It’s a double-release week!
We love it when we get to release two beers in one week — there’s a lot of buzz around the Tasting Room, preparing for the influx of fans, and getting excited about a new brew on the menu.
Regardless of our excitement about releasing two beers, these are two beers that you should definitely be excited about.
The first, an old favorite: Watermelon Wheat! And the second, a new favorite: Strawberry Sunset!
Both release on Friday, only through the Tasting Room!
Deciding which legacy beers to nix and which to bring back is a difficult process.
We know you have favorites. So do we. However, after eight years of brewing and, at the moment, 381 beers on Untappd, we simply can’t brew them all. If we tried, we’d never sleep and you’d only get one pint of every beer.
No one wants that.
Furthermore, we need to have the chance to brew up your next favorite beer. That’s the nature of the industry: if craft beer drinkers wanted to drink the same thing day in and day out, we’d brew nothing but Cape May IPA.
But you don’t. And neither do we.
So, each year, some beers end up on the chopping block — sometimes, some long-held favorites. It’s disappointing, but we have to do it.
Watermelon Wheat almost didn’t make the cut. Almost.
But, through a series of unexpected events — and a few champions throughout the brewery — not only is it back, but we’re canning it up for the first time — just in time for National Watermelon Day on August 3rd.
If you’ve ever been to a production brewery, you know that it’s one of the most wonderful-smelling places on the planet. Seriously. Walk into our production facility one day — escorted, of course — and simply stand there and inhale.
It’s heaven.
There’s once each year that it smells better. One time each year where the aromas from the production floor are even more intoxicating than the beer.
That’s the day we juice up our Watermelon Wheat.
Everyone gets involved, chopping up some 2,700 watermelons and adding them to the gigantic watermelon frappe we’ve got going on.
Watermelon Wheat releases August 3rd — National Watermelon Day! It’s suggested that, in order to celebrate National Watermelon Day, you have watermelon with every meal.
We suggest having Watermelon Wheat with every meal. Even brunch. Why not?
Check out the pictures below! They’re not scratch-and-sniff, so you won’t be able to smell anything, but… take our word for it.
Our Watermelon Wheat is one of our most-anticipated brews of the summer. And for good reason! Not only is it refreshing and delicious, it’s made with fresh watermelons for that straight-from-the-vine taste.
CMBC fans go crazy over this brew. Literally insane. It’s like a Tom Jones concert meets a British soccer match up in here. We need to bring in fainting couches and smelling salts.
Take a look at what our fans over at Untappd had to say about last year’s batch. This year, you’re bound to love it more than you have in previous years, if that’s even possible.
Swing down to the brewery and give it a try!
Juicing day for our Watermelon Wheat is one of our favorite days of the year. Not only does the brewery smell like a watermelon patch, but… well… let’s just say that not all of the watermelon gets into the beer. It’s one of those days that plays on all of our senses.
Jimmy only got one slice. “I’m a busy man,” he says.
Busy making killer brew, that is!
Four pallets of watermelons went into the brew this year. Four freakin’ pallets. Not including the rinds — because who wants that in their beer? — that’s about a ton of watermelons. 2,000 pounds.
It took about 5 hours with two people cutting and one person mashing. We picked them up from Tony’s Produce up the street in the Villas, and, of course, they’re seedless watermelons. No one wants to pick seeds out of their beer!
Check out the sweet stuff in the video below, and try to resist the urge to drink all of the beer. Actually, don’t try to resist the urge. Come down to the brewery!
So. Many. Melons.
150 to be exact.
That’s how many watermelons ended up in our batch of Watermelon Wheat this year. At an average of 20 pounds per melon, that’s a ton and a half of melons. “Now that figure includes the rind, which we don’t use,” says Head Brewer Brian Hink, “but it still a lot of fruit weight.”
That’s a big difference from our usual fruit beers. It took about 24 man hours (and woman hours, thanks to our magnificent intern, Paige) to cut and juice all the melons and pump them into the tank. “It took about four of us: JP, Nick, Paige, and myself with a few others on production filtering in and out.”
Nothing says summer like a watermelon beer.
Okay, that’s not true. Nothing says summer like a good watermelon beer. There are so many out there that don’t taste like the real, sun-
ripened, fresh-off-the-vine thing, but rather, like the processed, watermelon-flavored hard candies/water ices/jelly beans that can only imitate the real thing.
So, for the making of our own watermelon wheat beer, we brought in over 100 real melons and spent four hours slicing and dicing them into two, two-barrel stainless steel tanks. Then we liquefied it, and added the fruit to a 60% pilsner/40% wheat malt concotion with a neutral house yeast strain.
We know what you’re thinking: that base doesn’t sound very interesting. But that’s precisely the point. The more simple the beer, the more the watermelon flavor can shine. Since our star ingredient is such a delicate thing, we don’t want to overpower it. This is one of those cases where less is indeed more.
While the final product does have that great biscuity taste (and great head retention) lent by the wheat, the main flavor really is the watermelon, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
The beer will premiere at Brews by the Bay on August 29. Just one more reason to purchase those tickets… summer ain’t over yet.
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