From Cigar City:
Hunahpu's to be Released Via Innovative Lottery System at Spruce Street Taproom
TAMPA, FL (FEBRUARY 4, 2021) Cigar City Brewing (CCB), Florida’s premier craft brewery, announces details for the 2021 release of Hunahpu's Imperial Stout, a monolithic dark beer brewed with cinnamon, vanilla, cacao nibs and chile peppers. First released in 2010, Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout has become one of craft beer’s most coveted small-batch beers. This year, the brewery will continue its annual tradition of releasing bottles of the massive, complex Imperial Stout directly to consumers at its Spruce Street Taproom beginning Friday, March 12. CCB will offer 750 mL bottles of Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout alongside 500 mL bottles of Bourbon Barrel-aged Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, a rare and decadent variation. The release will be facilitated via a lottery system designed specifically for the brewery by Oznr Craft Beverage Marketplace, representing an innovative new approach to the highly anticipated release. The lottery is open through February 12. The sale of Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, lovingly dubbed “Hunahpu’s Day,” began as a small event to commemorate the brewery’s first anniversary in March of 2010. Though versions of the beer had been sampled at beer festivals before, Brewmaster Wayne Wambles saw the brewery’s one-year celebration as a perfect opportunity to share his Mexican mole-inspired stout with the world. The beer’s recipe, which remains essentially unchanged since 2008, begins with an 11.2% Imperial Stout boasting strong notes of espresso and chocolate. The beer is recirculated over a decadent mixture of cacao nibs, vanilla beans and cinnamon, blended with ancho, pasilla and guajillo chile peppers. The resulting beer finds balance between milk chocolate flavors, spice-derived complexity and a Scoville heat that’s slow building but never overwhelming. Wambles named his mole-inspired beer after Hunahpu, one of the Hero Twins in Mayan mythology, as a nod to the beer’s Central American inspiration.
Accolades immediately followed the beer’s release, resulting in appearances on RateBeer, Untappd and BeerAdvocate lists of all-time highest-rated beers worldwide. As international acclaim for the annual release grew in subsequent years, CCB invited its friends in the craft beer community to help celebrate by pouring their own sought-after beers at Hunahpu’s Day, organically creating what would become one of America’s most exclusive and high-profile beer festivals. Indeed, Hunahpu’s Day 2019 saw thousands of beer lovers flocking to Tampa from all over the world to enjoy rare beers poured by over 150 brewers from St. Petersburg, Florida, to St. Petersburg, Russia.
Hunahpu’s Day 2021 finds the brewery refocusing on the bottle release aspect of the event by offering fans more flexibility in purchasing and picking up bottles. CCB’s partnership with Oznr Craft Beverage Marketplace allows beer lovers to enter lotteries for both Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout and Bourbon Barrel-aged Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, a small batch version of the beer that adds spice and oak qualities to its already ambitious flavor profile. Additionally, the Oznr platform allows for proxy pick-ups at the brewery so craft beer fans from across the world can assign their Floridian friends as trustees to pick up their bottles. This option has not been available for previous Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout releases and represents new opportunities for beer lovers to get their hands on these coveted bottles.
“The release of Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout is the most anticipated annual event at our brewery and we’re beyond excited to put a new spin on it,” says Micki Bell, Marketing Manager for Cigar City Brewing. “The lottery system we’ve developed with our partners at Oznr gives everyone a fair shot at getting their hands on both Hunahpu’s and the ultra-cool Bourbon Barrel-aged Hunahpu’s while allowing greater flexibility in pick-up and fulfillment. With this year’s Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, our brewers have turned out one of the best iterations of this beer I’ve ever tasted, and I’m confident that beer lovers will feel the same way.”
Pick-ups for lottery winners will take place at Cigar City Brewing’s Spruce Street Taproom (3924 W. Spruce Street, Tampa FL) between Friday, March 12th and Sunday, April 11th. In addition to Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout bottle pick-ups, taproom-exclusive beer releases and Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout merchandise will be available.
Visit Cigar City Brewing’s website [
www.cigarcitybrewing.com] for more information on Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout and the rest of its dynamic line-up of craft ales, lagers and seltzers.
About Cigar City Brewing
Cigar City Brewing is Florida’s premier craft brewery company, delivering tropically-inspired hand-made ales and lagers to beer lovers across the country. Led by its flagship, Jai Alai IPA, Cigar City Brewing has used beer to tell the story of the history and culture of Tampa since its inception in 2009. The brewery currently produces over 180,000 barrels of beer annually, equating to over 2,000,000 cases of beer being sold across its entire footprint. Awards and accolades, including medals at the Great American Beer Festival and appearances on RateBeer.com’s Top 10 Brewers Worldwide seven times, have helped fuel the brewery’s rapid growth and expansion. Cigar City Brewing is a key partner in CANarchy, a craft brewing collective that represents the largest canned craft beer supplier in the country.
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