The Modern Times Beer Blog

Anheuser-Busch InBev is in the midst of a PR push, the goal of which is to soften resistance to their craft brewery acquisition strategy. Sadly, credulous beer writers aren't asking any of the right questions, so I feel a need to respond.

The sacrificial lamb in this takedown is Aaron Goldfarb's recent piece for Serious Eats entitled, "What 'Selling Out' Allows a Craft Brewery to Do.” I'm picking this one because it covers most of the bases on this issue, which makes it convenient.

Releasing 3 new year round beers was a thing. A major thing. A thing that consumed much of the time, energy, and brainpower of many of the people in this building. These beers also embody our collective approach to decision-making better than anything else we've made. Let me explain.

City of the Dead represents the divine union of our barrel-aged coffee program and our relentlessly inventive brewhouse. "WTF is barrel-aged coffee?" Good question, here's how we make it.

When we started realizing the incredible depth of delicious complexity we were able to get out of barrel-aged coffee beans, it was a pretty short step to: "We should totally put this in beer." A couple of casks of Black House w/ barrel-aged beans later, and we were convinced that this definitely had to be a thing.

If we had a nickel for every time someone said "You should make (insert preferred Modern Times seasonal IPA here) year round!", we'd have, like, so many goddamn nickels. Of course we'd love to make City of the Sun or Booming Rollers year round, but unless you've got a few truckloads of Citra & Motueka to sell us, it ain't happening.

It did, however, get us thinking. Was it even possible to make a year-round IPA that rivaled the standard of bomb-diggityness set by our seasonals without putting ourselves into a impossible hop-sourcing bind? At this point, the idea of beating the IPA boss on "Hard" mode became too intriguing to ignore.

Our beer lineup for 2016 is looking absolutely bonkers, and one of the things we're out-of-our-minds stoked about is the chance to add three incredibly unique year-round beers to our brewing (and drinking) schedule. We'll be featuring one of them here each week to get you better acquainted, so it's not all awkward when you meet in real life. First up: the epic crushability of Fruitlands.