Beers to a New Year

Whoa 2018 went by fast! Now it is that time of year to look back at everything that happened as time flew by.

In 2018 we made 69 unique brews. 48 different beers and 21 different kombuchas

Our brewery team has grown to 14 amazing people each bringing their own style to the brewery.

Lazy Beach Brewery Team

Beer Releases

In 2018 we made 69 unique brews. 48 different beers and 21 different kombuchas, variety is the spice of life after all. A few really stand out in my head and I cannot wait to see everything we create this next year. (See the full list at the end)

Beer Series

Sea Monster Series

Our Sea Monsters series began with the intention of brewing beasts of a beer. Very few beers should be aged and I cannot wait to see how this series and these beers changes over time. Our plan is to brew 2-4 of these a year and release them in regular alternating intervals.

  • Leviathan. We chose a Russian Imperial Stout to start off the series and at 12.5% ABV it did not disappoint. Huge chocolate and roasted flavors with a nice hop bitterness. Next release date early January 2019.

Origin Series

Every craft beer drinker has a beer that turned them on to trying new flavors. In this series we brew the style of beer that got each person on our team interested in beer.

  • Origin II – A beer made similar to Rogue Brewings Dead Guy ale. This was by one of our brewers Drew the “Big Kabrewna”
  • Origin III – In march Bobby the “Beer Engineer” moved out of state, to say farewell was this american pale ale.
  • Origin IV- Kolsch Hearted Woman. Jackie the “Onsite Ringmaster” wanted a light easy drinking Kolsch.

Our tap handles and taproom glasses got a nice upgrade, plus we finally have hats.

Brewers Working Together

A neat project on the production side was to team up with Cha and Ryan at B&Js Pizza to work on our brew house efficiency. We use the same grain provider and shared notes from different techniques to more quickly gain results that are tested on two different brewing systems.

Brew house efficiency is the percentage yield based on the amount of grain and the size of the batch. For example if we put in 50lbs of Barley to get 1 Barrel of beer (31 gallons or 2 large kegs) with an efficiency of 76% we would yield roughly a 4.5% ABV beer.

By working together we were able to raise our average efficiency from 76% to 91%. This means we only need to use 42lbs per Barrel to achieve the same ABV. You may have noticed both of our breweries average ABV spike up somewhere mid Sept-Oct as we started seeing our improvements kick in and started learning our new yields.

Quality Control

In addition to our joint project with B&Js Pizza, we also stepped up our QC game a lot this past year. It was one of our major priorities. We acquired a few more toys for measuring different aspects of the beer and kombucha process. But more importantly we implemented daily testing, greatly improved our yeast management procedures and many other changes but most importantly we learned a lot in the process.

Events

We started the Second Saturday Shindigs. Which means every Second Saturday of the month we will have 4 food trucks, live music and a growing market of vendors in addition to the normal new beer of the week. I really cannot wait to see what this looks like in another year!

We hosted a lot of great events:

We were also lucky to be part of a lot of great events happening this year.

Beer released in 2018

  1. Feeling Hazy
  2. North Padre Porter
  3. Brunette
  4. Amber Jacked
  5. Crawfish Cookoff
  6. Blue Crush- (Islander Saison)
  7. Hazy Monk
  8. Lovers in the Surf
  9. Origin II – by Brewman Drew
  10. Skipper – English Porter
  11. C-Water – w/ C101
  12. 1799 Stout
  13. Origin III – American Pale Ale
  14. Hot Cubana
  15. Corpus Christi v.16
  16. Choppy Waters
  17. Poblano Wit
  18. Cockney Porter
  19. London Beer Flood
  20. Corpus Christi v.17
  21. Lazy Toad
  22. Bikini Bottom Gose
  23. PeeWee’s Pecan Porter
  24. SMASH Calypso
  25. The KOOK
  26. Origin IV- Kolsch Hearted Woman
  27. Hot Shandy
  28. Squeeze Ya Later IPA
  29. Saharan Dust IPA
  30. Summer Stout
  31. Teacher Juice NEDIPA
  32. Amber Waves
  33. Farmer’s TANgerine Wheat
  34. Pumpkin Beer
  35. Taco’Bout Wit
  36. Oktoberfest
  37. Leviathan
  38. Emergency Sobriety Blocker
  39. Corpus Christi v.18
  40. Diwali
  41. Belgian Blonde
  42. Rudolph’s Red
  43. Pecan Paradise
  44. Substitute Teachers’ Juice
  45. Blonde
  46. Session IPA
  47. Beach in Wheat
  48. Texas Bock

Kombucha Released in 2018

  1. Coastal Sunrise
  2. Orange is the New Booch
  3. Ginger Spice
  4. Island Hopper
  5. Skinny Dipper
  6. Plum Cove
  7. Pretty in Pink
  8. Apple Pie
  9. Karanji
  10. Kombuchizzle
  11. Secret Santa
  12. Cardyum
  13. Honey Boo Boo Chai
  14. Co Co Kombucha
  15. Korchata
  16. Leaping Leprechaun
  17. Sage Wisdom
  18. The Watermelon One
  19. Sweet Melissa
  20. Krawberry
  21. That Guava one

It is really hard to look back and see all the changes that happened over the last 12 months but my gut says we are making the best Lazy Beach beverages ever and that we are on the right track to keep on improving everything over the next year.

-Cory