Omnivore Atlanta

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.” (more…)

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Decisions, decisions: Taco Mac is tapping special beers all month.

New beers are popping up all over this month, from new-to-Georgia breweries, to special casks and limited edition releases, to spring and summer seasonals from local and national breweries. It can be a bit overwhelming. I suggest you you just take it One Beer at a Time.

Bell’s Weather. Monday marks the Georgia debut of beers from Bell’s Brewery, and a number of local bars have events to mark the occasion. The Brick Store Pub will have a rare cask of HopSlam, the brewery’s much-drooled over double IPA, which will not be part of the regular Georgia portfolio until next year’s release in January. There will also be a keg of Special Double Cream Stout. Starting Tuesday, Taco Mac will be tapping Bell’s Amber Ale, Pale Ale, Porter, and Oberon, with a sixtel of HopSlam and Expedition Stout at the Kennesaw location. Check with your neighborhood store to see what is pouring. The Porter Beer Bar in L5P will host a Bell’s Beer Dinner on Tues., May 26. Check their website for details. Look for a full story on Bell’s next week.

More, more, more. Speaking of Taco Mac, there’s enough new stuff rolling out at their stores to keep you half-lit well into June. This weekend was the debut of Terrapin’s 30 Strong Ale, brewed especially for Taco Mac’s 30th anniversary. Thirty years is a long time in the restaurant business, and Taco Mac certainly deserves a special toast for turning its little Va-High pub into a beer bar empire. I remember experiencing some of my first world-class beers at that original store back in the early 80s when I didn’t know a hefeweizen from a doppelbock. Terrapin’s 30 Strong has a ridiculous 30 ingredients that includes 19 kinds of malt, 8 varieties of hops, water, and yeast, and is aged on oak spirals. It clocks in at 8.8% ABV. Now that’s extreme! (more…)

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