Ben is filling apple brandy barrels with an Imperial Stout.

Like a phoenix arising from the ashes, BlogDBB is back! Read along with our monthly posts, and we’ll touch on numerous subjects we promise you’ll find interesting. As we enter into 2021, in what will hopefully be a year that sees greater fortune for all, we wanted to give you an insider’s perspective for what you can expect from our little microbrewery from a brewing standpoint this year! We’ll walk you through how we shifted our business along with the pandemic, our goals for this year, and we’ll even give you a little insight into our vision for the barrel program in 2021. So, sit back, crack open a bitterboi, and let’s dig into the January edition of BlogDBB!

Like everybody, last year provided no shortage of challenges. This caused us to alter many fun plans scheduled to ensure our employees and guests stayed safe while and our small business was still in a secure position while navigating our way through this global pandemic. If you’ve been around our brewery for the nearly three years we’ve been in NoDa then you’ll know we pride ourselves on preserving and honoring traditional beer styles while simultaneously exploring and creating boundary-pushing craft beers that delight! As much as we love traditional styles, they’re not always as sexy or popular as beers like the Carolina Cobbler series. When COVID-19 struck, we made a conscientious decision to place more emphasis on brewing our greatest hits more often while pushing our creative limits on fun beers we knew you would enjoy. We can’t tell you how glad we are to have made this move as we learned an immeasurable amount about our business, and feel as though it has helped us carve out a name for ourselves! Bearing all of this in mind, let’s look to 2021 as we attempt to build on everything we learned from this last year!

We must still be diligent during this pandemic, but at least we can finally start to see an end in sight to this historic time in our lives. Our team has already talked extensively about the direction we’d like to steer the DBB ship this year. It’s extremely important for us to continue to build on all the great momentum from 2020. You will continue to see the Willy Wonka-style pastry sours, stouts, and other zany adjunct-laden beers. However, we feel a renewed zeal for honoring some of these amazing beers of old! We can’t wait to further explore the nuanced world of Lagers. You’ve already seen the release of a Schwarzbier & Italian Pilsner so far in this young year, and we’re only getting started! Don’t worry, our West Coast IPA program isn’t going anywhere. With a market inundated with hazy IPAs, we’ll keep pumping out the O.G. of American IPAs en masse! We also think it’s important to keep a bevvy of flavorful, low ABV options on tap spanning across a multitude of styles. A massive Imperial Stout is wonderful, but you can only responsibly consume so many. We find that a sessionable Oatmeal Stout with peanut butter can pack nearly as much of a flavor punch as its higher ABV counterparts, but you can enjoy more of them! You’ll also see bold styles like Brown Ales and Barley Wines, which are rich and flavorful enough to stand on their own, or we always apply some of the knowledge acquired through adjunct exploration to have a little fun with them. Part of the vision for this year should include ramping up our barrel program…

2021 is setting up to be a fun year for our barrel aging program! You can expect to see a jump in barrel aging production. After all, the word barrel is kind of in our name, right? As you can gather by now, our plan is to brew numerous styles this year, many of which will get barrel treatment! Ahem… remember that Barley Wine we talked about last paragraph? We’ll have more thick and luscious stouts going into a number of different barrels. You can also bet your bottom dollar more sour beer will go into barrels too! There is a wide world of wine and spirits barrels to choose from, and we plan to explore it! Again… remember that Barley Wine? Some of it may or may not have gotten put into three different freshly dumped and extremely wet cognac, apple brandy & bourbon barrels to age in. Now, some of these projects will see the light of day this year, and some will be aged extensively beyond. The beer will make sure to tell us when it’s ready. Time and patience are ever-so-important in the art of barrel aging, but we promise the wait will be worth it!

We truly hope this post has been insightful to you! It’s our goal to always keep our amazing guests well informed and we thought gaining an insider’s perspective on the 2021 vision from our brewery team seemed like a good way to kick our first blog post off! In summary, the pandemic offered us tons of teachable moments as we pivoted our business, like countless others. With an end hopefully in sight, we have a renewed sense of energy in honoring more traditional beer styles, much like we did when we first opened. We are also fully aware we’ve become known for and built a following for some of our more modern and experimental interpretations on styles. We can assure you that part of our portfolio isn’t going anywhere either! We love the science and exploration of beer, and it only helps us become better brewers overall! Finally, you can expect to see our barrel aging program take a jump this year as we fill an array of wine and spirits barrels with a range of beer styles! We cannot wait for our vision for this year come to fruition, and we hope you’ll visit our taproom to try many of these thoughtful libations. We appreciate you taking the time to read our first post of the year, and we hope you’ll continue to follow along our journey in 2021! Cheers, be safe, stay healthy, and let’s all try to be a little kinder to one another this year! Do you have any questions, comments or concerns? Feel free to drop me a line at james@divinebarrel.com!