Surly Announces 2021 Brand Calendar

You can click on the word “release” in any post to see all of the latest release calendars…now this from Surly:

The annual release of Surly’s brand calendar is always a welcome experience for us and Surly Nation. It gives us a chance to let you know what we’ve been working on and it gives you a chance to get your Outlook calendar updated with critical release dates. (If you’re wondering if we’re making too many or not enough IPAs, the answer is yes.)

This year, it takes on added importance as it’s the release schedule for the year 2021, which means it will no longer be 2020. Man, f*** 2020.

The vaccines are on their way. The friends you haven’t seen in a year have depleted their Netflix queue. The bartender you make small talk with has never been more ready to pour you a beer. It’s going to be a time to celebrate. We’re making the beers for it. We can’t wait to share them with you.

HIGHLIGHTS

SUPREME VARIETY PACK. Grapefruit Supreme, in the span of a couple short years, is now one of Surly’s cornerstone beers. Mango Supreme, released as part of last summer’s variety pack, was an immediate hit. How do you follow them up? You make the whole damn 12-pack out of Supreme. Enjoy Grapefruit, Mango, and two brand-new flavors: Key Lime and Black Cherry. Crisp, refreshing, and thoroughly crushable, the Supreme Variety Pack arrives in March. It will be available year-round.
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS. Quarterly variety packs will be back in 2021. We’re rounding up the first batch of miscreants for January’s Unusual Suspects 12er, including three all-new beers: Get Loud Hazy Wheat IPA, Razor Gang Dry Irish Stout, and Rivet Head West Coast IPA.
LO-LIFE LO-CAL IPA. Surly is deservedly known for its IPAs. Making a 100-calorie IPA that still tastes like an honest-to-god IPA is the kind of project tailor-made for a hop-forward brewery. We call it Lo-Life and it hits stores in May, right around when many of us will be crawling from the wreckage of our work-from-home diet. Available in 6-packs and 12-packs.
MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE HAZY IPA. All that we know, all that we’ve ever known, and all that we will know exist at the same time. Space, time, matter, energy, folding a fitted sheet, everything. It’s a lot to contemplate, but the answer lies somewhere in the haze. Look within and let our new year-round hazy IPA be your guide. Available in 16 oz. 4-packs beginning in February.
MOVING PICTURES IPA. Flavors paint pictures in our minds. Blink for a moment and they freeze—grapefruit, tangerine, mango, papaya—blink again and the frame resets. Moving Pictures, our first seasonal of 2021, tells this story in each sip. Available in 6-packs in January, although some locations may have it on shelves in late December of this year. Happy holidays!
FIFTEEN. It’s Surly’s 15^th birthday in 2021. Think that means we get our driver’s license in 2022? Until then, look for a very special anniversary beer in the fall.
PENTAGRAM. It’s tempting to call our legendary barrel-aged sour ale a cult favorite but given how many people ask us when we’re going to release it again, “cult” undersells its mass appeal. Pentagram returns in January in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans (you read that right) as the first BC Small Batch release of 2021.

The entire calendar is below. The pandemic took a wrecking ball to our 2020 schedule, so please bear with us if circumstances change for beers and/or release dates. But for now, consider this your roadmap. We look forward to drinking these beers with you. See you then.

This 5 Jan update from Surly:

Pentagram is finally back. It just looks different.

Surly’s legendary dark, barrel-aged sour beer hasn’t changed. It’s still ferments in stainless steel and spends 18 months or more in red wine barrels. It still has yards and yards of funk from the brett yeast blend. It still centers notes of sour cherry, oak, and tobacco and a Dark Munich malt chewiness. It still can be enjoyed immediately or cellared.

This time around, it’s in cans.

The 2021 edition of Pentagram is our introductory BC Small Batch release for the year. As with previous BCSB beers, it’s available in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans, replacing the traditional 750 mL bottle format.

(Why did we switch containers? Unless it’s Darkness, individual bottles just don’t move with the velocity they once did across our industry. A beer of Pentagram’s high quality should not gather dust at your local liquor store. The cans will cellar equally well, if not better. In addition, 64 ounces of Pentagram is more than 750 milliliters. Take that, metric system. More Pentagram for your money.)

We originally slated Pentagram to return in the summer/fall of 2020, but you’d be amazed how much a global pandemic can mess with an independent craft brewery’s release schedule. That said, it allowed Pentagram to spend even more quality time in the barrel than previous editions, and it allowed us to start the new year with a bang.

For longtime fans, we’re incredibly pleased to bring this one back. For newer ones, you’re going to want to see what all the fuss is about.

Pentagram is available to all U.S. Surly markets beginning the week of January 4^th.

The particulars:

Hops: Warrior (bittering)

Malt: Dark Munich, 2-Row, Belgian Crystal, Chocolate

Yeast: Brettanomyces

ABV: 7.0%

Pour: Reddish Brown

Bitterness: Low