Mother Earth Brewing

Happy New Year from all of us here at Mother Earth Brewing!  2012 was a fantastic year for us here at the brewery…we nearly doubled our beer production from 2011, had a great response to our brews at the SAVOR event in Washington, DC, won our first Great American Beer Festival medal (a bronze medal for Dark Cloud!), and for the first time expanded our distribution outside of North Carolina and began distributing both in Georgia and in Washington, DC.  We’re already full speed ahead in 2013 pumping out brews for the masses, so I wanted to take a few minutes and tell you about three special brews coming out in the next month that we’re really pumped about.

We released the first two brews in our Windowpane Series last year, Blackberries and Peaches, and the response was off the chart, with both getting major recognition across the state and even the country.  In January, we plan to release number three in the series, Windowpane: Figs & Raisins.  This brew had humble beginnings a couple of years ago as a collaboration with our friends at Carriage House Distillery in Lenoir, NC and The Raleigh Times Bar in Raleigh, NC.  Those two groups hooked us up with one of Carriage House’s apple brandy barrels and told us to concoct something to age in it for a special dinner.  So after thinking on it for a week, Brewmaster Josh Brewer woke up one morning and knew exactly what he wanted to do: an Abbey Dubbel, fermented with dried figs and raisins, and aged in the apple brandy barrel.  It turned out to be AMAZING, with an awesome sweetness from the dried fruits across the malty Dubbel base.  Needless to say, it was only around for mere minutes before it was promptly consumed.  But it was so awesome, that it’s now being reborn and we’re making it available statewide!  Look for this brew to land in late January at select bottle shops and bars across NC.

The fourth and final installment in the Windowpane Series is coming down the pipe in February: Windowpane Raspberries.  We really went barrel crazy on this one: it uses a Double American Wheat as the base (the same base found in Windowpane Peaches), but this time fermented with raspberries.  Half of the beer is aged in Chardonnay barrels, with the other half being aged in Pinot Noir barrels.  The two are then blended together before being bottled.  This one is coming along nicely during its aging process in the barrels, and we can’t wait to pull it out and let you try it.  Look for this ruby red beauty to land around Valentine’s Day.

The last beer I want to tell you about is one that we’re super excited about.  While ahead of his brew schedule one December morning, Josh grew a wild hair and decided he wanted to do something crazy, blurring classic style lines a little to create something unique, so he fired up the kettle and went to work.  The result of this creative outburst?  A German Pale Ale we’re calling Batch 533.  We started out with our Endless River Kolsch as a base, but the brew took a left turn once it got to the fermenter, being fermented with IPA yeast and also dry-hopped with two different varieties of Hallertauer hops.  The resulting beer turns out to be light-bodied and refreshing, with a huge citrusy hop nose and flavor.  This beer will be SUPER limited, and only available on draft at select NC watering holes in late January.  This is the first, last and only time we’ll ever see Batch 533, so enjoy this very limited draft only release while it lasts!

This is just scratching the surface for the exciting stuff we’ve got in store for 2013.  We can’t wait to share these awesome brews with you, along with many more, and we can’t wait to see you out and about at festivals, beer dinners, tap takeovers, and hanging out with us here at the Mother Earth Tap Room.  Thanks for continuing to rock Mother Earth brews, and we can’t wait to see what 2013 has in store for us all!

Peace, Love & Beer…………………………………………………………..TM