Well, it seems funny to be “wrapping up” Spring and Summer several weeks into Autumn, but it’s been waay too long since our last update. We’ve been, as they say, wicked busy here at your friendly neighborhood brewery. Some of you may have begun to suspect we really were flushed out of the Barrel Cellar by the monsters at AB-InBev and permanently, um, silenced (blog entry 4.1.10). Now deep into Great Pumpkin Ale season, we’re just trying to keep up!

We had a great spring and summer here, with great patio weather, and the return of classic CBC brews like Spring Training IPA and CBC HefeWeizen, Arquebus, Easy Ryder, and Heather Ale. We’ve brought back some recent favorites like Cacow! and The Audacity of Hops, and also introduced several new beers like Aces High, Sun King, Flower Child IPA, and Jack’s Cream Ale. For those of you who missed any of these beers, Aces High was an all-Sorachi Ace-hopped Belgain IPA. The Sun King, which proved so popular it sold out in just over a week, was a little Belgian single flavored with four different types of citrus peel.Jack’s was another real fun one, as we hosted Indiana homebrewer Jack Fuqua for a day and brewed a 10 barrel batch of his award-winning homebrewed Cream Ale. If you missed it, you should be sad.

These recent days have also brought about a flurry of creative activity, despite the overwhelming presence of pounds and pounds of pumpkins going into batch after batch of beer. In fact, obliquely announced with the recent release of Penumbral IPA – an “almost black” Belgian IPA – comes news of a new series of beers under the umbrella of the Tabula Rasa Series. The Tabula Rasa (blank slate) series will celebrate outside-the-box creative brewing as informed by ancient history, poetry, philosophy, conceptual art, and rock ‘n’ roll music. Releases will be irregular but truly inspired, and more information will be forthcoming!

In Brew Crew news, longtime Assistant Brewer Kevin “Kevlar” O’Leary has up and moved to Ol’ Virginny. We’re certain he’ll be doing a lot to improve the local craft beer scene in Richmond. Still with us are Lead Brewer, Megan Parisi, and Asst. Brewer Ben Howe, plus we’ve formally added CBC server/bartender Travis Wilson to the brewstaff, as well as our newest member, Jay Sullivan. Ben and Jay are both presently enrolled in the American Brewers Guild in Middlebury, Vermont under the direction of Steve Parkes. We’re very proud to say that Ben was the inaugural recipient of the Greg Noonan Scholarship honoring the memory of our friend Greg, author and founder of the Vermont Pub and Brewery. We look forward to using the vast knowledge they will gain to make CBC’s beers even more extraordinary!

Chef David Drew and his amazing crew of cooks haven’t been standing idly by while the brewstaff had all the fun. Chef’s Farmers Market Plate, featured nightly, involved him biking daily to the many farmers markets in Cambridge and Somerville, choosing ingredients picked that morning to be featured on the menu that night! This turned out to be even more popular than we’d anticipated, with the Farmers Market Plate selling out quickly almost every night. Many of our seasonal menu changes brought exceptional ingredients from local farms like, well, I’ll just let Chef David himself chime in here…

“We had a great year full of amazing food from our local farmers. Here are some highlights:
Colchester Farm in Plympton
Amazing all natural organic pig…featured throughout the summer on our specials board
Verril Farms
The quality of their produce is always “standout.”  I honestly write the menus in accordance to their harvest schedule.  90% of the produce we used this summer, just a little less so now, is from Verril. The SweeTango apples they have now are bonkers!
Pat Woodbury
The old reliable, the most perfect and awesome clam. Featured all summer and still so in our linguini and clams.
Kimball’s fruit Farm
I hit this stand up every time I visited the markets (2-3 times a week).  They were a mainstay on our hugely successful “farmers market plate.” Awesome berries of course. The plums this year were delicious. Great tomatoes, too.
Butter Brook Organic Farm
Guy and Sheryl provide beautiful organic mixed greens that we use for all our salads all year long. They are greenhouse growers who also have amazing chickens and turkeys. Their chicken is on the menu year round as well. We got some delicious honey from their hives and extra virgin olive oil, too!
The CBC Patio
Phil “Brewdaddy” Bannatyne has done it again! Terrific yield this year. Loads of herbs used throughout the summer. We grew almost all of our own mint, chives, thyme, and basil. I even battered and fried the chive blossoms when they came out. A cool story to share with our blog readers: Someone must have not liked tomatoes in their side salad that comes with sandwiches. They threw it into a nearby flower pot/former beer barrel, and we got about 30 small green and red cherry tomatoes. I have plucked them and I’m pickling them as we speak. Look for our patio pickled green tomato “chow chow” soon!

Cheers,
David

David and his crew also put on several amazing CBC events like the 10th Annual Bass and Beer Fest, our annual homage to the mighty Atlantic striped bass, and more recently a very special 100 Mile Dinner featuring Colchester Farms and their neighbors. This event sold out two days after we announced it, before we’d even come up with a menu or beer pairings! The celery root bisque, terrine plate, and chicken ballotine were all beautifully plated and delicious, with the Great Pumpkin Ale poached pear dessert one of the most elegant plates ever, and a glorious finish. Many attendees commented on how much they loved the format (as well as the food and beer), so we will likely see a series of these 100 Mile events in the future. Having the farmers and their families as our guests at these events, and giving them the opportunity to both speak to the room and meet the people who enjoy the fruits of their hard labor, is a great experience for all. It really emphasizes the spirit of community, and though we may be preaching to the choir here in Cambridge, it is a valuable experience to be reminded that the food we eat comes from people who often struggle to maintain the viability of their land.

So, now it’s October! We’ve already chopped over 3,500 pounds of organic sugar pumpkins to satisfy our customers’ relentless craving for the Great Pumpkin Ale. Huge thanks to our friends at The Farm School for once again providing such bounty! We’ve brewed an additional couple of pumpkin/squash beers as specialty saisons, one lightly flavored with curry spices (Punjabi Pumpkin, on tap now), another created with 200 pounds of blue hubbard squash and 35 pounds of honey (Old Mother Hubbard, on tap soon!), both from Allandale Farm in Brookline. We’ll have a total of eight CBC-brewed pumpkin beers on tap for the big event on October 30th – the 3rd Annual Great Pumpkin Festival. We’ve emailed all of our brothers and sisters from around the country who are insane enough to join in our pumpkin beer madness, and we’re looking forward to having over 20 guest pumpkin beers. From whom, you ask? Well, Dogfish Head, Wormtown, The Alchemist, Avery, Heavy Seas, Elysian, Jolly Pumpkin, and Iron Hill, Watch City, Uinta, Martha’s Exchange, and Cisco, Smuttynose, Cape Ann, the Bruery, and Southern Tier to name just a few. Chef David will be coming up with another smash menu of pumpkin-infused delicacies. Here’s your reminder to get working on your costume!

Enjoy the Autumn weather (preferably on the CBC patio with a glass of beer), and we’ll talk again soon. Thanks and Cheers!

Peace,
Will