The Modern Times Beer Blog

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.

To celebrate the Grand Opening of Kindred in San Diego, we're tapping an absolutely face-melting pod of mega-whales, with special tappings throughout the day to pair with their menu, plus hot and cold brewed Black House and Heavy Weather coffee. Wizard Fest, indeed. Here's what's on the agenda:

10am tapping:
Cask: Devils' Teeth With Coconut & Heavy Weather Winter Blend coffee
City of the Sun IPA
Aztec Mummy (tequila barrel-aged gose)
Fortunate Islands

4pm tapping:
School of Certain Victory (white wine barrel-aged sour w/ apricots)
Monsters' Park Aged in Rye Barrels (NITRO)
Neverwhere Brett IPA

We'll be in Portland this Saturday to party with our homies at  The Commons Brewery in celebration of the release of the new collaboration, "Good Problems." This complex saison was fermented with both breweries' house Brett strains and aged on Nebbiolo wine grapes from nearby Mosier, OR. The result is a glass of fruity, dry deliciousness that stretches the boundaries of both beer and wine and embodies the adventurous spirit of collaborative brewing. If you'd like to try some of this liquid radness, Saturday at The Commons would be the time to do it.