Sneak Peak at our new labels

Woohoo! We finally got our label approval for Sly Rye Porter and Sue. Here's a sneak peak. It will take a month or so to get them printed, and then we'll be releasing them both in time for the holidays!

New dock door at the new brewery!

We had to knock out a section of the wall at the new brewery to get the tanks inside, so that meant we deserved a new dock door! Deserved? Weird choice of words? Well, if you had struggled with the doors we have here at Marathon for the past six years, you'd say the same thing! First, there is a dock door that took two people to winch closed, plus a sledgehammer. Then, a set of doors so low that a normal forklift won't go through it (luckily, the tires on our forklift are so worn out that it will clear the doors by 1/4 inch.) And to get to the dock, you have to run a gamut of metal plates covering collapsed concrete and mud holes. So needless to say, we're excited about a brand new dock door!

Mark Moynihan fund

Thank you to everyone who helped us raise some money to help Kim Moynihan, Mark's wife. Mark was a brewer in east Tennessee that was critically burned in a welding accident. While he was fighting, with burns over 90% of his body, we teamed up with the Nashville homebrewers club to try to raise money. We auctioned off an opportunity to brew a batch on our commercial system to the homebrew club, with the proceeds from sales of that batch also going to the Mark Moynihan Burn Fund. Sadly, just before we brewed the beer, Mark passed away. We decided to go ahead with the benefit and donate the money to Mark's wife, Kim.

Thank you to Brandon, for his wonderful Hop Blaster, and to everyone who came in and enjoyed a pint or growler of it. Thanks to you, we were able to donate a little over $6,000 to Kim to help with her bills. Thanks again!

On tap this weekend:

Pale Ale
Dos Perros
Hefeweizen
Brandon's Hop Blaster (last keg, come help us finish it off!)
Sly Rye Porter
and...drum roll please...
Hop Project #22!

Hop Project #22 bottled today, 3rd week of October

You can't muzzle the Hops!

Hop Project #22 was bottled 3rd week of October. We first-wort-hopped it with Ahtanum, then Galena at 30 minutes, Amarillo at 5 minutes, and dry-hopped with Zeus and Amarillo.

Even though it is promoted as a bittering hop because of its high alpha-acids, I'm loving Zeus as a late or dry hop. It's pungent, bright, and earthy. The bitterness on this one is just right - not harsh up front but long and lingering. This isn't the hop bomb that the last batch was, but we don't get our hands on 200#s of fresh Amarillo but once a year.

We only brewed 20 barrels of this one, and about half of that is heading to Alabama (there are some serious hopheads down there, man!) If you are in the B'ham area, look for it on tap, hopefully at the J. Clyde again, and in bottles at Whole Foods.

Yazoo Brewing in this month's Southern Living

I haven't seen it yet, but lots of people have emailed us about an article about Yazoo in this month's Southern Living. It's funny how it happened. Their deadlines are set so far in advance, that the writer interviewed us about a year and a half ago. I had honestly forgotten all about it until a photographer called and wanted some updated shots about three months ago.

More Sue Locations

Yazoo Sue, our cherry-wood-smoked imperial porter, is now on tap at:

Three Crow Bar
Beyond the Edge
Broadway Brewhouse - Midtown
12th South Taproom
Beer Sellar

This is a small batch beer right now, as we wait on label approval to bottle it, and we have been in and out of stock with Sue at our distributor. So even these limited locations may be periodically out of Sue. We hope to be bottling it later this year.

And the reason why we can't serve it at our own taproom? We would have to get a liquor license, and then we would not be able to sell growlers. I could go into all the legal BS behind that but I don't feel like getting riled up right now.

On Tap This Weekend

For those of you who plan your life around beer (like me):

We will have on tap this weekend:

Pale Ale
Dos Perros
Hefeweizen
Brandon's Hop Blaster
Fall
Sly Rye Porter

Cheers!

Scene's Best of Nashville goes to...

Thank you to all our fans who voted us "Best Brewhouse" in this year's Nashville Scene's Best of Nashville reader's poll!

Getting that award is more of an honor to us than any beerfest medal could ever be. We really strive to be a part of our local community, and to have y'all recognize us as the best brewery in Nashville means a lot to everyone here at Yazoo. Thanks!

We also were voted the 2nd "Best Place to Buy a Keg"! Not everyone knows this, but we sell kegs directly from the brewery. Big kegs are $125, and the popular 5 gallon kegs are $55. They are cold, and usually don't have to be ordered ahead of time, so come on down to the brewery and pick up a keg for your next party!

Finally, the writers at the Scene mentioned our upcoming move to 910 Division in their "Best Industrial Relocation" blurb. It's not a done deal yet, but the plan is to sell our current brewery tanks to Corsair Artisan Distillery once we move out of Marathon. They will set up their stills next to the brewing tanks and use the brewery to feed their distilling equipment. If all goes well, that transition should happen around the first of the year.

Tanks in and hooked up...

Well, it has been an exciting past few days. Our new 40 bbl brewhouse arrived bright and early Monday morning, and we spent the next few days getting the big tanks inside the building and stood up. I knew that they would be bigger than anyhing else we have tried to move, and that we would need more than a little forklift to get them inside and stood up, so I rented a small crane, the Brody IC80 (with the advice of my friends at Terrapin Brewing - thanks Mark!). It did great, and most of the tanks were unloaded with no problems.

I had never operated one before, so I felt a little like Trinity from "The Matrix", trying to absorb the instruction manual while climbing into the seat to unload the first truck. The Lauter Tun, at 6000 lbs and 10 feet in diameter, was the biggest challenge, but with the help of another crane from McCord Crane Service, we got it in the building. Quinn and I spent the next few days standing the tanks up and getting them in postition. Then came the challenge of assembling all of the process piping, which had been disassembled for the trip from Vancouver at Newland Systems.

Now we will be working on finishing out the taproom, while engineers from Advanced Engineering in Franklin, and Prism Systems in Mobile, AL, finish the automation system for the new brewhouse. Stay tuned for more pictures of the brewery and the new taproom!