S5 Episode 2: Beer News Galore

Just over a month into the year and things are getting exciting. Two of our beers are finalists in the Good Food Awards. Our tour program is one of the top ten in the country, and you can help it rank higher. Plus we have crowd favorites from our tasting room that have graduated to larger distribution. So give this ep a listen! It's packed with fun, digressions, news, and laughs.

Transcript

Brett Willis 0:00

All right. You both are ready? Right.

Ryah Lempert 0:02

Yep.

Brett Willis 0:02

All right. This is from Maine with Love, an Allegash Bring podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, and things that generally make us happy. And I've got it's a full, full house here. I'm excited. Hey. Liz, Raya.

Liz Wilson 0:14

Hello.

Brett Willis 0:15

Both here with us. Uh, thank you for joining.

Liz Wilson 0:18

Yeah. Thanks for letting me eat lunch.

Brett Willis 0:35

I was like stand, I was like glowering behind Liz as she ate the fastest lunch of all time. Did six minutes. That's great. That's you know what? Let's put it up on the board.

Liz Wilson 0:44

All right.

Brett Willis 0:44

See you can beat that record.

Liz Wilson 0:46

A classic Liz lunch at 2 p.m.

Brett Willis 0:48

If if being a parent has taught me nothing else, I can eat fast.

Liz Wilson 0:51

Yeah.

Brett Willis 0:52

So I think I can beat six minutes.

Liz Wilson 0:53

Okay. Yeah.

Brett Willis 0:54

We'll try that.

Liz Wilson 0:54

My family's just very fast eaters. Oh, you really? Yeah. That's good. You don't my husband and I are quite mismatched. He's a slow eater. And I'm a fast eater. So it's like, okay.

Brett Willis 1:05

Yeah, my grandfather was like notoriously slow. And we'd go to like a lobster dinner with him every time. And he was the guy who like ate every leg and like every swimmerette.

Ryah Lempert 1:14

And it was just there for hours. Yeah. My dad is an incredibly slow eater. Like, take a bite, put the fork down. And also, like when we have family dinner, like my family is big talkers. And so we'll be like talking and eating. And then he's still eating and not typically done.

Brett Willis 1:33

Oh man. Poor dads.

Ryah Lempert 1:35

Yeah.

Brett Willis 1:36

All right. We got the secret question to start this one. Well, actually, I mean, as a brief preamble, we got a lot of cool stuff to talk about in this episode. A lot of cool beers, a lot of cool things that aren't even beer, some things we are potentially going to win, some other stuff. It's crazy. We got a lot of stuff. Um, because when I set out to kind of put together this episode, it was like, what are we gonna talk about? And now, as I've been doing it, I've been like, whoa, there's a lot.

Liz Wilson 1:58

I need to talk about all right.

Brett Willis 1:59

But the first secret question, Liz, uh, what's your least favorite holiday?

Liz Wilson 2:03

What?

Brett Willis 2:04

Or holiday tradition, a tradition you are not a big fan of.

Liz Wilson 2:08

Oh my lord. Um I like a holiday, Brett. I don't I don't know.

Brett Willis 2:14

You could say, you could say it doesn't apply.

Liz Wilson 2:16

I'm literally dressed in Valentine's Day gear.

Brett Willis 2:19

That's what made me think of it. Because I was gonna ask about your Valentine's gear, and I was like, no, no, no, I gotta do something a little different.

Liz Wilson 2:24

I I don't know. I think we need more things to celebrate and be joyous about. So I say bring on any, I don't know, cheesy, jacky, I love stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think there we don't the like massive consumerism around buying stuff for every holiday is probably like we've gone too far. Sure. Um but the like I don't know, a great excuse to celebrate, sure, why not?

Ryah Lempert 2:50

I like that. Are you guys a decorate for every holiday?

Liz Wilson 2:54

Not over the top, but like yes, we certainly do decorate for any of them.

Brett Willis 3:03

Good for you. I'm not we we have the jankiest decorations ever. Like we have like a skeleton guy who like comes out and he looks like his arm fell off and then he stays out there for way too long and he's like stuck in the room.

Liz Wilson 3:14

Oh yeah, we still definitely have Christmas lights up. They're they're just Christmas lights are nice.

Ryah Lempert 3:19

And it's winter in Maine. Yeah, we need a little glow.

Brett Willis 3:21

It's been cold.

Ryah Lempert 3:22

Yeah, I still have Christmas decorations up, but they're my winter decorations. Totally. They're like snowflakes. Yes. It's nice.

Brett Willis 3:29

All right. Raya, you ready for yours? Yeah. Raya, what is your favorite apple?

Ryah Lempert 3:35

My favorite apple is McCown's. They are the perfect, not too not too sweet, not too sour, nice and crisp. They're like uh early summer or late summer, early fall-ish apple, but you can get them year-round, but like that's like September's peak. They're so good. That sounds amazing. Yeah.

Brett Willis 3:59

I gotta I gotta find myself a McCown. I was enjoying a fine honey crisp earlier, and I know it's not Riot's favorite.

Ryah Lempert 4:04

I'm not a big I just don't like sweet apples. That's okay. I get it. I like sour apples. Yeah, yeah. They're a good baking apple too. Okay. And apple crisp. That's good.

Brett Willis 4:13

That's a good apple crisp.

Liz Wilson 4:14

Oh, yeah. So good.

Brett Willis 4:16

I love the salt in apple crisp. You know, a little bit of saltness, salty in it. I made one once. I put so much salt in it, it sucked. It was awful.

Ryah Lempert 4:24

Like, yeah, I really like the salt.

Brett Willis 4:26

I really I salted literally every aspect of it, and I was like, what have I done? And I had a very nice friend who ate it with ice cream and was like, it kind of works. And I'm like, no, it doesn't, dude. This is awful.

Ryah Lempert 4:36

Uh so I always do that to pasta. Yeah. Oh, over salt? I just I love salt. So I'm like, Yeah.

Brett Willis 4:43

Yeah. It's a good salting song.

Liz Wilson 4:46

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Brett. Thank you, Brett. I got one for you. All right, give it to me. If you were a kitchen appliance, what one would you be?

Brett Willis 4:54

Oh uh, I will say, I don't know why I'm gonna say this, but I would say a thin mesh strainer.

Liz Wilson 5:03

Wow.

Brett Willis 5:04

Because I just I found thin mesh strainers to be like the super tool of my kitchen where it's like for what?

Ryah Lempert 5:11

What do you strain it?

Brett Willis 5:12

So if like like you gotta wash rice. If you have a normal strainer, the rice getting caught in that thing, it's super annoying. If you're trying to like clarify something to pour it through, like you have a super thin mesh, you're like golden, like it's great for the big things, pasta and whatever else, but like I freaking love my thin mesh strainer. So there you go.

Ryah Lempert 5:29

I don't think I own one. You're you're about to change to change your life to get one. That's such a good Brett response.

Brett Willis 5:36

I appreciate it. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Ryah Lempert 5:37

You're welcome, honey.

Brett Willis 5:38

Yeah, I I I could also say I'm the the knife sharpening stone that I still don't know how to use, so I just make my knives duller every time.

Ryah Lempert 5:47

I like the rod one.

Brett Willis 5:48

Oh, the rod. Oh, yeah. That's a honer though. Oh that's like that straightens the blade out, but you can actually do like the the stone.

Liz Wilson 5:55

Oh, yeah, I don't know how to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 15 degrees and booby.

Brett Willis 6:00

Yeah.

Liz Wilson 6:00

I know. Okay. Well, anyway, maybe next year you can be that.

Brett Willis 6:04

I'm I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I feel like I've got some, I've watched some YouTube videos and I'm like, I don't have time for to learn how to sharpen those.

Liz Wilson 6:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Willis 6:12

Someday. Okay. All right. First up, USA Today 10 best brewery tour. Our brewery tour is in the running. One of the 10 best in America according to USA Today.

Liz Wilson 6:26

I think I just checked because I just did my daily voting that we are ranked number 10. Oh, we're on the list.

Brett Willis 6:32

Hey, you know, 10's good. It goes up to like 15 or something.

Liz Wilson 6:35

So no, 10 best.

Brett Willis 6:37

No, there's like more than 10 in options.

Liz Wilson 6:40

Yes.

Brett Willis 6:40

Yeah.

Liz Wilson 6:40

I know, but we gotta stay in that top 10.

Brett Willis 6:43

Definitely too.

Liz Wilson 6:43

Please go vote.

Brett Willis 6:44

Please get that. That's it. The true chalice head number of votes is one a day.

Liz Wilson 6:48

Yes.

Brett Willis 6:49

Because you can actually vote every day if you want to.

Liz Wilson 6:53

Yes. And shout out to our amazing team in hospitality who gives these tours. I think you can go look at our reviews and you can see how much people enjoy it.

Brett Willis 7:04

Yeah. They it yes, they are awesome because they're knowledgeable. They're going to be at your level. If you are a beer connoisseur, they're going to be able to talk to you about all sorts of stuff. If you know nothing about beer, which is, I'm going to say, a lot, if not most, if not all of the people who go on our tours, that's like perfect. Yeah. That's what we want.

Ryah Lempert 7:21

I find myself taking tours. They're awesome. Yeah. Learning some new things. Yeah.

Brett Willis 7:25

I took a tour like two years ago, and I like think I wrote part of it at some point. Like, and I was still like, this is so fun. This is so nice. Yeah. So even if you know everything that's coming, it's still really enjoyable. Um, we got two of them just to plug it. Taste of Alagash, the origin tour, which is 30 minutes, a couple samples, um, sort of a more of a quick tour through the brewery. I feel like this one's more of like your typical brewery tour. You're gonna get to see the production line, you're gonna get to see kind of like the ins and ins and outs of the brewery. Um, you're literally gonna walk through the brewery, which is really cool. The second one is a signature beer and barrels experience, uh, which is six samples of beer and or something else potentially. We have wines we do, we do ciders, it's some really cool stuff. Um, and that's more in depth.

Liz Wilson 8:11

Yeah. And you can book them ahead of time online. So if you are planning a trip up to Maine this summer, something to do.

Brett Willis 8:19

Yep, and then go vote on USA Today 10 days. Put us up in there.

Liz Wilson 8:23

I think we you got 10 more days to vote.

Brett Willis 8:26

Is that right? Yeah, 10 more days. So fewer than 10 days to vote by the time you listen to this, likely. Uh, I think it closes on February 19th. Is that what sound like right?

Ryah Lempert 8:35

February 18th.

Brett Willis 8:36

February 18th. February 19th. Yes. Uh, and I just wanted to shout out uh there's some other 10 best uh sort of polls going on, and kudos to Argenta. Uh there I've up for the um best uh new brewery starting last year.

Ryah Lempert 8:54

Super exciting. Yeah, it's a great spot.

Brett Willis 8:56

It is a great spot.

Ryah Lempert 8:57

I really like that downtown Portland. Yep.

Brett Willis 9:00

A lot of breweries there. All right. Second up, the good food awards. Do either of you know much about the good food awards, or do you want me to explain it?

Ryah Lempert 9:09

I took pictures for it and made a post. Yeah, that did very well. Yeah. That did very well.

Brett Willis 9:14

Go for it, Brett. All right. Uh, so we've actually entered a couple beers over time, and we have won some and we have not won some. Uh, and this year we are close to winning some. We've got two beers in for the Good Food Awards, uh, administered by the Good Food Foundation. We've got Alagash Lager and Alagash Kickabout Lager. Um, but I think the thing I wanted to underscore with this one is like the Good Food Awards sounds kind of like, yay, kind of like hippy dippy, they're having some good food. Like it's serious.

Ryah Lempert 9:43

Yeah.

Brett Willis 9:43

The application is legit. It takes a long time. They want to look into a lot of things about how you do things and why you do them. I think it's connected to Michael Pollan. Yeah. Michael Pollan, the prominent writer, uh, has done a lot of stuff in the um sort of progressive food space. Um, so like it's I literally pulled examples from it uh of the questionnaire. So how have we made concrete water recycling and efficiency improvements? Does the employer engage in their with their community? And how? Do you hold third party third party? That's great. I'm not editing that. Do you hold third party certifications? We do with a B Corp. Um, do you use artificial additives? We don't. Uh and list all ingredients sourced within 150 miles. And those are that's like one third, I think, of the questions that are in there.

Liz Wilson 10:30

So yeah, legit. That's cool. That's cool. I think thanks to uh being a B Corp, we have a lot of that information at our hands, but it's just great to be able to be like, okay, this is legit. Uh yeah, we have a lot of this stuff.

Brett Willis 10:46

We do, yeah. I mean, we hit the probably the big ones, the two million, but we hit two million pounds of grain. We mentioned it, that was the entirety of the last podcast, but we did it last year. Two million pounds of main grown grain in a single year.

Liz Wilson 10:58

Yeah, that's wild.

Brett Willis 11:00

Yeah. So yeah. You go for it.

Liz Wilson 11:02

No. Did we now did we announce the beers yet? Uh I think I did, but let's announce them again, like we didn't. Alakash Lager, which is having a moment.

Brett Willis 11:13

Yeah.

Liz Wilson 11:13

Uh straight off its Great American Beer Festival.

Brett Willis 11:17

That's right. I I was like, what do you mean? This sounds wonderful.

Liz Wilson 11:23

Yeah, it's a great beer. Um, it's tasty and it's um, yeah, it's getting some really fun recognition. And so it's a finalist in the Good Food Awards. Finalist. Cheering our lager on. And then I maybe it's uh the year of the lager. I don't know. Um kick about lager, which is our collaboration beer with our um beloved Hearts of Pines soccer team, is also up to be uh an award winner here. So um two great loggers in the running.

Brett Willis 11:57

That's awesome. Awesome. All right, and for kickabout, the very cool thing I wanted to kind of squeeze in here. Oh, you know what? We're gonna talk about it later. Never mind. Stay tuned for when we talk about the very cool thing about kickabout lager very soon. Um but I guess the other one, do you are you familiar with any of these other local producers, Raya? Have you had Bixby chocolate before? Yes. Do you like Bixby chocolate?

Ryah Lempert 12:21

Big fan. Nice. Um That's the only one.

Brett Willis 12:25

That's it. I I mean, to be honest, I think there are some other small producers, but um, we got I will say I was served or I recently saw Maine Gravy.

Ryah Lempert 12:35

Oh and like something. I don't something on socials, and then it came up and I was like, whoa.

Brett Willis 12:41

Whoa.

Ryah Lempert 12:41

Okay, maybe we should get a bottle for aliens. I'm really intrigued.

Brett Willis 12:45

I'm almost I'm almost certain, and I'm not totally certain, but I'm almost certain that Main Gravy has one of their uh sauces that is called Resurgum that part it was created in part by a former employee here at Alagash.

Ryah Lempert 13:00

Whoa.

Brett Willis 13:01

Guy named Hank, really good dude. Um but yeah, he would just be like, Yeah, I just made like six batches of resurgum and it's like fermenting in buckets in some garage or something. They don't do it that way anymore, but that was for the very startup phase. I remember that. Yeah, that's why we always had resurgum hot sauce here.

Liz Wilson 13:15

I know. I I I remember that fondly.

Brett Willis 13:17

Yeah.

Liz Wilson 13:18

Yeah. Some other main companies, Bixby, Turn Coffee, Main Gravy, Turtle Rock Farm.

Brett Willis 13:26

There are a lot of categories. Yeah. Beer is just one. There's coffee, cheese, spreadable fruits.

Liz Wilson 13:35

All the things. And it's not a this is a national award, not a main specific.

Brett Willis 13:41

Yes, definitely a national award. Um yeah, so that's exciting.

Liz Wilson 13:45

Okay, cross your fingers and toes, everybody. We're up for a few things we're hoping to win.

Brett Willis 13:51

We'll tell you how they go.

Liz Wilson 13:52

Yeah.

Brett Willis 13:52

Uh smash that vote button for the USA Today one, though. You can you can affect that. Um and the kind of the meat of this one was uh the beers, the things we have going on. We're a brewery, beers and more, uh, that are coming to you this year as a slight change. So that aforementioned kickabout lager uh surprise is previous last year. It was available in Fitzpatrick Stadium, uh, where we play uh where Portland Hearts of Pine play. And it was available in our tasting rooms, and that was it. Now this year, available all of Maine. Yay! I might have lied. I think it was available in a couple bars, like a couple small, like one-off sort of things, which was really cool, but yeah, I'm excited about that.

Ryah Lempert 14:39

That is probably one of my favorite beers. Oh it is very good.

Brett Willis 14:43

I agree. I really like it. Do you want to know a secret about that beer? Sure. It is mirrored not exactly, but has of many of the same ingredients as Alagash White.

Liz Wilson 14:55

Oh, interesting. It's like wheat lager bestie.

Brett Willis 14:58

It's not fermented with the same uh yeast strain, it's fermented with a different yeast strain, so that changes it up. It's dry hup with citra, which is like honestly a big part of the aroma of that beer. Very like limey, sort of zesty. Um, but yeah, that's where you get like I think that wheat is a big portion of it.

Ryah Lempert 15:14

So that's really cool.

Brett Willis 15:15

It is. Oh, Branch, who was on the previous podcast. That's his recipe.

Liz Wilson 15:20

Who gave me the worst tasting fruit that I never forgive him before?

Brett Willis 15:25

You gotta you gotta tell, you gotta talk about it because this isn't like a one-off.

Liz Wilson 15:29

No, I made the mistake of inquiring about a bag of fruit next to him yesterday, and he's like, Oh, you should give it a try. He did sort, he like sort of warn me that it was like interesting. That's it, funky. Uh and I was like, oh, nibble nibble, and then I was like, this tastes like rotten caramelized onions. And it was durian.

Brett Willis 15:54

Durian. Yeah. Yep.

Ryah Lempert 15:56

Was it like fresh fruit? No or like dry? Like fruit jerky. Yeah.

Brett Willis 16:01

Have you ever heard of durian? Yeah. Yeah, it's like an infamous.

Ryah Lempert 16:04

Well, I was telling Liz this morning that my family went through a kick of trying like crazy different fruit.

Brett Willis 16:11

Oh.

Ryah Lempert 16:12

And that was one of them.

Brett Willis 16:13

Whoa.

Ryah Lempert 16:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Willis 16:15

Like get you got a fresh one, like cut it right open.

Ryah Lempert 16:18

Yes. I was not included in that. I but I remember them telling me about it. It's so bad. Traumatic. Yeah. Because they it was like that and dragon fruit that they were trying.

Brett Willis 16:30

Yeah.

Liz Wilson 16:31

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We then looked up the Wikipedia page for it, and it was hilarious. I bet. The descriptions of what people had described. Or just stray away from it.

Brett Willis 16:41

I remember uh do you remember um it was the Andrew Zimmern show? Bizarre Foods. Is that what it was called? Yeah. I just remember I watched that not a lot, but it would come on, and I remember what like the episode where he could not eat the thing was durian. He just couldn't do it. Yeah. And he like eats everything twice, is like his thing.

Liz Wilson 16:57

Yeah. I one bite and I was like, I'm gonna go see if I can find Brett and give this.

Brett Willis 17:03

I already turned it down because like I think three years ago, Branch had some different durian candy he was trying to foist upon people. And I was like, never again, Branch.

Liz Wilson 17:12

Yeah. Oddly when we try it. Oh god, well, he has a whole bag of it. It's only just because I'm like curious, but also you'll like want to chop your tongue off. Yeah.

Brett Willis 17:22

Yes, you will 100%. I will say this one was less bad than the previous one. Okay. Because I try I did try a little bite of this one. I actually I got I didn't get fooled. I knew what I was getting for, but I was like, I'm gonna take the smallest bite.

Ryah Lempert 17:33

Yeah.

Brett Willis 17:33

I'm gonna be like when my child, when I'm like, try this sauce, and they're like for like a mil micro milliliter before they go. Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 17:42

Yeah. I feel like it could be a flavor in like that jelly bean game. Like the really nasty ones. Yeah, definitely.

Brett Willis 17:48

Harry Potter jelly beans.

Liz Wilson 17:49

Yeah, something like that.

Ryah Lempert 17:49

Yeah, they had like there was like diaper, yeah, brass. Yeah. Okay. Well skunk. I remember that one. That was really bad.

Liz Wilson 17:58

We're taking a real left turn here.

Brett Willis 18:00

I'm sorry. I'm gonna take it even further just for a brief moment because there was a there was a party, a family party that I had with family, uh, like on my wife's side of the family. And for some reason, it was like the most masochistic party ever because one group of people was playing that game with the jelly beans. Yeah, the other group of people who I was with is have you ever played that game where you hold the buzzer and it electrocutes you? It's like you know, look it up. It's actually really fun. It's basically four buzzers, and there's like a light in the middle that goes from red to green, and it'll be like doot, doot, doot. And when it turns to green, the last person to press the buzzer button gets shocked. And we were playing that on like max volume shockage. I don't know why.

Ryah Lempert 18:40

Why those games?

Brett Willis 18:41

I don't know, but we I just was looking around and like, what the hell are we doing right now?

Ryah Lempert 18:45

I my sister and I had the like bag of really nasty jelly beans, and it was like our favorite thing to give guests them and not tell them. Oh yeah, and my dad was like, he was we f we fed them a lot. Yeah.

Brett Willis 19:00

Oh, that's funny. All right, good stuff.

Liz Wilson 19:02

Things that do not taste disgusting.

Brett Willis 19:04

Kick about lager. No, yeah, yes. What's next, Liz? Or what's next, Ryan?

Ryah Lempert 19:09

Clementine Kolsch. Hey, yeah, I'm excited.

Brett Willis 19:12

Returning.

Ryah Lempert 19:12

That is a great beer.

Brett Willis 19:14

Really good beer. Uh, third year. Third, third year it's been around.

Liz Wilson 19:19

Yeah, but really has been in a very limited capacity. And I think from the I think we've sold out of it before we anticipate. And people are like, what about that Clementine culture? And we're like, ah so it seems like we have um remedied that this year, and we are sending it out to a larger uh amount of states.

Brett Willis 19:44

Yep.

Liz Wilson 19:45

So it looks like Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire are all getting Clementine culture. Ooh.

Brett Willis 19:52

Uh four point four point two percent ABV. Uh how we're getting that Clementine Clementine juice added while we brew, and it's actually, I have the wrong note here. It's actually orange, it's natural flavoring. Little top note, as we like to say, natural flavor flavoring to give you that true clementine sort of like punch.

Liz Wilson 20:12

Yep.

Brett Willis 20:13

I think that is a is a very like it's it's indicative of a lesson I think we've learned as a brewery over the years is like when you ferment stuff, the the character of it changes. Yeah, you cannot add like if we just added a bunch of legit clementines to this thing in the beginning and then fermented it, it would not taste like clementine. Right. Just doesn't work.

Ryah Lempert 20:33

Yeah. Check that.

Brett Willis 20:34

You gotta so we have the juice in there, but then you gotta just give it that little extra touch at the end to just like you know hit that like fresh note, and so it comes off really well. Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 20:43

Wonder what a durian beer would taste like.

Brett Willis 20:46

Durian beer.

Liz Wilson 20:47

You you and Branch could collaborate on a pilot beer.

Brett Willis 20:50

But yeah, put the pilot recipe in there.

Ryah Lempert 20:53

I've been turned down too many times. And I know it's anonymous. I know it's not me.

Brett Willis 20:58

Oh, it's totally anonymous. It's uh yeah, it's hard. I I think the thing also to note is the backlog of pilot beer ideas is kind of insane. It's like I think like 200. I don't take it personally.

Ryah Lempert 21:09

Please don't. I do. Please don't. I do really want to make a beer.

Brett Willis 21:12

So we flagged Liz to just automatically deny her every single time. That's why we respond in 0.4 seconds whenever you send it in.

Ryah Lempert 21:25

No. Oh man. Okay, wow.

Brett Willis 21:27

Clementine cultures coming in March. It's coming soon.

Ryah Lempert 21:29

Yay! Lines out the door.

Brett Willis 21:31

Yep. Next beer, also fruit related.

Liz Wilson 21:34

Fruit train.

Brett Willis 21:35

What is it, Liz?

Liz Wilson 21:36

Main blueberry ale.

Brett Willis 21:38

Uh, we probably have a can over there somewhere. Maybe not. People drank them all.

Liz Wilson 21:42

Yeah. They're all gone. Yeah. This talk about a real winner. This was a tasting room only.

Ryah Lempert 21:50

Yes.

Liz Wilson 21:51

Tasting room only last summer. And you drank us out of main blueberry ale. Yeah. So we had to make more.

Brett Willis 21:58

Yeah, and I asked for. I actually asked for some numbers around this one and there are a lot of them, but I think the best way to describe it is it sold two times as much as our next popular beer.

Liz Wilson 22:12

Wow.

Brett Willis 22:12

So it was just flying out the door.

Liz Wilson 22:16

Shout out to our brewing team because all fruits are not equal in the brewing world. And blueberries are quite challenging to blue to brew with. So I feel like they there was a lot of trials, a lot of experimentation. There's like the flavor, the color, the you want to make sure you're meeting people's expectations of what a blueberry beer is. So yeah.

Brett Willis 22:43

There was a lot, yeah. It was it it was cool to see the iterations. Cause I think this is a blueberry beer. Blueberry is a significant part of it, but they still managed to hit that blueberry note while lending it that balanced complexity where you're like, yeah, I can crush an entire can of this thing. So good. They nailed it. Yeah.

Liz Wilson 23:01

Okay, so where is that one going?

Brett Willis 23:03

Do we're going?

Ryah Lempert 23:06

Oh, what? Hold on.

Brett Willis 23:07

It's on the previous page.

Ryah Lempert 23:09

Ah that's going to Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Liz Wilson 23:14

So this is our I feel like blueberries are very exciting to Mainers. So for all the other states outside of Maine, just know a blueberry beer is delicious and you should give it a try. And you should also come to Maine and eat blueberries in the summer.

Ryah Lempert 23:30

Yeah. I think the the main blueberry is really gonna bring people in it. Okay. Yeah.

Liz Wilson 23:36

I think so too. Yeah. And I love the branding on that can in particular. It's so good.

Brett Willis 23:41

So good shout at the Stout Collective. Yeah. That's not the Stout Collective Jam. They crushed that one. Just has, yeah. It you'll if you see it, it's just very clean. I think it represents the beer really well. It feels like a little slightly upscale for some reason. It's it shows one of those little cartons that you'd see like on the side of the road, like little bush blueberries. Farm standy. Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 23:59

Farm standy. Farm standards fits nicely. Not grocery store.

Brett Willis 24:03

Four packs. Those are in four packs, 60 ounce cans, 5% ABV. Very good ABV.

Liz Wilson 24:09

Perfect.

Brett Willis 24:10

Blueberries from Maine.

Ryah Lempert 24:11

Yep.

Brett Willis 24:11

Um, yeah. And then last, but certainly not least, not a beer.

Ryah Lempert 24:16

So excited for this.

Brett Willis 24:17

All right. Take it, take us home, Ray.

Ryah Lempert 24:19

What is Rose Cider is coming in cans.

Brett Willis 24:22

Coming in cans. Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 24:24

And six packs. I cannot wait to drink it this summer. Like it is the perfect summer vibe. Yeah. It's pretty. It's so pretty.

Liz Wilson 24:34

Like a magentini. Yeah, it's so pretty. Yeah. And it's been a huge hit in our tasting room. So we're sending it out in the world.

Brett Willis 24:44

Yeah. And it it is the first non-beer thing to go to a larger distribution. Yeah. I wrote down. I mean, let's workshop it. I'm I'm almost certain there's no other like non-beer thing that we've ever sent away from the city.

Liz Wilson 24:59

Water. Sorry. Dang it. But maybe a regular cider? Uh I don't. We've can't. Oh, Brett. Uh-oh. We have we have to. No, I think it's only in the tasting room.

Brett Willis 25:13

No, we sent the cider out small. Yeah, we did. Well, it was it has been away from the brewery in very small drops. It was at, it was actually at Folken Fairways uh last year.

Liz Wilson 25:23

Which I was at indefinitely.

Brett Willis 25:25

Definitely had a cider at um amazing. It was the first non-beer item to leave our brewery.

Liz Wilson 25:32

I'm just gonna erase exactly.

Brett Willis 25:34

Forget everything else you said. I'm not gonna erase it, but yeah.

Liz Wilson 25:37

Okay, one of the few.

Brett Willis 25:39

One of the few, and uh I would I would argue probably it's gonna be the biggest amount. Because even though we sent hot water out there, it's a pretty small uh niche item. This one's also Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire coming in March.

Liz Wilson 25:56

Sorry, Connecticut and Rhode Island. I'm not sure exactly why we didn't round out New England, but um, you can email us. We'll try and get you an answer.

Brett Willis 26:04

Talk to your friends who live in Maine, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire or not, whatever the states I just said, and tell them drink a fair amount of that uh cider, and then it'll probably get to you soon.

Ryah Lempert 26:15

Yeah. Or drive to those states or visit us. Cannonball run and take a tour while you're here.

Brett Willis 26:24

Vote for us. USA that they did best. We can do it.

Liz Wilson 26:27

Oh gosh. Yeah, okay. Well, it's exciting. The can design is really fun. Yeah. Um, we taught our uh graphic designer, really crushed it.

Brett Willis 26:39

Yeah, he did. It's got a fun, you'll I mean, we could even put a little, we could we'll put this one up up on the blog. It's like you're in a little orchard, there's a little picnic setup. Uh, it's very, I'd say, uh peachy, pinky sort of background color to just really call out that rose. Font is super fun. Um, it's nice. Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 26:59

I want to drink it at an apple orchard. I know.

Brett Willis 27:01

You can't. You know, you know people who work at orchards, apparently. So apparently. Yeah.

Liz Wilson 27:06

We've got a lot of well, Jason has a love of cider that he has honed over many, many years. And this is, you know, we've had our cider on tap at the tasting room. So this is exciting.

Brett Willis 27:18

Yeah. And these apples, they come from New England and New York.

Liz Wilson 27:22

There's so many, so many things coming out. These are all coming out in the next like couple months. Yeah.

Brett Willis 27:29

We got we got other stuff to talk about. We got so much fun stuff that we're is going on this year. It's exciting.

Ryah Lempert 27:36

Big year.

Brett Willis 27:36

Yeah.

Ryah Lempert 27:37

Okay.

Brett Willis 27:38

All right. We did it. We did it. This has been an Alagash Brewing Production. If you have something you'd like us to talk about or a question for our team, just send us an email at podcast at alagash.com. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

Ryah Lempert 27:50

Bye.