Back in October we got our little hint at this collaboration between the east end’s Blank Slate Brewing company and the city’s Gypsy collaborators ‘Quaff Brothers” when Blank Slate Brewing company founder/brewer Scott LaFollette posted this glorious photo to twitter.
Bourbon barrel peppermint RIS… Coming soon… @Quaffbros #merryxmas pic.twitter.com/WVKi1RPtxV
— Blank Slate Brewing (@NotBlankSlate) October 12, 2015
I’m not sure that it’s going to be easy for anything to top last years Fume experiment (Scott added some crushed candy canes, and ginger to the smoked beer creating what I think is one of my favorite holiday beers to be made in recent years). But this might just do it for me… There is definitely a time and a place for the “traditional” winter warmer ales that we have been familiar with for so long, but It’s especially exciting for me to see breweries here in the city pushing what they want to release as their winter seasonals in some other directions. It only makes sense for a brewer like Scott to be doing this beer.
We don’t know a ton of information about the beer yet, other than judging by the photo Scott posted, it looks like the stout is aged in Buffalo Trace barrels… which happens to be my go-to distillery. The label approval that we’re seeing come from the TTB is for a 22oz bomber bottle, which is likely to create a little bit of buzz locally with people trying to snatch some of these up. This will be a fun one to see how ti progresses in a cellar over time. So… I’ll keep you updated on news of when this is coming out as we hear more, I hope that it’s soon for winter beers sake… we shall see!