foundational class, Beer and Spirits, teaches students the major categories of beer including the practical brewing and sensory analysis of beer styles. Students can earn major degrees in Brewery Operations and Brewpub Operations as well as a minor or certificate.

To complement classroom instruction, students previously utilized the Gold Medal winning Blue Moon Brewing facilities, located in the Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field, to experience first-hand all phases of the brewing process. Now with the opening of Tivoli Brewing Company on campus, the program will shift higher-level course experiences to Tivoli’s campus operation. The foundation Beer and Spirits course will also work with Rising Sun Distillery and Strange Craft Brewing Company for additional experiential education, since both facilities are within walking distance from campus.

“When we considered pursuing this endeavor, we saw the educational opportunities it would create for students, current employees and craft brewers as a whole and we knew it was a win-win for all those involved,” said Corey Marshall, founder and chief executive officer for Tivoli Brewing Company. “Educational opportunities for students will go beyond just brewing to all aspects of the operation from restaurant management, distribution, sales, marketing, packaging, quality control and business operations.”

Tivoli Brewing Company has already hired students in roles such as certified beer server, brewer’s assistant and restaurant service.

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Sierra Nevada Creates Game to Celebrate Oktoberfest Release

The excitement surrounding the release of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s annual Oktoberfest lager can be felt across the country. The brewery has even redesigned their entire site to commemorate the release, including a traditional Oktoberfest pattern and German navigation options.

Looking around the site, you’ll learn a variety of information about the history of Oktoberfest and learn why this beer—which is a collaboration with Brauhaus Riegele of Augsburg—is so important to Sierra Nevada. After you click around a bit, you might notice a visitor has popped in the middle of the navigation bar, meet Kenny.

Kenny is the hero in a game Sierra Nevada had created in honor of the beer. Basically, the Oktoberfest celebration is in trouble—there isn’t nearly enough of Sierra Nevada’s Oktoberfest lager—and it’s up to you and Kenny to save the day collecting ingredients to brew more. You guide Kenny to jump around like a little brewing Mario and collect malt, hops, water and yeast.

Sierra Nevada’s Oktoberfest game is a prime example of how our ever-expanding digital culture is invading every industry, including craft beer. There are a million ways to catch someone’s attention, and Sierra Nevada definitely has the attention of craft beer enthusiasts. This game might be a new experiment for them to attract another kind of customer beyond who they normally reach.

The game is not advertised anywhere on the site. The user has to be actively looking around the site (and hopefully learning about the beer) for Kenny to appear in the bar at the top of the page. Sierra Nevada has a very well established fan base of craft beer drinkers, and they’re looking at ways to increase their appeal and differentiate themselves from other breweries both for their current fans and hopefully some new ones.

Learn more about this year’s Oktoberfest collaboration:

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Dan Powell is the current Craft Beer Program intern and a bartender at Upslope Brewing Co., as well as a homebrewer, hop enthusiast and transplant to Colorado from Maryland. He loves talking and writing about beer, dogs, cars, gear and tech. For more, follow him on Twitter and Instagram @danpow6

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