The long dark chilly wait is over for these beers, and it's finally time to bring them out into the light of day, in force!  So this coming Saturday during our 12-5pm Growler Hours, we'll be doing just that - and then some.  Here's the lineup...prices do not include $3 bottle/Growler deposits.

F.O.D. Bottles (back by the brewhouse):

- Homewood Reserve 2010 $14 (Our Black Strap Stout aged in Bourbon Barrels, 500 bottles filled)

- Eye Opener Coffee Porter $13 (Brewed w/coffee from The Commonplace Coffee Co. 800 bottles filled)

- Illustration Ale $15 ("Belgian Dark Strong Ale" w/help from the Toonseum. Last 6 boxes left)

We'll also have bags of Commonplace's fresh-roasted Sumatra available at the brewery, the same coffee that went into the beer.

F.O.D. Draft (Growler fills in the tasting room, tasters back by the brewhouse):

...including the usual dark characters we see around here at this time of year:

- Steelcut Oatmeal Stout $13 (Oatmeal Stout or Black IPA? Come decide for yourself!)

- Snow Melt Winter Ale $13 (Always good for melting the fog off your glasses)

- Black Strap Stout $12 (Taste is side-by-side with it's bourbon-barrel-aged version)

- Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale $10 (There has to be a Session Strength Ale in the mix, right?)

PLUS, starting Saturday, we're clearing house on some not-so-dark older stock...

WOODEN NICKEL SAISON:

We released this 6th Anniversary beer back in March, and you may have noticed it's no longer available at the brewery or at the distributor.  Over the course of the last couple months of personal consumption of this beer, we've discovered that many of the bottles don't quite have the level of carbonation that they should.  For a Saison, this is a pretty important part of the beer, and we've managed to trace it back to a packaging failure (the thinner wire on our tall swingtops just doesn't hold the top on the bottle firmly enough).  As soon as we discovered this, we pulled the remaining stock from the distributor and from our shelf at the brewery.  And of course, we're not using those closures anymore.

But what to do with a few hundred bottles, when we're guessing almost a third of them are kinda flat?  Hmmm...  Tough call.  We'd like to dump the flat ones and put the rest back up on the shelf, but there's no way to tell which they are without opening them...and of course, once they've been opened they can't be resealed without even more of a carbonation loss.  Based on our sampling, it's a little less than 1 out of every 3 that's a dud, so dumping them all would be a waste. 

So I got to thinking.  If I had a case of this beer at home (which I do), I'd open one when I wanted to, and if it's a dud, I'd just dump it and move on to the next one.  But for beer you paid good money for, that's kind of a rough approach, to say the least.  But what if you bought them at 2-for-1, paying for the one that was fine and not the dud?  Would that cover your odds?  What about 3-for-1? ... or more?  Maybe then we could find a home for this otherwise fine beer.

THE "EVERYTHING MUST GO" DEAL:

This bottle originally sold for 18 bucks: 15 for the beer and 3 for the bottle deposit.  But starting this Saturday if you want to pick up some "Suspect Wooden Nickel", a four pack is just $30.  So in effect, you're buying one bottle at regular price, and you're getting 3 more bottles for just 1 dollar each (but one is likely to be kinda flat.).  Of course, $12 of that 30 is bottle deposits, so you'll get that all back when you make the returns.

We're going to mark these bottles so that we can tell they were sold at this pricing, and just so we can keep everything straight when it's time to get new closures on them.  And although there is there no limit to how many of these 4 packs you can get, we are only selling them in lots of 4 so that the 1 in 3 odds work a little better for everyone.

OUR USUAL PROMISE STILL APPLIES TO THE STUFF WE'VE ALREADY SOLD:

Of course, if you've already gotten a bottle of Wooden Nickel that's flat, bring in the un-enjoyed portion of the bottle, and trade it in for any in-stock FOD Beer of your choosing that you can take home, along with our apologies for the extra trouble.  Don't drink it just because you paid for it - life is too short, and you deserve better.  We'll make it right.

This is honestly the best way I can come up with to find a home for all of this GOOD BEER, while publicly acknowledging that a portion of this stock is LESS THAN GOOD BEER due to it's lower carbonation.  So if you have an even better idea, I'd love to hear it.

12/9/10 Edit: I forgot to mention it, but bringing beers to share is always welcome at Release Day events here.  I'll see if I can round up some cheese, and other snacks worthy of these rich, dark offerings.  And we'll make an afternoon of it, okay?

Hope to see you on Saturday!

Cheers - Scott