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Appalachian Spring

spring seasonals

Building out a product lineup has been one of the most enthralling parts of owning and operating a brewery. It’s entirely open-ended, and a the choices a brewery makes in regard to its family of beers defines its niche. We’ve been tweaking and adding to our lineup ever since we brewed our first batches of White Sky and General Braddock’s in our fraternity garage. Business Casual and Build and Destroy came shortly thereafter, and those original four that we launched with became five with the recent addition of Table Beer. Seasonals, however, have been incorporated piecemeal; starting last summer with Garden Party, we’ve been slowly building our lineup of two annual releases per season. Mexican Coffee, our first fall seasonal, was the fastest-selling beer we’ve made to date. Our pair of winter seasonals, Winter Warmer and Mammoth, were similarly well-received, selling out much sooner than expected. So now that spring is soon to be upon us, we’re proud to announce the two newest beers in the Brew Gentlemen lineup: Loose Seal, a well-hopped saison fermented with a blend of saccharomyces and brettanomyces (“brett”) yeast, and Overgrowth, a dank, juicy pale wheat ale.

When our pilot batch of cucumber wheat beer (part of our now-defunct Rapid Prototype Factory Series) was met with an exceptional level of praise, we knew that it warranted a spot in the seasonal lineup. It reappeared a couple of months later under the name Garden Party, the step towards our eventual goal of having eight reoccurring seasonals. A similar apotheosis has now occurred with New World Saison, a dry, funky saison that we very quietly released last December. We’ve renamed and redesigned New World in order to match the branding of our other flagships and seasonals, and it will join the seasonal lineup this spring as Loose Seal.

Alongside our newfound semiaquatic friend is a beer that combines two of our favorite aspects of the beer world: the clean, refreshing, American-style wheat beer, and the modern trend of hop-forward beers with low bitterness. The result: a smooth, soft wheat beer made with a huge addition of US and New Zealand hops, bursting with big notes of tropical fruit and pine. It’s named after an often-beautiful symptom of Braddock’s dramatic downfall: Overgrowth.

Personal context time: I’ve been in love with the concept of nature retaking human construction for as long as I can remember. As a kid, discovering overgrown abandoned cars in the woods felt like finding buried treasure. Fallout is my favorite video game franchise. Hiyao Miyazaki, my all-time favorite animator, uses overgrowth as a recurring theme across several of his movies.

Somewhat obviously, this long-standing interest in abandoned and overgrown things is one of the reasons I’m so drawn to Braddock. There’s no time that it’s more evident than in spring, when small sprouts of green begin popping up in all the nooks and crannies of the abandoned structures. So when it came time to give a name to one of our lushest, most floral beers, Overgrowth seemed like a perfect fit. Although we kept the design clean and simple to match its peers, we’ve already begun playing around with overgrown imagery with our labels for New World Saison and its sequel, Nelson Saison, with more to come.

2012-12-16 19.24.25

The darker, thicker, heavier beers that helped get us through the cold months are slowly being replaced by fresher, crisper offerings. We’re incredibly excited to introduce these two new additions to the lineup over the coming weeks, especially as we usher in those first few glimpses of green.

Overgrowth will be released on draft starting Wednesday, March 18th, with Loose Seal following shortly thereafter. For the most up-to-date release information, join our weekly email blast.

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