Bottle Release Day 2017
We hope you will join us in our Tasting Room for our Bottle Release Day on November 24th, 2017. We will be releasing several bottles to-go as well as for onsite consumption. We are looking forward to sharing these special projects with you. For more information about the beers, check below.
Booger Hill – barrel-aged biere de garde made with local honey
This beer’s name is a nod to Booger Hill Bee Company, the Danielsville, GA-based farm from which we sourced the honey used in the brew. Booger Hill fermented in oak barrels with our house-mixed culture of yeast and bacteria and underwent 16 months of aging in the barrels.
Booger Hill (7.8%) presents a flavor and aroma of almonds and subtle cherry, balanced by a palate of medium acidity. The beer was bottled April 2016 and in September 2017 was disgorged – a technique commonly used when making sparkling wine.
“A tremendous amount of time and work went into this beer,” says our Wood Cellar and Specialty Brand Manager Blake Tyers. “Each step along the way was challenging, a lot of labor, and a bit of loss too – making the finished product really special.”
Booger Hill is the second release from our Locally Grown Series. We use the Series to showcase local ingredients sourced from farms in and surrounding Athens. DaySpring, our grisette, was the first release from the series and featured wheat from DaySpring Farms in Danielsville.
Athens illustrator and CCBC staff member Melissa Merrill, who has now designed several labels for us, created the artwork for Booger Hill. Merrill painted the original artwork with a Booger Hill honey reduction and pollen from hop flowers.
Dayspring – grisette made with local wheat
We sourced the wheat used in the Dayspring (5.3%) locally from DaySpring Farms (Danielsville, GA), for which the beer was named. We used the local wheat in the 2015 release of DaySpring, in addition to other previous releases and collaborations.
“The first batch of DaySpring was the first time we sourced wheat from the Brett family, who run DaySpring Farms,” says Tyers. “Since then we’ve become good friends and we’ve tried to use their grains in a few of our beers now. We feel like it has such a sense of place to where we are and it’s always great working with a local farm. Being able to do that again and make another beer with their name on it is a privilege, an honor, and an awesome way to be able to extend that friendship.”
Much of the flavor profile DaySpring presents is driven by the wheat, yeast, and traditional European hops used in the beer. DaySpring is dry and drinkable with a bit of pastoral funk, grassiness, black tea notes, and an herbal hop character. The beer was bottled in August of 2017 and has been bottle conditioning since then.
DaySpring (2015) was released just a year after our brewery opened, and served as the first release from its Locally Grown Series.
The 2017 release was bottled in green 750mL bottles. This is the first beer we’ve packaged in green bottles and chose them in order to allow consumers to shape the flavor path of the beer and to have the ability to create an intentional light-struck character to the beer if desired. We decided to try this method after having great conversations with the brewers at Jester King Brewery on the topic.
Golden Door – mixed fermentation saison aged in oak barrels
Golden Door (6.7%) is an expression of our house-mixed culture of yeast and bacteria – the backbone of our barrel program – and time. The flavor of the beer is driven by its time aging in wood. The name is a nod to a quote by American botanist and inventor George Washington Carver that says, “education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”
“As saisons were made for farmers and fieldworkers, we wanted to honor a person who made a difference in the agricultural community, especially in Georgia,” says Tyers. “We take inspiration from the curious thinkers, inventors, artists, and explorers, and with saisons being so important to agriculture we picked out George Washington Carver and used a quote of his to name the beer.”
Golden Door was aged in oak barrels for one year and bottle conditioned. The beer was bottled April 2017.
The label was designed by local artist and CCBC staff member Melissa Merrill. The original artwork was inspired by Carver’s quote the beer’s name references.