From East End Brewing:
One of the best things about Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week (aka #PCBW), is the chance for all the local brewers to get out of the brewery - and into a DIFFERENT brewery, to work with some new people and some new equipment on a Collaboration Beer. Or as is the case this year, work on one of the FIVE DIFFERENT COLLABORATION BEERS being brewed at five area breweries.
I personally missed out on all of this stuff last year, as we were in the throes of brewery buildout. But this time around, Brendan got to work on the beer brewed at the Church Brew Works, and I got to work on the one we brewed here at East End Brewing.
Our group consisted of...
- Steve Crist, Penn Brewery
- Ryan Bove and Dave Lishego, Aurochs Brewing (a new startup, brewing 100% Gluten Free)
- Steve Sloan, Roundabout Brewing (also a startup. But you may know Steve from his magazine cover modeling work here.)
- Me. (aka, Scott from East End Brewing)
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After a quick huddle over a couple tasty pints at Penn, we determined that we'd brew something with regional ties, possibly a sour beer using a kettle-souring method, an something relatively low in alcohol 4.5-5.5% abv. Then, with a few rounds of not-as-tasty-as-beer emails, and some reference to a few pages in Randy Mosher's excellent book, we refined our plan to be the beer we have in the tank now...
"Pennsyl-tucky Uncommon" is a bastardized hybrid of a "PA Swankey" and a "Kentucky Common", probably more sour than either.
Or, said another way, it's a kettle-soured brown ale (from the KY Common) of 5.4%, very lightly spiced with Star Anise (from the Swankey), negligibly hopped with Cluster (the most common hop grown in this region at the time), and brewed from Pilsner, Brown, Chocolate, Cara, and Wheat malts... along with a good bit of corn.
Corn is historically appropriate for BOTH of these styles, and is also a nod to our gluten-free co-conspirator, Ryan. Though this is by no means a GF beer. Steve Sloan provided the kettle-souring know how, Steve from Penn brought the ale yeast, and East End brought the brewery.
Above photo courtesy of Zavo Gabriel, who was in this day shooting for Craft Pgh Magazine. (Don't blame him for the other photos though.)
Also, I'd like to make a special thanks and shout-out to both Judy at Brewer's Supply Group, and Bryan at the Brewing Science Institute for sponsoring ingredients in this brew! Check them out if you're in the market!
We'll release this beer at the brewery, and keep about half of our 20bbl batch for Growler Service at the Brewery and at the Shop in the Strip. The other half will be distributed in sixtels and halves through our Master Distributor, Vecenie Distributing in Millvale. Maybe in about a week or two? (It's 4/11/2013 today.)
You're also likely to see this beer at a few PCBW Events that we're doing here and around town, as well as some of the BIG PCBW events. So come check it out. We ALL hope you'll like it, and hope to pour you one soon!
Cheers - Scott
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