Best Thursday Ever!

As you might remember from previous posts, we have been adding new tanks over the last few years in order to make more Harpoon beer for you guys to enjoy!

Today, we are keeping our promise of making more beer by welcoming a couple new MASSIVE tanks – two 1200 barrel bright beer tanks are going in at our Boston brewery. They are now the biggest tanks at the brewery, with each tank capable of holding enough beer to fill 2400 kegs.  Now that’s a lot of beer.

What does a bright beer tank do? I thought you’d never ask!

Bright beer tanks are the last step for beer before it gets packaged in a bottle or in a keg. The bright tanks will be filled with beer after the yeast has been filtered out of the beer. At this point, we are going to add in the other 2/3rd of carbonation, through a process known as “forced carbonation”, to our beer.  Basically, we pump in CO2 through something that looks like a pummice stone, and it infuses the beer with CO2.

It kinda works how an oxygen stone works in a fish tank.

The reason why this is so important is because our house ale yeast usually produces about 1/3rd of the total carbonation during fermentation. So, in order to bring our beer to the desired carbonation level, we use the bright beer tanks.

These brand new tanks will be joining the other new tanks outside our brewery… we’ve got a pretty awesome collection going on now! We’re very excited to get these up and running  because we know you’re thirsty.

Cheers!

Brewer Matt DeLuca worked for two years to perfect his recipe after becoming interested in the Black IPA style. However, he didn’t want to just make any ordinary one. His love of hops really comes out in this beer, as he strove to create a Black IPA that was “more hop-forward instead of roasty”.

I think he did a darn fine job at creating this unique and delicious beer… so grab a pint of Black IPA and listen to Matt talk about how he crafted his contribution to the 100 Barrel Series!

Lindsey with her new K2 Skis!

For me, nothing beats heading out on the slopes and getting a couple runs in before heading over to the ski lodge for a delicious Harpoon beer on a weekend. Judging from the large number of people who entered our K2 Ski Sweepstakes… you guys like to spend your weekends that way too!

I had the pleasure to hand off these awesome pair of K2 skis to our winner – Lindsey from Somerville, MA – this past weekend, and since snow is in the forecast in certain parts of New England, it looks like she’ll have the opportunity to really break those skis in (I’m not going to lie… I’m a little jealous).

Lindsey’s been a Friend of Harpoon since May 2011, but “Harpoon was a friend of [hers] long before then!”

She mentioned that she was just looking around on the Harpoon website, in search of an upcoming brewery event, and she discovered the contest section, took her chances and never looked back.

“[I’m] So pumped to get out on the slopes and use them for the first time,” said Lindsey.

Our winner has just one request though –

“How about some fresh powder, New England?”

Cheers to that!

Interested in becoming a Friend of Harpoon? Click here!

Cheers!

We wanted to let you know that today we are bottling our latest 100 Barrel Series beer – #40 Black IPA - in Boston today. Brewer Matt DeLuca crafted this delicious beer, and we really hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

The Friesen grain silo at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston, MA was painted IPA orange with a cut vinyl decal.

If you have happened to stop by the brewery in the past week for a tour or tasting, or to pick up some beer, you have seen in person the makeover we just gave to some of our outdoor tanks. If not, you should come on down to see it in person!

What you will see first when you get here is on the Northern Avenue our Friesen grain silo painted in Harpoon IPA orange with a cut vinyl decal. Then as you walk around to our Visitor Center entrance, you will see our 53 foot tall waste water tank covered in orange vinyl and a whole bunch of Harpoon bottle caps.

We think it really brightens the place up, in a Love Beer, Love Life sort of way.

We’d like to invite you all to take part in a friendly contest:

53 foot waste water tank at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston

How many bottle caps are on the waste water tank (at right)? 

Simply post a comment with your guess of how many bottle caps are on the waste water tank  and your email address (so we can contact you if you win). The winner guessing closest to, without going over, will be selected from all entries made by the end of December!

The prize to the winner will be 2 admission passes to Harpoon St. Patrick’s Festival on March 2 & 3 at our Boston brewery.

We hope that you make it to the brewery soon to see us! Cheers and Happy Holidays!

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Clearing the roof of the brewery off!

In January, we kicked off celebrating our 25^th birthday with a tribute to the Catamount Brewery, by brewing our 100 Barrel Series #35 Catamount Maple Wheat beer! In 2000, Harpoon purchased the former Catamount Brewery in Windsor, VT. The beer was delicious, and I won’t confirm or deny that it paired perfectly with a stack of pancakes.

Winters in New England can be tough, and both Boston and Windsor got some heavy snow during the early part of 2011. For those near Boston, you might remember getting a TON of snow in February. One of the best parts of working at Harpoon is that you are truly part of the team. So in true Harpoon form, everyone helped clear the snow from the roof of our Boston building. The best reward for shoveling snow? Harpoon IPA. Trust us. We know.

Once the snow melted, we really got the party going. In May we celebrated our 25^th birthday in style at HarpoonFest, where Rich Doyle and Dan Kenary unveiled their 100 Barrel Beer – 100 Barrel Series #37 Rich and Dan’s Rye IPA. We randomly put on “25” on our bottle caps, in order to share our excitement with everyone who was enjoying some delicious Harpoon beer. I know I have a pretty big collection of these…

Rich Doyle and Dan Kenary brewing their 100 Barrel Series beer!

Production wise, we also got a few new toys to celebrate with. We started using our brand new racker (aka keg-filling machine). The double storied machine (complete with elevators) can fill a keg about every 15 seconds. Yeah. It’s pretty awesome. Our warehouse got a revamp as well, with new storage racks in order to make getting beer out to you just a little bit easier. We also got some new 500 barrel tanks delivered, along with installing a 10 barrel pilot system – which means more space to develop some delicious limited edition beers!

Other summertime activities? Our Harpoon sporting events! Across four events (Harpoon 5 Miler, Brewery to Brewery, Point to Point, Octoberfest Road Race) we raised $391,000 for charity!

As the summer turned to fall, we threw our LARGEST party ever… Harpoon Octoberfest. We saw over 18,000 people that weekend… the biggest Harpoon Octoberfest that our Boston brewery has seen! Windsor also saw thousands of people, on Columbus Day weekend for Octoberfest and the Octoberfest Road Race -Thanks for coming out and partying with us, I know I had a great time with everyone who came!

Our Harpoon Helps Grateful Harvest Beer-B-Q was also a great success – 300 Bostonians came to enjoy a deliciously prepared barbecued Thanksgiving meal to raise money for the Greater Boston Food Bank. Harpoon Helps donated over $20,000, which was enough to buy more than 1,000 turkeys for families in the Boston area. Did I mention that I got to eat an amazing meal AND feel good about doing something good?

Harpoon Helps Grateful Harvest Beer-B-Q!

In December, Harpoon Helps Spreads Holiday Cheer definitely got everyone in the holiday spirit, as more than 600 volunteers came together to decorate more than 40 shelters, food banks, and community centers in our distribution area.

So as we come to the end of our stroll, please join me in raising a glass of your favorite Harpoon beer – because without you we could not have had the year that we had. Thank you!

Cheers everyone! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Harpoon Vermont brewer Tom Graham created the recipe and brewed this 100 Barrel Series beer. “I first got the idea for this beer when reading a great book called ‘The Homebrewer’s Garden.’ When spring finally came to Vermont, my wife and I gathered a pound of spruce tips and I brewed a homebrew batch using them,” says Tom. “I was pretty pleased with the results so I shared the beer with my colleagues here at the brewery. From there it blossomed into this 100 Barrel Series beer.”

In this video, Tom talks about the whole process of creating and brewing this beer. Grab a pint and enjoy!

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Love Beer. Love Life

This past weekend 2,500 pre-registered runners thought they were, when they signed up for Brooklyn’s Rugged Maniac race – a 5K adventure race and music festival.

The courses are designed and mapped out with help from Navy SEALS, so the event it truly for those with a sense of adventure and fun.

Mike Paone, promotions specialist for Harpoon, said that one of the highlights of the event was the band “Workout.” Apparently, they play a pretty awesome version of “Chariots of Fire,” that had the crowd going wild. You can’t go wrong with great live music.

We poured plenty of Harpoon IPA and UFO White for the thirsty finishers and enjoyed the beautiful fall weather in Brooklyn!

How did you enjoy your favorite Harpoon beer this weekend? Let us know on our Facebook page!

That’s right!

Today, in Boston, we are bottling our latest 100 Barrel Series beer – #39 Vermont Spruce Tip Ale! We are really excited about this brew, crafted by brewer Tom Graham and we hope that you get to enjoy some of this when it hits the shelves at your local package store.

Working at a brewery means that there are plenty of exciting things that are happening around you every day. But today is especially exciting for us.

Today, at the Boston brewery, we are breaking in our brand new 10 barrel pilot brewhouse by brewing the beer that started it all – the Harpoon Ale.

When the Harpoon Ale was first brewed in 1987, there were virtually no other American Pale Ales or Amber Ales available, let alone being brewed within the city limits of Boston. This easy drinking beer was completely different from any other beers available at the time – the caramel color and the mild hop characteristic truly brought another option to the taps in Boston.

Not surprisingly, this beer has had a strong following since day one.

Now, almost 25 years after the Harpoon Ale was first brewed, we are happy to be brewing it once again here in Boston!