Tuesday, July 28, 2009

HOP PROJECT #18 kegged this week

Hop Project #18, on draft only, used Zeus and Galena for first wort, Cascade at 60 minutes left in the boil; Ahtanum, Cascade, and Amarillo at 30 minutes left; Cascade at 20 minutes left; Amarillo at 10 minutes left; Ahtanum at 5 minutes left; and Ahtanum, Amarillo, and Cascade for dry hopping.

We are going back down the direction of some of the batches around #9-#11, with a lot more late hops and not as much initial bitterness, trying to get a lot of juicy, citrusy hop flavor but not as much harsh bitternesss.

This was a small batch, and will not last long. We're trying to keep the taps we have around town supplied, until all of #16 in bottles sells out. We will be brewing a big batch of Hop Project #19 this week that will be bottled in about two weeks.

And hey, please keep giving us feedback, here and at sites like www.beeradvocate.com or www.ratebeer.com. We don't always know exactly how these projects will turn out, and while we know which ones were our favorite, we need to hear from you! About the only thing we won't do is exactly repeat a recipe again!

Yazoo Beer Dinner at Findley's Pub in the Opryland Hotel this Saturday, August 1st


We will be teaming up with Brian Owensby, Executive Chef at the Opryland Hotel, to host a Yazoo beer dinner at Findley's Pub this Saturday, August 1st, from 1-3 PM. It's part of the Food Network's Southern Food and Wine (and Beer!) Festival this weekend at Opryland Hotel. This looks like a great event for the weekend - Alton Brown, the Neelys, Bobby and Jamie Deen, among other authors and TV stars, will be on hand to give special seminars and sign their books. For more info and to get tickets, go to:



Friday, July 24, 2009

Busy as heck weekend!

OK, we are still getting a ton of calls about tickets for tomorrow's Music City Brewers Fest. WE ARE NOT SELLING ANY TICKETS THIS YEAR. If there are any tickets left they will be at Jim-n-Nicks.

We are getting pretty excited about the fest tomorrow. We will have SIX beers on tap this year! In the tried and true corner, we will have our staples - Pale Ale, Dos Perros, and Hefeweizen.

And in the up-and-coming contender corner, we will be pouring the following:

Summer Ale - a new crisp and refreshing beer brewed with 100% organic malts and US Saaz hops
Hop Projects #10, 11, 12, 13, and #17- we will be tapping small kegs of these at both sessions, in a sort of vertical tasting. You can hang out at our tent all day, or follow us on www.twitter.com/yazoobrewmaster to find out when we tap each one.
SUE - this is our first high-alc beer we have legally brewed, a smoked porter. Come by and give us some feedback!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Introducing our first High-Alc Brew - "SUE"

We will be tapping our first high-alcohol brew this weekend, at the Music City Brewers Festival in downtown Nashville!

The beer named SUE is best described as an big Smoked Porter. We tossed in loads of pale, chocolate, caramel, and black malts, along with a brand new malt on the market - cherry-wood smoked malt! I had some of this malt this year at the Craft Brewers Conference in Boston, and knew right away what beer I wanted to try it in. The sweet smoky caramelly aroma and body of this beer reminds me of a great wood-fired pizza, balanced out with some earthy acidity from plenty of Galena and Perle hops. It's got a great clean finish, and you have no idea that it weighs in at just over 7.5% abv (until you have had a few!).

Future batches will probably come in higher in alcohol - I just didn't want to overwhelm the great flavors from the smoke. But now having tasted it, I think we could get it up to 9% or so without taking anything away from the smoke at all.

OK, that's the good news! Here's the bad news: we can't serve this at our Taproom. Sorry, once again, blame stupid Tennessee laws. To serve anything above 6%, we would have to get a liquor license. When you have a liquor-by-the-drink license, you can't sell ANYTHING to go, and that would mean an end to our growler business. So, for the meantime, look for this beer at the Music City Brewers Festival this weekend, and after that, at your favorite local pub that has a liquor license. We plan of hosting a series of tasting nights around Nashville and possibly in Alabama in the coming months.

Monday, July 20, 2009

YAZOO TAPROOM WILL BE OPEN THIS SATURDAY

Usually we close down the taproom for the Music City Brewers Festival, but this year we will be open our regular hours, Saturday 2-8 PM. We will be giving guided brewery tours at 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30 PM. So if you didn't get a ticket to MCBF, or want to visit the brewery before the night session of MCBF or after the afternoon session, come on down!

P.S. Hop Project #17 was a big hit this weekend, and it may not last through next weekend, so if you want to try it, this may be your last chance!

Five days to the Music City Brewers Fest!

Only five days to go! We are getting a lot of calls this week asking if we have tickets for sale for the festival this weekend. We did not get any to sell this year, they are only for sale online at www.musiccitybrewersfest.com, or at area Jim-n-Nicks restaurants. The second night session is completely sold out, but there are still some tickets left for the afternoon session. I imagine that they will sell out early this week.

Again, if you want to follow us on twitter at the festival, and see when we tap some special brews, follow us at www.twitter.com/yazoobrew or www.twitter.com/yazoobrewmaster.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

please let up on Cantina Laredo in the Gulch

Hey all you Yazooligans,

Thanks for all the emails you sent to the managers at Cantina Laredo in the Gulch, asking them to put Yazoo on tap. If you remember, their beverage manager said he would consider putting our beer on tap if he had enough people email in and request it. They have asked us to please cease and desist, so I guess it must have been quite a few emails that you sent! I don't know if it did any good yet, but you made an impression. Thank you!

Cheers,

Linus

Yazoo Hop Project #17 on tap Thursday July 16

Kegged July 16, all on draft. For this hop bomb we used Columbus at the beginning of boil, Amarillo at 30 minutes, and Zeus and Galena at 5 minutes left in the boil. Then we dry-hopped it with Cascade and Zeus. Galena and Zeus are typically used mainly for bittering at the beginning of the boil, due to their extremely high alpha acid levels. But Ivan, who came up with this recipe, wanted to see how they behaved when used for more for aroma, towards the end of the boil and as dry-hops.

I'm picking up a pleasant, piney aroma, followed by a mellow, rounded bitterness in the body, and finally a clean, bright finish. This is not as heavy and chewy in the bitterness as #16 was - I think this is one of the top ones we have done over the last 17 batches. Come by the taproom and give us your opinion - but make it soon, because we only brewed about 15 kegs of this batch!

Cheers,

Linus

P.S. to get quick updates of when we tap special beers, and to find out where we have specials or promotions going on in your area, follow us on twitter, www.twitter.com/yazoobrew or www.twitter.com/yazoobrewmaster

Monday, July 13, 2009

follow us on Twitter to know what beers we're tapping at the Music City Brewers Fest!

We have kept back one keg each of several Hop Projects past, to tap them at this year's Music City Brewers Fest. We have kegs from what we thought were the best batches, including kegs from Hop Projects #10, 11, 12, 13, and the upcoming #17. We will also have a test batch of our first high-gravity brew that we will tap at the festival, a smoked porter using cherry-smoked malt.

To receive an alert at the festival of when we tap particular special brews, sign up to follow us at www.twitter.com. Linus' tweets are under "yazoobrewmaster" and Neil's tweets are under "yazoobrew". We'll be using twitter to tell you when each keg is tapped. Or, you could just hang out around our booth all day long!

Yazoo on Channel 2 news last Friday

In case you missed it - here is the link to the video.

http://www.wkrn.com/global/story.asp?s=10708684

Friday, July 10, 2009

Music City Brewers Fest tickets

First off, we won't have ANY this year. NONE. The only way to get tickets is online, or at the three Jim-n-Nicks restaurants in Nashville, Smyrna, and Murfreesboro.

The second night session is sold out, I hear. And there are only about 500 or so tickets left for the first day session. Don't say we didn't warn you, get your tickets now!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Yazoo in the Gulch




If you have ever taken a tour of the brewery, you know how tight it is back there. We've crammed tanks and equipment in every conceivable corner, and for the past year it's been like brewing in a submarine. And we hate seeing people having to wait so long for a beer or a growler now, due to our cramped quaters. So late last year we took the plunge and started planning a much bigger brewery.

We bought a building at 910 Division, right behind all the condos going up there. It has a wide-open floor plan that will allow us to brew about four times as much beer as we can here at Marathon. We're also planning a bigger taproom with an outdoor beer garden, with the same concept of local cheeses and bread to accompany the beer.

Construction will start soon, with our contractor ripping out some of the old interior walls and beginning on some concrete work to install new drains in the brewery. Luckily, we won't have do as much to get the building up to codes as we had to do here at Marathon. The new brewery should be arriving in October, and we already have three 80 bbl fermenters and an 80 bbl brite tank sitting in the yard under tarps. If everything goes well, we hope to be brewing there in early 2010. Check back here for pictures as we progress. It's going to be a long process, with lots of regulatory permits to get that may delay us, but we've done it once before so we won't be surprised!

What will happen with our space at Marathon? We would love to continue to have a presence there, after all the work we put into it and the goodwill we generated for the cool old building. It's a great space, and we have a great relationship with the owner, but we had to make a move to continue to grow. We have some interesting irons in the fire for ideas for this space, but right now are focussed on getting the new brewery up and running.
And to all our fans - don't worry, we aren't going to change anything! Still going to be making the best best beer we can, by people who love what they are doing!