Brew Days

As many of you have observed, we are closed Mondays and Tuesdays for brewing. If you drive by, it might look like we have just torn apart the front of the house, replaced the tables with kegs, and are sitting around drinking beer or writing in notebooks—a bit strange, yes. You may have also noticed that we currently don’t offer tours of our brewing facilities, and if you peek around the bright tank room, it may appear that we brew in a tiny corner no larger than your kid’s bedroom. Neither of the observations above would be entirely incorrect, but perhaps it is time to explain what goes on during brew days a bit more—and how that might be changing in the near future!

Of course, the primary function on brew days is brewing beer. With the quantities of beer that we brew, it is not possible for us to do so in the tiny space where we store all the kettles during open hours. As such, we have to close the front of the house so that we can spread out our equipment and have adequate elbow room – not to mention, we need to focus! We also spread things out a bit to disperse heat. Brewing is a very hot process, and giant kettles of boiling grains heat up the place so quickly that we often have the back door propped open a bit as well.

If we are supposedly brewing all day, why do you see us sitting around? Every beer recipe is slightly different, but at the core of brewing is basic chemistry. In order to achieve the transformations in our inputs, we must hit certain temperature points at various intervals, the same way a chemist has to heat up reactions in a lab (but we use a much larger heat source than a Bunson burner). This requires waiting for our giant kettles to get up to temperature, so what better to do than a bit of quality control while we wait? The pints in our hands are beers that have been fermenting, and we use the down time to ponder whether or not it is ready to come on tap. Sometimes we like to just check that the current beers on tap are still quality offerings…

Filling kegs from the fermenters.

We also do some housekeeping on brew days, including cleaning kegs, filling kegs, and improving the front of the house. Cleaning kegs can be a less-than-fun process in which we get all the grime and yeast out of the bottom of our kegs. Every brewery has some degree of trub in the bottom of their kegs, but we do not filter our beer at any point, resulting in a higher level of sediment in our kegs. While cleaning is an ongoing chore for brew days, we also use brew days to modify or improve the pub—like the recently added Zia symbol on the wall! If we are really feeling motivated, we might even update the chalkboard beer menus for what is new on tap this week. 

You might be saying, wow Jerry, a painting. Big deal.

What you might not have heard yet is that we want to change our brew day hours. Or that we love the ambiance created by standing room only on weekends, but sufficient elbow room would be nice for our customers too, not just the brewers, and we are working to make that happen. And someday in the near future, we might even have enough room to give tours of the brewing facilities, which won’t be in the front of the house any more.

What?

One of the biggest projects we have been working towards on brew days is expansion. Part of our current expansion is in our local presence – this May we will be participating at the Blazin Brewfest, hosted by the New Mexico Brewers Guild here in Las Cruces. This festival will have beers on tap directly from the breweries, not canned beers through distributors. Tickets are available in house for $15 cash, so ask your servers for more details. They will be $25 at the gate the day of the event, so save yourself some dinero and buy early. Start the Cinco de Mayo celebrations early and come join us!

The other part of our expansion is internal. We have local, state, and federal approval completed, so we think it’s time to spread the news! We are increasing our space, including parking, which you may have already noticed. We will also be building out a patio area in front of the brewery for almost doubled seating area. Not only will this allow us to serve you better with additional space, but we will also be able to brew without shutting off the taps—everyone needs a pint on Monday. I will leave the details to your imagination, but we are growing, summer is coming, and we couldn’t be more excited! Come grab a pint and celebrate with us (once we are done brewing for the week). See you Wednesday!

Good Beer brings Good Cheer!

It’s finally here! Our first seasonal beer release, a secret known to few until today, is coming on tap when our doors open—just in time for Christmas and New Years! It’s dark, it’s roasty, and it’s everything mysterious and beautiful about beer that has been fermenting long days in the back of our brewery. We will let you be the judge of the flavor profile, but be warned: it might just knock you off your feet (literally) at 9.6% ABV! Continuing a four year tradition of crafting a high gravity holiday brew, Jerry and the team here at Spotted Dog Brewery are proud to release the Corruption Imperial Wheat for your tasting pleasure!

Without compromising the rich flavors, this year’s brew is a little more controlled than the first Imperial Wheat Jerry delivered to his family at Thanksgiving in 2011. The term “Imperial” is traditionally only applied to a special family of brews that register at or above 7% ABV and derive from the Russian Imperial Stout style developed in the 1800’s—but that first experimental batch was above 13% ABV! Talk about a beer that makes your toes tingle!

How exactly did that first batch get to be so strong? The technical answer is that the yeast in the recipe went to town on the extra sugar used to make an Imperial brew—which links us back to the origin of the Imperial Russian Stout style. While the specific breweries involved are hard to pin down, the beer exporters of London in the 1800’s found Porter lovers in the Baltic area, including the Russian royalty – thus the “Russian Imperial” part of the name. In a similar fashion to the evolution of Pale Ale to an IPA, the British Porters were given a little (or a lot) extra boost in the form of hops to embolden the flavor and sugar to increase the alcohol strength. There is a disagreement between many as to whether the alcohol content and flavor strength were increased to appeal to the vodka-drinking Russian market, or solely to stabilize and preserve the beer during transport on the seas. Who says it wasn’t both?

As you may have noticed, our synopsis of Russian Imperial Stout history has skipped over the “Stout” part of the name. With the increased alcohol content, high gravity Porters became known as Stout Porters and eventually the name was shortened to Stout.

So why have we chosen the name “Corruption” for our Imperial Wheat?

While it may seem strange to name our winter holiday seasonal after such an un-festive word, Jerry has good reason behind the name “Corruption.” Traditional Porters are brewed using barley, not wheat, and the majority of the sugars come from malted grains. In a nod to New Mexico colonial history where barley was not readily available, the Imperial recipe Jerry uses at Spotted Dog uses wheat and piloncillo Mexican sugar instead—what he calls a corruption of the traditional Russian Imperial Stout. One of the results of the ingredient swap that you may notice is a darker sweetness due to the unrefined nature of piloncillo instead of solely malted sugars from the grains.

We hope you enjoy the Corruption Imperial Wheat as much as Santa did—and please remember to always have a designated driver, especially when drinking like the Russian royalty!