Growler 101 - Your reusable beer conveyance technology explained!

The William Street Beer Co. is ecstatic to announce that our high quality, small batch brewed craft beer is now available in reusable 1.89L glass containers...or growlers. These amber glass jugs allow us to provide you with fresh product at the best possible price. You are only required to pay a one time deposit and, after that, you are only paying for the contents; fresh craft beer. However, there are a few things that you should probably know about growlers and their care.

History
In a pre-prohibition era, when most towns and communities had a brewery or two, and modern packaging was not yet in place, people would travel to the local brewer armed with a container of their choice, often a milk bucket, to purchase a volume of fresh beer. They would take them home for consumption over the following days and would certainly open themselves up to spoilage and contamination. In response, brewers who cared aggressively about customer experience created air tight vessels that would allow for enjoyment over a reasonable time period.

Our Growler
The William Street Beer Co. has selected a 1.89L amber glass jug for our growler program. This is a proven format which ensures product stability. In addition, we "counter fill" our growlers in the same way as our 650ml bottles. This means that each container is purged of air with CO2, to ensure that the beer never comes in contact with harmful environmental factors...namely oxygen.

The contents of a 1.89L Growler is roughly equal to three of our 650ml bottles, or about a standard 6-pack. You will find that this is a very economic way of purchasing craft beer, especially for those who are local and likely to visit with some frequency.

Growler Care
The first thing that you should know, is that a growler is filled with carbonated liquid and contents are under reasonable pressure. Under normal conditions, this is a great thing that ensures correct draught style carbonation in your glass. However, care should be taken to avoid dramatic temperature changes (ie. being left in a hot car under direct sunlight) as this can result in increased internal pressure.

The most frequent question we get about growlers is regarding shelf life. As a rule, they should be opened within 72 hours to ensure product freshness. Once opened, be sure to reseal immediately after pouring. If you do this, contents should remain fresh, delicious and carbonated for over 48hrs.

Once every delicious drop has been consumed, it's time to clean your growler. Please avoid all household detergents, especially dishwashing liquids. Do not put the growler in the dishwasher. All that we would ask you to do is rinse twice with hot water, drain in your drying rack and then store with the lid off until returned. We will ensure that the vessel is "beer clean" before it gets refilled.

How Does the Program Work?
There are two separate items involved when you purchase a growler from the William Street Beer Co. Firstly, there is a deposit on the vessel. This is paid only once and it can be returned for value at any time. Secondly, there is a fill value for the beer. This will vary based on beer style. Once you have paid your deposit, you will find that the subsequent fills are an amazing value.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Cheers!

William Street Beer Update - October

Some of you are perhaps curious about why this blog has been pretty quiet over the past few months...well, I guess things have been pretty hectic. The summer came with some pretty crazy demand and our limited fermentation capacity was a bit of a challenge. Oh well. Onward and upward. As you may know, we have been pretty aggressively reinvesting in our brewery to provide our customers, retail and commercial, with a product of increasing quality and diversity. Thank you again for all of your support.

So...here is where we are at at this point:

We are currently maintaining steady and consistent retail hours at our onsite retail store. They are Wed - Fri 12-6, Sat. 10-5. Many of you have commented that it is periodically difficult to visually confirm that we are open. If it is during those hours, we are.

We have, of course, also been working hard to refine our products to further meet your tastes and your expectations. At this time, we are working to have Cliff Top Pale Ale and Red Sky Amber Ale available in the retail store at all times. Our new fermentors are getting us into a position where that is a reality for the very near future.

We are also able to now focus on getting some one off beers out to you, and we certainly share your enthusiasm for this. In September, we released Burnham Raspberry Ale. This was a dry, raspberry infused wheat ale which was very warmly received. Thank you to the Burnham Family Farm Market and to all of you for your enthusiasm for local ingredients.

We also recently released a limited number of bottles of Blindside Belgian Tripel. This is a simple version of a Trappist Tripel, but at 9.6% ABV, it makes a great event beer....and rumour has it there is going to be another release very soon.

We have a great line up of beers coming down the pipe in the weeks to come and we are very excited to share them with you. As I mentioned to many of you in the store, we are soon to release Peculiar Pumpkin. This is a strong, English Style spiced ale which features a complex blend of European Barley Malts, joined by mashed pumpkin and a blend of spices designed to remind you of home...where ever that might be. Please keep an eye on our Facebook Page to confirm release date and availability.

Thank you again for your support and enthusiasm. It inspires us every day to create a product which you can all be proud of.

Cheers!

S

What a Month!

Well, friends. It has been a few weeks since we first timidly opened the doors to our retail store at 412 William Street and delivered our first kegs to local restaurants. It would be an understatement to say that we have been on a roller coaster of epic proportions. We have had some very rewarding successes and some very public shortcomings. But at the end of the day, we own it all, we have learned a ton and are in a great position to be truly up to speed by summer.

In the success column, we introduced three of our beer brands recently. They are North Shore Blonde, Cliff Top Pale Ale and White Sail Wheat. At their best, the response has been solid. In particular, I was very pleased by the response to White Sail, our North American Hefeweizen. I believe that it will be in steady rotation through the summer months.

On the set-back side, we have learned some lessons about our carbonation process, and particularly about yeast management. As some of you may have experienced, we had some under-carbonated Cliff Top sold over the long weekend. In addition, we utilized an unproven yeast strain recently which lead to a batch of North Shore Blonde with pretty undesirable results. Regretfully, some of it was sold on Thursday of last week, although only about 50 bottles. Some of you have already reached out to report this and I appreciate your kindness and understanding. If you purchased a bottle of Blonde on Thursday and haven't opened it yet, don't. If you did open it, please bring the empty bottle in to the store and we will rectify the situation as best as we can.

Going forward, the good news is this. We have brand new, fresh and vibrant yeast being propagated for us in a lab environment as we speak. This will improve and shorten our fermentation and allow us to offer you a better and more consistent product. Also, we are acquiring new fermentation vessels which will dramatically increase
our production capacity.

The retail store will not open this week (May 29-31), as we are refilling our production pipeline. We appreciate your kind patience as we continue to work out these early jitters.

Cheers.

William Street Brewhouse News

Firstly, I want to thank all of our great friends in Cobourg and the surrounding area who have made it so completely clear that we are building our brewery in the right place. Thank you for your unwavering support...and your seemingly unlimited thirst.

As I have had the opportunity to explain to many of you, we have spent the past few weeks waging a war on two fronts. One one side, we have been working to get our brewhouse operations up to full capacity. This has included a ton of engineering and re-engineering, assembly and re-assembly and countless hours of watching CO2 bubbles. You will be happy to hear that we are just now finally hitting our stride with many of the kinks worked out.

At the same time, there is the wonderful issue of your enthusiasm and patient demand to buy beer from our on site retail store. We have opened as possible, we have sold beer in large quantities at an unexpected pace, and we have had to turn people away empty handed. Many of you have commented that "it's a nice problem to have". You are probably right, if you consider the opposite scenario in which the fridges were full and no one wanted the contents. However, our goal now is to provide you with consistency.

To that end, after much deliberation and angst, we have decided to keep the retail store closed this weekend (May 9th-11th) in order to get ahead of the game. We really want to have our best foot forward going into the May long weekend. The store will be open on May 15th at noon. At that time you can select between:

Cliff Top Pale Ale 

Our North American Style Pale Ale which boasts a balance of citrusy hop bitterness and smooth malty sweetness.

North Shore Blonde

An effort at elegance in simplicity. It is golden in colour with a crisp sweetness and a subtle and balanced hop presence

White Sail Wheat

Your first introduction to our Canadian Hefeweizen - Cloudy and crisp with a strong presence of Orange. Perfect for the May long weekend!
 

Thank you, Cobourg!

Wow. It's Sunday afternoon and the William Street Beer crew and supporters seem to all be basking in the afterglow of a really tremendous Saturday at the brewery. As you may know, we opened our doors for the first day of retail sales on a very quiet note. At 10am, we announced that we were open via social media, we turned on the "OPEN" sign and we held our collective breath. As we hoped, the response was fast and dramatic.

In short, by about 3pm we had sold through our available stock of 650ml bottles of North Shore Blonde Ale. Thank you to all of you who came to support our efforts, and thank you to all of you who took the time to linger, chat and show an interest in our work. So what's on the horizon?

For the remainder of the spring, we will be opening the retail store on Thursdays (12-6), Fridays (12-6) and Saturdays (10-4). Our intent is to increase our supply and our hours once we get into the summer.

In the short term, we will be open next weekend with both Cliff Top Pale Ale and North Shore Blonde in the fridges. This week, we are also brewing the introductory batch of White Sail Wheat Ale in preparation for the patio season which is around the corner.

I am also excited to receive feedback from those of you who walked out of the brewery with some of our limited supply of Wheat King IPA. We have always been dancing around the issue of India Pale Ales, trying to establish a unique approach which would contribute a unique perspective to the style. We are hopeful that this beer fits the need. Offering a unique blend of Canadian barley, wheat and caramel malts, Wheat King IPA delivers a different perspective on the IPA, balancing the characteristic cloudy tang of an American Hefe with the warm sweetness of Caramel malts and the crisp citrus notes of west coast hops. We hope that you like it.

Finally, we are very proud to announce our first active draught presence. On Saturday afternoon, amongst the excitement, we finally delivered a keg of North Shore Blonde to 92 King, Cobourg's new and exciting gastro-pub. This place delivers an unbelievably sophisticated take on pub fare, fuelled by a spectacular Ontario beer line up. Thank you and congrats to Drew, Michael and the team there.

Cheers!

Opening Soon...Status Update

When it was decided that we were going to proceed with the creation of William Street Beer, it was with the commitment that we would create a small but effective brewery, specializing in simple ale styles, to be provided directly to our community from the point of production at 412 William Street in Cobourg. To that end, we have worked very hard to gather together great tools, great equipment and fabulous ingredients. Despite our small size, we want to create world class beer that Cobourg and the surrounding communities can call their own. We will not waver from that commitment.

You may be one the the people who have been asking when William Street Beer will be available in local restaurants and when it can be purchased at our onsite retail store. In truth, we have been brewing for a period of time now, ironing out some production issues and  ensuring that the beer that is introduced to you is up to our standards. The William Street Beer Co. stands for high quality, small batch brewed, all natural ales...with no compromise.

Thank you all for your patience. We will be open to serve you soon.

We promise.

The Time is Near

So...we have had the tremendous pleasure over the past couple of weeks to meet a great many of our neighbours, make a bunch of new friends and begin to get ourselves oriented in the fabulous business community in Cobourg/Port Hope. Not surprisingly, I have been asked pretty regularly about our opening date and when people can buy beer at William and University. Truthfully, it's pretty much out of our hands right now. It's entirely at the will of about 3,000,000,000 of our most trusted helpers...and this is where they work!


Seriously though, we have a batch of North Shore Blonde and a batch of Cliff Top Pale Ale bubbling away in these fermentors. Once the yeast have finished their fine work, we will get this beer carbonated and into kegs and bottles just as fast as we can. As soon as we have beer in the fridges, we will fire up the "OPEN" sign and invite you all in. I can't say too much, but I would certainly recommend that you keep half an eye on our FACEBOOK PAGE over the coming days...

What else is new? Well aside from just standing around waiting for beer to ferment we have also been finishing all of the details off in the store, celebrating the arrival of our signage (Thanks, Holly!) and doing all of the last minute errands in preparation for opening. BTW - Check out this awesome fridge that we're picking up this week...we are stoked!

Have a great day!