Bellwether’s bounty
Bellwether is rolling out a cornucopia of beers for Thanksgiving week and beyond:
– First up is this year’s winter seasonal Ancestry Ale, a big (7.4 percent alcohol by volume), dark gruit that releases at the taproom today. Like last year, it includes both bitter and sweet orange peel, allspice, cinnamon and grains of paradise. But this time around, there’s chamomile instead of mugwort and elderberries replace the previous rose hips.
Like mugwort, chamomile adds bitterness when boiled for a longer time but has a cleaner, more tea-like character, says brewer Thomas Croskrey. The elderberries contribute a purplish tinge and “sort of a winelike tannic quality that lingers in the aftertaste,” he says.
The beer will likely show up at a few area restaurants and bars as well. “I would have thought it was a little too weird, but we’ve had some interest already,” Croskrey says.
– Wednesday will see the release of the fifth beer in Bellwether’s small-batch garden series, a sour with rosemary from Croskrey’s garden and heather. It’s similar to the regular Albion heather ale, but without the smoked malt, he says.
Albion, by the way, will return to the tap lineup in a couple of weeks after aging for a couple of months. “It tends to sell really quickly, and heather has been a little difficult to get hold of lately,” Croskrey says. “I think I’ve secured a source now for wild-grown Scottish heather. I’m pretty excited about that.”
The garden series is scheduled to wrap up with two more weekly releases: a pumpkin rosemary sage sour, and a kale hefeweizen.
– Bellwether will be closed Thursday and Friday for the holiday, but reopens Saturday with a Christmas tree decorating party. Help trim the tree (bring a small ornament if you like) and get your first pint for $4, plus free popcorn.
The beer specialty will be the return of Hearthstone Barleywine after aging for a year. That will be followed after it blows by the rest of last year’s Storytime Wheatwine, and then the Armchair Ryewine.
– The week wraps up with the launch of a Sunday series of warm mulled ales. They will be different each week, including some with cider, but most will be based on the Ancestry, Croskrey says.
“I actually like it warm better than cold,” he says. “I think it’s going to be awesome as a mulled ale.”
The series will continue at least through December, and possibly the rest of the winter if it proves particularly popular.
– Croskrey also has brewed two beers with the winners of Bellwether’s homebrew contests.
A porter with home-smoked chipotle peppers, cinnamon and cacao nibs – the champion in the Blank Slate Challenge with the Inland Brewers Unite (IBU) club on Learn to Homebrew Day earlier this month – is expected on tap by mid-December.
Joining it by year’s end, if not before, will be the chai stout that won an earlier competition during May’s Spokane Craft Beer Week. It includes a spice blend that focuses on cardamom and clove, plus buckwheat honey and some lactose to mimic the steamed-milk creaminess of a chai latte.
“I’m really excited for both of them,” Croskrey says. “They’re going to be great.”
– Also coming next month is a red ale with pine resin and rose hips that was brewed in collaboration with Four Eyed Guys, which is wrapping up the licensing process to open its own brewery.
Bellwether just released another collaboration last Saturday, with Young Buck, a Winter Woods IPA featuring birch bark, juniper berries and fir tree resin.