This Saturday, September 15, 2012 we’re releasing number nine in our Ultimate Box Set series. This one is a Remixed Track that pays homage to Guns n’ Roses’ cover of the Bob Dylan classic, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
Track 9 began as a few barrels of Cuvee de Tomme that hadn’t matured enough to make it to bottling last year. To those we added currants and an additional dose of Brett and let Nature do what she would. The result is a jammy brew with just the right amount of tartness and funk. You’ll find the beer details (blend, ABV, liner notes, album art, etc.) on the website here. Details on the other Box Set beers can be found on the Box Set home page.
The tasting room doors will open at 10:30 am for this special event. As with all Box Set releases, the beers must be consumed on site, same day. Unopened bottles may not be carried out. Each bottle is 375ml and is $15 each.
Cuvee de Tomme 2011
The long wait is over! Cuvee de Tomme 2011 is scheduled for release in the brewery on Saturday December 17, 2011.
While larger than the 2010 release, the total run for this year’s CdT is still extremely limited, so bottles will be a brewery-only release while draft will be available in limited quantity here in Southern California.
Kevin Hopkins, Hospitality Manager
If you’ve had the opportunity to visit The Lost Abbey Tasting Room in the past couple of months, you’ve probably noticed a new (old) face behind the bar. Kevin Hopkins
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Kevin Hopkins, manager of our new Hospitality department.
As the HM, Kevin’s responsible for overseeing pretty much all of our customer-facing operations including customer service, the tasting room, tours, parties, and special events — both in the brewery and around San Diego (whew).
Those of you who have been members of The Faithful for some time will probably recognize Kevin from his frequent volunteer work at our special events (competence doesn’t go unpunished around here, so we brought him on board and put him in charge), but he’s actually been a craft beer connoisseur long before Lost Abbey — a couple of decades, in fact — first in the U.K. and Europe and later right here in San Diego.
When he’s not serving beer and propounding the superiority of upper Yakima over lower Yakima hops or the many virtues of a good stout, you’ll find Kevin looking up — literally.
Kevin’s a long-time flying buff who doesn’t just love the sound of a plane thundering overhead, he loved it so much, he spent years managing airshows full of them. No too coincidentally, he’s also an accomplished pilot who takes to the air as often as he can. (Good thing too. We need someone to captain The Lost Abbey Airship Gabriel.)
You can catch Kevin in the tasting room most weekdays and the occasional weekend. For all his latest tasting room and local updates, you can also follow him on twitter at @LostAbbeyKevin. On other days, just look overhead. If you see a plane pulling barrel rolls, that’s probably him.
First Ever: Commercial Conclave
Send us a concept for a commercial; win and you get it filmed! Got an Idea for an Ad?
You know the scenario. You’re sitting there with your friends, enjoying a perfect glass of craft beer, and suddenly you’ve got a great idea for a commercial. (If this has never happened to you, you are drinking the wrong kind of beer.)
Well now here’s you’re chance to capitalize on your creativity!
The whole month of December we’ll be accepting submissions for Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey 60 second commercial concepts. From all the submissions we’ll select one concept (via a very serious Conclave process) to be filmed as an actual advertisement for our brewery. The winner will receive an all expenses-paid two-day trip to San Diego, V.I.P. status at Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey and go on set to film the commercial with our acclaimed in-house director, Ryan Tillotson!
Full details, rules, limits, legalese and fine print will be available on The Lost Abbey website starting December 1, 2011.
Date:December 17 December 24, 2011 – 12:00pm – 7:00pm
This will be the release date for Cuvee de Tomme 2011, our multi-award winning bourbon barrel-aged aged strong ale with sour cherries.
Cuvee de Tomme 2011
Release Details:
Style: Cuvee de Tomme 2011
Format: 375ml cork-stoppered bottles
Price: $15 per bottle
Limits: 6 bottles per person
Supplies of this beer are extremely limited. Bottle sales will be brewery only and a select quantity of draft will be available in the Southern California region, however, it will not reach any of our other distribution areas (sorry).
Because we expect this beer to sell out quickly, we’ll open our doors at 11am for registration; bottle sales will begin at 12pm.
Standard disclaimer: This is a barrel-aged beer. As such release dates are subject to change based on the whims of the barrels.
Update 1: 12/14/11 – Release has been delayed by one week to December 24, 2011.
From the Director’s Scribe’s Chair What we did on our summer vacation
Editor’s Note: This spot is normally reserved for a few words from our director of brewery operations (DOBO), but Tomme’s off doing important DOBO things, so our Abbey Scribe, Sage, is filling in for him this month.
I am staring at a calendar above my desk that tells me the Great American Beer Festival is exactly three weeks from today. GABF? Already? Where did the summer go?
Oh, that’s right, we’ve been busy. So busy, in fact, that not only did we not get a vacation, we missed the July issue of this newsletter altogether. Let’s see… Cuvee punted to football season, Santa showed in July, our buddy Russ brought strawberries, the Witch came back witty as ever, and we found the Road to Helles to be paved with great beer. Plus, the brewhouse boys became the brewhouse boys and girl, the tasting room got a little more elbow room and we had everyone down for breakfast before Stone Brewing’s anniversary party.
Add that to a release angels and demons in the Abbey tomorrow, a tidal wave of fresh hops in a week or two, Denver mid-month, a return just in time for a beer and boobs and finally, a fine (and long-anticipated) Cuvee de Tomme to finish September.
Yikes. And I thought we were busy.
I’ll tell you what. You catch up on what’s new at Lost Abbey below. Me, I need to go and find a bigger calendar.
Christmas in July Wrap-up
Christmas in July 2010Back on July 24th we held our annual Christmas in July party and fund raiser. If you’re not familiar with our (non)holiday shindig, each year we celebrate the release of barreled Santa’s Little Helper (aged in bourbon barrels for a year) with a Christmas party and fundraiser to benefit Toys for Tots. There’s food, music, photos with Santa and — of course — great beer, so it always ends up being quite the celebration.
This year we raised nearly $10,000 in toy and cash donations for Toys for Tots. Thanks to the generosity of our guests that day, a lot of kids will have have a better Christmas than they might otherwise.
For those of you who weren’t able to attend, we have a huge photo gallery of the day’s festivities. If you did come to the party, we’ve also posted all the Santa photos, so you can pick yours up (just in time for Christmas card season!)
At her age it might be premature to call Devon Randall “the Most Interesting Woman in the World”, but she’s certainly on the right track to earn the title.
A Berkeley grad who’s conquered real estate, climbed mountains, run with Alaskan sled dogs, and sailed a catamaran from South Africa to Trinidad in just a few short years, even Vladimir Putin would have a hard time not being impressed with her achievements.
Devon discovered craft beer while still living in Berkeley and quickly took to homebrewing. Two years later she found herself living in Santa Monica, California, and traveling south in her spare time to San Diego to learn what she could about the beer Mecca. It wasn’t long after, in her typical fashion, Devon decided to make a “dramatic” change, dump her current occupation, and jump into craft brewing with both feet even though she didn’t have a job waiting.
At first she made the 90 mile from LA to San Diego trip daily volunteering at breweries and learning what she could. This eventually led to some part time work at The Lost Abbey where her talent and abilities were quickly realized. She made the move from Santa Monica to San Diego in June and became an official member of our brewhouse team in August.
These days you’ll find Devon doing everything from brewing to bottling, soaking up as much knowledge as she can with an eye towards being a “famous girl brewer” with her own brewpub down the road. Given all she’s already accomplished, we have no doubt she’ll succeed.
If you happen to see Devon in the brewery or at a Lost Abbey event, make sure to say hi and buy her a beer. (Saisons are her favorite.)
Upcoming Events
September 17-19 Great American Beer Festival | Denver, CO
This is the big one. The one where, as the DOBO says, “we bring the noise”. Look for us in the Lost Abbey and Port Brewing booths in the Pacific section of the festival itself as well as our peeps making appearances around town during the week. (follow us @lostabbey on Twitter to find out where we’ll be.)
September 24 Beer for Boobs | Lost Abbey Brewery San Marcos, CA
Help us & our friends at White Labs support support the Susan G. Komen philanthropic trust and The 3 Day event to help find a cure for breast cancer. $10 gets you you a commemorative Beer for Boobs pint glass and two pints of any Lost Abbey or Port Brewing beer on tap.
New Beer Releases
August 28, 12pm — 6pm Deliverance
Our first release of the embodiment of good versus evil in a barrel-aged blend. Part bourbon barreled The Serpent’s Stout, and part brandy barreled The Angel’s Share, this is our most anticipated release of the summer. (May reach limited distribution)
September 25, 12pm — 6pm Cuvee de Tomme
A release pushed back repeatedly by cool weather and barrels unwilling to create the beer any faster, the 2010 vintage of Cuvee finally emerges after nearly a year and a half in the barrel. (May reach limited distribution)
October 4 High Tide
Our autumn fresh-hopped IPA, the release of this one actually depends on the timing of the hop harvest. The past two years the harvest & brew dates were in the first week of September. Based on that we anticipate the release by the first week in October. (Will reach full distribution)
Serious Eats’ Maggie Hoffman is back this week with a review of “‘mostly” sour American fruit beers. We’re pleased to see three of our beers — Amorosa, Cuvee de Tomme and Red Poppy — among those earning a very respectable 4 plus out of 5 stars.
Serious Eats reviews American fruit sour beers[Photo credit: Maggie Hoffman]
From the story:
Ask a beer fanatic what they’re into these days, and chances are they’ll wax poetic about sour beers.
Inspired by the puckery beers of Belgium, American brewers are playing with yeasts and bacteria and fruit like never before.
While we’re not really all that interested in who can make the sourest beer imaginable, we’re thrilled at all the great, creative options coming out of American breweries. Some of these delectable examples are juicy, zippy, and full of real fruit flavor; others are funky and horsey, quite challenging for the beginner–and sometimes thrilling to the nerdiest among us…
As you can see from the photo, the story also includes reviews of New Glarus, Captain Lawrence, Russian River, and several other breweries’ fruit brews. A great read.
Cuvee de Tomme is looking both Rico and Suave in today’s Esquire Magazine blog Eat Like a Man. Cuvee de Tomme at Esquire.com
From the article:
Does your lady drink more Chardonnay than IPA? Try converting her – gently – with these crossover brews: They’re smooth Belgian-style ales with hardly any bitterness but a ton of luscious flavor. Oak barrels (and the microorganisms living within their wooden walls) mellow out the beer and make it taste like nothing you’ve ever tried before.
This is the release date for Cuvee de Tomme (2010 vintage).
This is a limited release and will be available in bottles directly from the brewery only.
Details:
Date: December 11, 2010 – 12pm – 6pm
Beer: Cuvee de Tomme
Format: 375ml cork-finished bottles
Price: $15/bottle
Max: 4 bottles per person
Standard disclaimer: this is a barrel-aged beer. As such release dates are subject to change based on the whims of the barrels.
Update 1: June 22, 2010 – Release date has been pushed back to Aug. 28, 2010.
Update 2: Aug 11, 2010 – Release date has been pushed back to Sept. 25, 2010.
Update 3: Sept. 13, 2010 – Barrels aren’t shaping up like Tomme wants, so the Cuvee release has been pushed back again.
Update 4: Oct. 13, 2010 – Great news! There’s going to be a Cuvee release after all! It will, however, be an extremely limited release and will not go into distribution. A full case count & purchase limits will be posted as soon as it’s available.
Update 5: Nov. 11, 2010: Cuvee de Tomme has been bottled but the release is being pushed to December to allow the bottles to properly condition.
Wine Enthusiast Magazine has published its list of the top 25 beers of 2009. We’re please to find two Lost Abbey beers — Cuvee de Tomme and Duck Duck Gooze — made the list, both with excellent ratings of 93 out of 100. Along with our neighbor and good friend Stone Brewing, we’re the only breweries to have two beers on the list (the Stone-Nonge-Jolly Pumpkin collaboration, Special Winter Ale, and Vertical Epic 09.09.09 both scored very solid 92’s).
Here’s a selection from the Cuvee review in the article:
…A ton of things going on in the mouth: flavors of bourbon, sour cherry, coffe cream, walnut and more balanced by appropriate acidityto counter the weight and heft of the flavor profile. An infinite finish with minimal carbonation and high abv makes this an ecellent sipper to be shared among good friends or stored in the cellar for years to come.
Cuvee de Tomme will release this day. This is an annual release of the barrel-aged beer.
Bottles will be available in 375ml and 750ml cork-stoppered bottles with a limit of 12 total bottles (any combination) per customer. The 375ml bottles will be $15, 750ml bottles $30.
I am staring at a calendar above my desk that tells me the Great American Beer Festival is exactly three weeks from today. GABF? Already? Where did the summer go?
At her age it might be premature to call Devon Randall “the Most Interesting Woman in the World”, but she’s certainly on the right track to earn the title.
