Talking Head: Sweetwater, you old sailor, you
August 6th, 2009 by Jeff Holland in Drink
Sweetwater Brewing Company will be releasing its fall seasonal, Sweetwater Motorboat ESB on Aug. 7. The beer will be available in 6-packs and on draft. Introduced last fall, Motorboat was an unqualified success, winning a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the ESB category and selling out in about 6 weeks. Steve Farace of Sweetwater promises that there will be more to go around this year.
Never one to be constrained by style guidelines, Sweetwater brews Motorboat with a generous dose of hops, including a dry-hopping with Cascade, and loads it with toasted malt, making it more like an amber ale than a typical British bitter. This year’s version will follow the same path. “We’ve upped the ante a bit on the hop bill this year, but we’re not monkeying around with it, just improving it,” says Farace. ”With a beer like Motorboat it’s all about balance in a fall seasonal.”
One could say things are going swimmingly right now at Sweetwater. The Dank Tank series of specialty brews is getting settled in, with the next offering being a blueberry Belgian ale brewed with 750 pounds of organic, Georgia-raised blueberries and wheat and rye malts due out Aug. 20. The 8.5% beer will be called Big Ol’ Blue Balls, in true Sweetwater double-entendre fashion. The popular brewery “tours” on Wednesday through Friday have been expanded to include Saturday afternoon from 2:30-4:30 p.m. and special casks are now offered on Wednesday to take some pressure off the Friday evening gatherings. “The casks have really been going great,” says Farace. “It gives us a chance to experiment with our core beers, adding fruit, dry-hopping, or whatever we want to try.”
If that weren’t enough, the eco-conscious brewery will be presenting a check to the Upper Chattahoochee River Keeper on Aug. 14 for somewhere in the neighbrhood of $60,000 from their “I Gave of My Liver to Save the River” campaign, raised through beer sales and $1 donations at local liquor stores for paper fish plastered to the walls.
For more information on Sweetwater news and events, check out their Facebook page.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
You know, I love that we have some great beer being brewed in state with Sweatwater, ABC and Terrapin. I really appreciate that.
But I’m going to go out on a limb, be a big-stick-in-the mud fuddy duddy and say that the sophomoric, sex-based names for these Sweatwater specialty brews are getting irritating.
The first couple of times it was worth a chuckle, but it’s just getting old now.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I tend to agree, Darin, although to be fair they have recently put out The Creeper Belgian IPA, Ron Burgundy Scotch Ale, and an unnamed DIPA, and they do put out Festive Ale at the holidays, so not ALL of their special releases have wink-wink names. And Stone, Lagunitas, and Dogfish Head have been known to engage in some naming shenanigans as well (ever heard of DFH’s Golden Shower Imperial Pilsner?). Not everyone can have our sophisticated sense of humor.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:14 am
I agree with Darin. Hopefully, we won’t see a return of Donkey Punch. That one was way over the top.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Lighten up. I for one am waiting with baited breath for the arrival of Sweetwater Rusty Trombone Lager. It has a real nasty innitial taste but a great finish.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I wish I had a dollar for every time some ignoramus said ‘lighten up’ as an internet comment.
I have my opinion; you have yours.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
We’re talking about beer here people, not the name of our first born. Don’t take it so seriously, or I’ll put it another way, lighten up (wink-wink Robin).
I get a kick out of asking the bartender if I could get a Hummer for $5.
Keep the names coming Sweet H2O! You rock!
August 10th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Another dollar I could have had. Posting comments on CL is not taking things seriously.
Do you guys know what Donkey Punch means? Does your daughter?
August 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The children the children!! Wont someone think of the children!!!
August 10th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
It’s a marketing thing more than anything, done to aim at the college students, fratboys, buckhead/midtown party crowd, and other types of generic beer oafs. The beer, and I mean SW as a whole, is mediocre as far as craft brewing goes. Terrapin beats them easily, and Dogwood was superior (Moran is still around at 5 Seasons). And now with the advent of all these out-of-state craft beers, such as Lagunitas, Stone, Stoudts, Bells and many many more, SW has no choice but to do something (anything really) out of the ordinary to compete.