As a conglomerate privately owned businesses, Renegade Reps is a vehicle for creating entrepreneurs. Through creating inter-related businesses and putting them in the hands of those who may not otherwise be able to begin a business of their own, Renegade Reps hands a profitable and reputable new concept over to people who can make the most of them. We continue our relationships with cooperative small business that help each other create that mystical "synergy" that we all talk about.
I finally, finally, finally got some Cold Hop local to me! Drinking one as I write this and I couldn't be happier with the outcome.
For those who are not initiated - Cold Hop is Boulder Beer's release as a British Style Pale Ale, the brewery's description as such:
"With a nod to our founders' roots as homebrewers, we tapped into the expertise of an old chum, Charley Papazian, author of "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing". Expanding on one of his favorite recipes by giving it our own twist, our brewers crafted Cold Hop - a cult favorite here at Boulder Beer Company. Rich golden malts from Great Britain combined with rare, aromatic and flavorful Czech and New Zealand hops make up the backbone of Cold Hop, our modern take on British-style ale."
At 6.3% ABV and 46 IBUs, this brew is made with Willamette, Czech, Saaz, Hallertau, Hercules, and what is apparently a massive amount of Nelson Sauvin hops. Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaah! A grapefruit lover's sticky and resinous wet dream.
We ran into this great brew on draft for the first time this year in South Florida and have been dying to get some draft in our local market. Well, ABBEY hooked it up last night. My Sunday is spent drinking on the Cold Hop.
Get down to ABBEY quick and ask for some of this unbelievable brew. But don't ask for too much 'cause I need my fair share. Cheers!
After what seemed like years of planning (and a month of teetotalling prior), the Boulder Brewing Beer Crawl in downtown DeLand finally arrived. Thanks to the generous donation of beer from Jeff Brown of Boulder Brewing, we were able to raise money for Mainstreet DeLand.
A few things about Boulder brewing if you're not privy: Boulder Brewing is Colorado's first microbrewery, having been established in 1979.
These guys have seen many, many breweries come and go. Makers of the legendary Hazed and Infused dry-hopped ale, Boulder Brewing received the 43rd brewing license ever issued in the United States. Not only is their beer great, they are also PACE Certified as a green brewery and take tons of steps to help save the environment. In fact, every 6 pack of Boulder beer you buy, you can feel good knowing that the carriers are made from 100% recycled paperboard! This company is truly a company that I feel very lucky to be affiliated with. So we put together this little beer crawl to raise money for Mainstreet DeLand. Mainstreet is the organization that is responsible for keeping DeLand vital and they do what they can to ensure people keep coming downtown. A little-known thing about Mainstreet is that most of the events they carry on are money losers. This being the case it's always nice to help raise money for them and help aid in those events such as Monsters on Mainstreet where the kids can come out and trick-or-treat during Halloween season. This is also an organization that I'm proud to be a partner with and I'm always enthused at their activity. We were able to involve 10 different location for the crawl and had 5 different beers to choose from. This way, folks could cherry pick where they wanted to drink and we could ensure they could be in their comfort zone. The 5 beers that we had ran the gamut of styles: Hazed and Infused, Mojo IPA, Sweaty Betty Hefeweizen, Kinda Blue, and Singletrack Copper.
Thanks to the hard work put on by my buds at S.R. Perrott, we had a banner made for each locale that had the name of the restaurant and the Boulder Beer they were serving. This way, people could just walk up and know what was being served. With some of the crowds that developed, that was a good thing. The banners ended up beautiful and I was especially proud of the giant Boulder logos on them - but of course I'm biased.
The locations cover nearly the entirety of downtown: Abbey, DaVinci, Bill & Frank's Brickhouse, The Elusive Grape, Casey's on the Corner, Issues, De La Vega, Mainstreet Grill, The Grotto, and Dublin Station; all took part and all poured massive amounts of brew!
I began my adventure losing a weight loss bet, but was comforted by a delicious gift of some brews that my buddy Mike at Dunedin Brewery gave me from his trip out west: Fort George brewery out of Oregon. We had cans of their Vortex IPA, the Cavatica Stout, and the Quick Wit, which was an unbelievable Belgian Wheat with lemongrass - Yum!
So me and my buddy Defran caught a little buzz at the house and then headed downtown for some brews. First stop - Abbey for some Hazed. I can't get enough Hazed. The wonderful thing about this beer is that the heavy dry-hopping produces a massive floral aroma but the additional hops does not add bitterness so you get a huge nose, huge flavor, and and easy finish. I absolutely love this beer.
Walking out, Steve was hooking up some Hoopla Pale Ale outside and I had to have a glass. Another interesting beer. This one was a collaboration beer between the brewery and Kyle Hollingsworth of the band The String Cheese Incident. See video insert of the story behind Hoopla. This is another that I love because you can have quite a few and not see palate fatigue on it.
Next stop was to Casey's to get me some Sweaty Betty. In my opinion the most underrated beer in Florida. This is an extremely flavorful bavarian wheat that has massive aromas of banana and clove and is so incredibly beautiful on draft. It appears like you'd imagine white stained glass would when you put it in the sun. A gorgeous beer with a gorgeous name. I dig it!
And on to Davinci to have some Mojo IPA. This one is a very citrusy IPA and at 7ish percent alcohol is no lightweight. We do well with the Mojo and it always makes me look forward to the Mojo Risin' Double IPA that we get in January. Awesome IPAs all the way around.
At Davinci we had a few glasses of whiskey, too. Always my first love, I just can't say no to whiskey in any of its forms and when I see someone order a glass of Jack, I just hafta have one myself. What can I say? The point is, I was getting pretty loopy at this point and one of my favorite bands to watch in DeLand, The Republik.
So, a quick Singletrack at Issues and back to Abbey. Singletrack is a neat little beer. A very flavorful amber ale that just packs a ton of flavor into a very drinkable brew. The Singletrack in glass, we head to Abbey and on to see some Republik.
This is a band that is definitely worth checking out. They travel nationally, but play quite a bit in Florida. I own one of their CDs that have their own material on it and they are quite good songwriters as well. Talented band and they seem like nice fellas too.
Once inside, I settled back in with my Hazed & Infused and relished in how great my world is. Great band, great night, great cause. Very happy with how everything went and I'm proud of all involved. Big thanks to everyone who took part. Cheers!
Of course nearest and dearest to my heart is the first business that I ever owned, Abbey. I opened Abbey in 2006 and sold it on January 1, 2011. This bar has been the source of some of my life's greatest joys and greatest sorrows. Abbey made me who I am today, for better or worse. It will always be one of my greatest accomplishments and my greatest failures.
Anniversary day is always one of my favorite of the year and although I don;t own Abbey anymore, the excitement is still the same. This year, as a Renegade Rep, I get to affect the bar in a totally different way and this adds even more excitement to the event.
This year I get to represent some of my favorite breweries in the world, many of which I was serving the day we opened our doors. Newest in this mix is the legendary Trappiste beer, Chimay. We began working with Chimay just two days ago, so adding it to our repertoire right before Anniversary day sends chills down my spine. On this day, I get to serve Chimay to some of my favorite people not as their bartender, but as a representative of the very company that moved many of them into beerlover-hood.
From the Renegade standpoint, our beers have a great showing this year. On draft, we have Boulder Hazed & Infused and Kinda Blue, Chimay Cinq Cents, and Lazy Magnolia Jefferson Stout. Very nice! Among all of the other great things about this day, this is also always a day that allows me to see some people I don;t get to see very often. It always brings out the old friends and it reminds me of how much I miss all of them. In particular, I was over-joyed at hearing that my good buddy Harris English was gonna visit for a bit. Harris was a salesman for our local Bud guys, Quality Brands, back in the day. Those guys were awesome and I made great friends with most of them. The irony that a place that is diametrically opposed to Anheuser Busch becomes best of friends with the very guys who sell it is testimony to how much our local guys rocked and what fans of craft beer they are.
What Harris didn't bother to tell me was that he was going to be bringing a world of vintage beer deliciousness with him that was going to get my day started with a bang and inevitably finish with an ouch. Among the good stuff he brought was: 2 year old Old Horizontal Barleywine, a 2008 and 2011 120 Minute IPA, 2 year old Golden Monkey and V-12, 4 year old Midas Touch, Barrel Aged Brrrrrbon, and a 2008 Double Black Stout. Additionally, I had been hanging onto some bottles of Cascade brewing Cherry and a batch 1 Ommegeddon. Not a bad way to start a night of drinking.
Needless to say, once we were finished working on these bottles and passing around some samples, the buzz was working just right. Just as we had finished the last sample Harris brought and were about to open the Cascade Cherry, Bobby and Ryan from Daytona Beverages walk in and we continued to work on the bottles we had opened.
In addition to the aforementioned brews, on draft were St. Bernardus ABT 12, Merry Monks, and Golden Monkey which would allow you to put together a flight of Belgian and Belgian-Inspired beers. As anyone who knows me well enough already knows, it is the Belgian Brews that really get my motor humming and to see a Belgian-Inspired beer flight brings tears to the old eyes.
Before I knew it, I had lost track of time and had to arrange the giveaways we had prepared from Chimay, Hobgoblin, and Monty Python Holy Ail. We had supplied glassware to give for those who bought draft of Chimay and had some raffle prizes of Monty Python, Hobgoblin, and Xingu T-shirts. T-Shirts for small breweries always go over well and the Monty Python line is great because they have girly tees as well as the standard men's t-shirts. Not many breweries offer tees for girls and they always light up when they see that some are made for them.
All in all, it was a great night, we sold a lot of beer, and I got to visit with people that I don't get to see as much as I would like. I wish you all the same good fortune that I have had with some great folks. Cheers!
My buds at ABBEY decided to take the Blueberry concept to a new level. Where the defacto idea that many bars rely on is to throw some blueberries into the bottom of a glass filled with a blueberry beer to add a flair to the fruity brew. Throwing blueberries into a Randall and infusing the beer with fresh blueberries is new to me and I was excited to try it.
Now, where this idea really benefits is that Boulder Brewing's offering is much lighter and drier than most blueberry beers and adding fresh, natural flavors really make more sense in this type of beer than in the heavier Kool Aid versions.
If you are not already familiar with the label, the Boulder Brewing Kinda Blue is a recently-released product, premiering just last year. This is the 10th beer in the brewery's Looking Glass Series, which represent slightly "larger" beers than their traditional core line that the brewery began with.
On the Randall, the flavor of blueberry intensifies in much the same way as the addition of hops adds to a beer infused the same way. It gives it a freshness that is simply impossible to gain straight out of the keg. In much the same way that you could ask "why not just have a hoppier beer" the question is answered in much the same way. The additional berry flavor is certainly a welcome addition, but to simply add more blueberry to the beer at the brewery would not have the same effect. As a blueberry beer, I dig it. As a Randalled blueberry beer, I really dig it!
So here we are again. This is the third year of the DeLand Craft Beer Festival http://www.facebook.com/DelandCraftBeerFestival and we have achieved thus far what we intended to do - make it better each year than the last. This year represents a huge leap forward as we have added a rare and vintage booth to the already impressive list of beers being poured.
Added last year were our breakout sessions, which are essentially half hour classes on various topics in the beer industry that are held by respected professionals in the field. We have four classes this year including Jeff Brown of Boulder Brewing discussing the ins and outs of moving into new markets, John Lasseter from Rogue discussing the use of locally grown ingredients, Tom Meonch of Unique Beers on the topic of bottles versus cans, and Bryan Hansen of Craft Brewers Alliance on barrel ageing beers.
But more on the actual festival later. This weekend begins on Thursday, where the local bars are beginning their kickoffs of this weekend with some great promotions. Before I headed out to an event in Orlando, I was able to stop into ABBEY delandabbey.com and get a first taste of some of their rare drafts they have pulled out for this event. Of course, a beer that has been three years in the tasting, a 2009 World Wide Stout http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/occassional-rarities/world-wide-stout.htm on draft was my way to get motivated for a long trip. Daneaux of Mermaid Juice Brewery was also kind enough to let me sample some of his brew before I left and they were great as always.
ABBEY also has on draft as we speak, Boulder Brewing Hazed and Infused, Mojo Risin Double IPA, and Killer Penguin Barleywine; DFH 120 and World Wide Stout; Holy Mackerel, Mack in Black, and Panic Attack; Lazy Magnolia's Southern Pecan and Jefferson Stout; and of course a list of great Belgians. \
Tomorrow begins the massive set-up and the next few days are some of the happiest days of my year. I'm very proud to be a part of this event and feel fortunate that Mainstreet DeLand went for this crazy idea three years ago when we pitched it to them. Cheers!!
