Our annual beer release and party to benefit the Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots Foundation!
Join us for a day of Christmas time festivities, great food and beer to celebrate the release of bourbon barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper and collect toys and cash to benefit the Marine Corp’s Toys for Tots foundation.
How Much: Photos with Santa, food and entertainment are all FREE when you bring a new, unwrapped toy valued at $15. No toy? That’s okay. Give a $15 cash donation to Toys for Tots at the door and you’re in! (Beers are all regular price!)
Events on tap:
Beer releases:
2012 Bourbon Barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper – 22oz bottles; $15 ea. / 6 bottle limit. Bottle sales begin at 12pm.
Food & Beer:
Food – Entrants will receive a ticket good for food at any of the four vendors in our mobile food court
On Tap – All of The Lost Abbey & Port Brewing’s full regular tap line-up, plus a few secret specialties (more on those as we approach the event…)
Activities:
A Visit from St. Nick
Santa Claus loves to visit us while he’s on vacation in San Diego! He’ll be dropping by the brewery from 12pm – 5pm so you can get you, your friends’ and family professionally photographed with him. Santa’s photo schedule will be 12-1, 2-3, 4-5 & 6-7
Toy Drive — Bring a new, unwrapped toy valued at $15 or more to benefit Toys for Tots
Giving Tree – Make an additional $15 cash donation to Toys for Tots (above & beyond the unwrapped toy) and you get to select a gift from the Christmas Tree. Gifts will include rare bottles, Port Brewing & Lost Abbey gear and tickets to our legendary Barrel Night during San Diego Beer Week.
Yeah, it’s August, but what the heck — it takes a little time to put these things together. Below is a quick video re-cap of the event deftly captured by our in-house director Ryan and hosted by Andy “MetromixSD” Killion.
Thanks to all the others who helped put the video together: editor Ryan Girkins, audio mixer Kyle Thompson, and musicians, the Dolbies. And, of course, all of you who attended and helped make it a great event and fundraiser for the Toys for Tots foundation.
Christmas in July at The Lost Abbey!
Join us for a day of Christmastime festivities, great food, beer and music to celebrate the release of bourbon barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper and to collect toys and cash to benefit the Marine Corp’s Toys for Tots foundation. Last year we raised over $10,000 in toys and cash donations — this year we’re trying to beat that!
Events on tap:
Beer releases:
2011 Bourbon Barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper – 22oz bottles; Release day only: $12 ea . Regularly: $15 ea. ; 4 bottle limit. (Yes, this beer will reach our distribution network in limited quantities.)
Food & Beer:
Food – We’re doing a real Christmas meal! We’ll be serving fresh smoked turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, yams, fresh-baked rolls and dessert
On Tap – All of The Lost Abbey & Port Brewing’s regular 21 tap line-up, plus a few secret specialties (more on those as we approach the event…)
Activities:
A Visit from St. Nick Santa - yes this guy, The REAL Santa, will be on-hand for photos
Santa Claus loves to visit us while he’s on vacation in San Diego! He’ll be dropping by the brewery from 12pm – 5pm so you can get you, your friends’ and family professionally photographed with him in the Barrel Room. Live Webcast
We’ll be doing a live web broadcast — this time from a platform high above the tasting room floor where our intrepid Anchor, Andy Killion, will cover the festivities. If you’re not able to attend, you’ll be able to watch the broadcast from your computer, tablet or smartphone via our brewcam page here*.
* Download the Ustream Smartphone app for Android and iPhone here.
Toy Drive — Bring a new, unwrapped toy valued at $15 or more to benefit Toys for Tots
Giving Tree – Make an additional $15 cash donation to Toys for Tots (above & beyond the unwrapped toy) and you get to select a gift from the Christmas Tree. Gifts will include rare bottles, Port Brewing & Lost Abbey gear and tickets to our legendary Barrel Night during San Diego Beer Week.
How Much: Photos with Santa, music, food and entertainment are all FREE when you bring a a new, unwrapped toy valued at $15. No toy? That’s okay. Give a $15 cash donation to Toys for Tots at the door and you’re in! (Beers are all regular price!)
Schedule of Events: To ensure that we’re not mobbed all at once and that everyone has a chance to get their photos with Santa, enjoy the food, music and get a ticket for the Giving Tree, we’re breaking the day into two equal sessions with exactly the same stuff in both sessions. The schedule is as follows:
Session 1
(12:00pm – 3:30pm)
12:00 – Doors open; Block 1 of Giving Tree Tickets available. (2 ticket max per person)
12:30 – Santa Arrives for photos
1:00 – Live Music: The Firkins; Food is served!
2:00 – Live Music: The Professors
3:00 – Giving Tree Drawing #1
3:30 – Session 1 ends
Session 2
(3:30pm – 7:00pm)
4:00 – Session 2 starts; Block 2 of Giving Tree Tickets available. (2 ticket max per person)
Ever since we found out that Santa is a big fan of The Lost Abbey (and that he has a vacation condo here in San Diego), we’ve been able to persuade him to turn out in the red suit to take photos with the folks attending our Christmas in July fundraiser and celebration. Of course, Santa demands the best, so we also convince famed-photographer Jon Schulz to step away from the supermodels, rock stars and professional athletes for a day and help us out.
Take a gander below at the photos this year’s visit from St Nick. (Sure, a few of the people haven’t sat with Santa in a while — for some, a long while — but the results are always entertaining.)
Oh, and if your picture appears here, feel free to download it and use it.
This past Wednesday, I attended the San Marcos Economic Development Committee meeting at City Hall here in San Marcos. During this luncheon, there was an award ceremony and, wouldn’t you know it, we won an EDE.
Since many of you readers out there may not know what an EDE is, I thought I would share with you that it stands for Economic Development Excellence award. All told, there were 8 EDE’s given out and Port Brewing earned the award for Product Excellence in Manufacturing. These awards are given to San Marcos based companies who display excellence in their business practices and promote the city at the same time.
Standing on stage (in front of all sorts of San Marcos City Council Members and Planners), it was an honor to receive this business based award.
You see, since we opened our doors some 4 years ago, Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey has won numerous awards at local, regional and even international beer competitions. All of these awards focus on specific beers competing against other beers. And we love to see our beers do very well. Yet being a very young company means we don’t typically get nominated nor win awards for our civic contributions. Still, the great people on the EDC committee thought we were worth recognizing.
I guess having a World Class brewery in San Marcos does makes great sense and I for one am glad we earned this recognition. Hats off to all of our employees who made this possible.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find some glass cleaner. Someone got their fingerprints on our new shiny trophy…
4th Anniversary Celebration Wrap-up
Our 4th anniversary celebration last month was our largest yet and was doubly exciting, as it almost didn’t happen.
This year we divided the party into two sessions and converted our barrelhouse loading area into an outdoor dining area. Combined with our new, larger tasting room we were able to comfortably accommodate all our guests.
Beyond the great music and the great beer (naturally), the other highlights of the day were the tours of the new barrelhouse led by Tomme himself. (1,000 oak barrels full of beer stacked, racked and awaiting the angels’ blessing is something to behold.)
The barrelhouse only has room for 20 or so people at a time, so the plan was for Tomme to guide a tour every 30 minutes or so. But once folks got inside, people naturally began asking questions, taking photos, etc., and each tour ended up being closer to an hour long. As a result, we only did half the number of tours planned, but we’re pretty sure those lucky enough to go enjoyed the time twice as much.
We’ve posted a photo album from the Anniversary party on the website.
Upcoming events Christmas in July Celebration & Fundraiser
Christmas in July
This July 24th, celebrate the release of the 2010 Bourbon-barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper and help us collect toys for the Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots Foundation. There will be food, music, photos with Santa, and, of course, great Lost Abbey / Port Brewing beers on hand.
There’s no admission, all we ask is that you bring a new, unwrapped toy worth $15 or more for Toys for Tots. Last year we collected nearly $10,000 in toys and cash donations for the Foundation, and this year we’re hoping to beat that and help a lot of kids who otherwise might not get a Christmas.
With our increased capacity and expanding distribution, our beers are showing up in places more than ever. You can help your fellow Lost Abbey / Port Brewing beer lovers by adding the location where you found our beers to the map on our website.
Restaurant, pub, retailer — it doesn’t matter. We want to know!
Tomme & SantaHere in San Diego, even when it’s supposed to be Christmas time, it rarely truly feels like Christmas. In December each year, other parts of the country, throw on their best Christmas sweaters and sing about how the “weather outside is frightful.” Us, we head for the beach and roast Marshmallows (not Chestnuts) by a bonfire. Yet, each year we at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey do our part to support seasonal beers with the production of not one but two Christmas beers- Santa’s Little Helper and Gift of the Magi.
Last August when we produced the 2008 Santa’s Little Helper Imperial Stout, we put a plan in motion to age a portion of the batch in Bourbon Barrels for a Christmas in July promotion that I wanted to do at the brewery. Last weekend, we had another kick ass event at the brewery (thanks to all of our volunteers who supported us)! There were great new beers in bottles and on tap (including the first release of Duck Duck Gooze). Chef Vince of course whipped up some amazing pizzas and The Professors sounded as tight as they could in a brewery environment. Santa Claus even paid us a visit. All told, it was a great event for the patrons of Lost Abbey.
But what truly made the event memorable was the overwhelming support that we received for Toys for Tots. As part of our Christmas in July promotion, we asked attendees to bring one unwrapped toy (valued at $15) in exchange for entrance to the party. I must say that I was blown away by the generosity of our people and clearly they understand that together we can make a difference. We raised over $10,000 worth of new toys from this event. Those who didn’t bring toys were asked for a cash donation and $1,500 was sent to the Toys For Tots Foundation as well.
It gave me goose bumps on Saturday night to stand next to all the great toys that we collected. It meant an awful lot to me that we were able to take something (like beer with the associated stigmas) and do great work for kids. Just a few of the bins of donated toys
I know that beer and children can be very taboo in our society but if you look at what we accomplished this weekend, I know this is not always the case. Personally, this was an incredibly gratifying and rewarding day. Many children will need help in order to celebrate Christmas this year. Knowing that our beer brought so many people together for this cause is an exceptional feeling.
So, to everyone who was there on Saturday and gave a little bit to help brighten the Christmas morning of so many children, I say thank you! Christmas in July has landed here at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey and will remain on our calendars each year from here on out.
The Giving Tree
Just a quick note to let you all know that we’ve wrapped the gifts and placed them under the Giving Tree! If you’d like to receive one of them on Saturday, we’re asking that you give a $15 donation, the proceeds of which will go to benefit the Toys for Tots Foundation. (There’s a limit of four donations per person so that more people have an opportunity.)
Here’s a list of what you’ll find under the tree come Saturday afternoon:
Brandy Angel’s 08 (750 ml) bottles
Bourbon Angel’s 09 (375 ml) bottles
Bourbon Angel’s 09 (750 ml) bottles
Cuvee de Tomme (375 ml) bottles
Cuvee de Tomme (750 ml) bottles
Isabelle Proximus (750 ml) bottles
Older Viscosity 09 (375 ml) bottles
Saints Devotion (750 ml) bottles
Veritas 004 (750 ml) bottles
Additionally, there’s also a number of super-special “Golden Ticket” rarities:
Angel’s Share 06 (750 ml) bottles
Cable Car 08 (750 ml) bottles
Cuvee de Tomme 06 (375 ml) bottles
Sinner’s 08 Blend (375 ml) bottles
Hope you’ve been good enough to make Santa’s “Nice” list this year.
2011 Bourbon Barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper – 22oz bottles; Release day only: $12 ea . Regularly: $15 ea. ; 4 bottle limit. (Yes, this beer will reach our distribution network in limited quantities.)
