Hop Project #21 : Return of the Fresh Hop!

SCORE! My friend Darren Gamache, the ONLY grower who has Amarillo hops, just called me from Yakima in Washington state - the hop harvest is well underway, earlier than last year, and they are about to start harvesting Amarillo hops this weekend. "Would you be interested in about 200 lbs of fresh wet hops this year, Linus?" he asked. "HELL YEAH!" I said. So the next Hop Project we brew, sometime early next week, will be hopped with 200 lbs of fresh, wet Amarillo hops!

Last year we only made 600 gallons and didn't bottle any. We'll be brewing 1200 gallons this year and bottling about 250 cases of it. I can't wait! I still have vivid dreams about that beer from last year. OK, they might be more like drug-induced flashbacks from all the hops, but I'm still looking forward to brewing it next week. Look for the Fresh Hop tour hitting your local taproom soon!

Alphabeticall

Just got a list of all the breweries at the Great American Beer Festival this year. There used to be a brewery called "Zuma" down in Atlanta, but they are no more. So that makes us the last brewery in the list again! (Alphabetically...)

Amazing stat...

The Brewer's Association just released mid-year numbers, and the results are encouraging for the over 1500 small brewers in the country. Dollar sales of the craft beer segment were up 9%, and volume was up 5%. All this in a difficult economy and with the big three - oops, sorry, it's the big two now - suffering declining market share. I think it is a testament to how beer drinker's tastes are changing.

But one graph they included in their press release really caught my eye. It is a graph of the number of breweries operating in the U.S. over the past 100 years. In the early 1900's, before prohibition, there were over 1500 breweries operating. Most of these were small regional breweries - in fact, there were no national breweries, and most of the beer people drank came from their local breweries.

Now, after close to 100 years, and the great experiments of Prohibition, and even worse, Light Beer, the U.S. is host to over 1500 breweries once again.

"Sue" Release Party and Pint Night

Join brewmaster Linus Hall at 12th South Taproom on Wednesday, August 19th, starting at 6:30 PM, for the release party for Yazoo Brewing's first high-alc beer, "Sue", a deliciously smoked porter brewed with cherry-wood smoked malts.
For every pint of Sue you purchase, you'll get to keep the nifty Yazoo pub glass the beer came in. If you missed this beer at the Music City Brewers Fest, you'll want to catch this event. "Sue" was one of the most requested beers at our tent that night, surprising even us! And since we can't legally serve it at our own Taproom (got to love Tennesse laws), you'll want to try this one while you can.

Progress on the new brewery

We're making progress at the new place. The new trench drains are set, and we'll soon be pouring a new concrete slab in the brewery to handle the load of all the tanks. After that, we'll be installing the new sprinkler system (yay! more money!) and then we can start moving tanks inside. Meanwhile, we'll be fixing the old storefront windows and working on the new taproom.

Yazoo Cash for Clunkers

Meet the newest addition to the Yazoo fleet - a pretty much stock 1956 Ford F100. I had a 1954 F100 when I was in high school, and have always regretted selling it when I went to college. If you look at our Pale Ale label, you can see Lila's rendition of that old truck. We had a lot of fun in that old truck, and I have been on the look out for one for years. I saw it on the side of the road in Ardmore, Alabama, and after a little cash for a clunker changed hands, I drove it back to Nashville. We're going to get it fixed up into a daily driver, paint it and christen it with some Yazoo signage and some old kegs in the back, and then take it around to different events in Nashville.

Yazoo Sue tap locations...

Check back to this post often if you want to see where you can try our Yazoo Sue, a cherry-wood smoked porter weighing in at about 7.5% abv:

8/13 going on tap at Broadway Brewhouse, in midtown near Vanderbilt
8/14 should be going on tap at 12th South Taproom soon, hopefully today