It’s been about a week since we’ve released Salute, our Double IPA, and all the kegs are sold. Well that escalated quickly.  So where did they all go? While we’ve been really active on social media with places where you can find the beer, I wanted to compile a list of all the places we now know have brought it in. One thing to note- these are places that have bought the beer.  It may not yet be on draft. If that’s the case, ask the bartender which beer it will be replacing and then proceed to drink the shit out of that beer. Here we go: Bars — Kegs/Draft Union Brew House – Weymouth Atwood’s Tavern –...

  It’s been about 18 months since Backlash has been selling beer commercially. Damn, where did the time go? Somewhere amidst the endless beer tastings, beer fests, brew days, labeling days, waxing days, and lots of drinking, a year and a half went by. We set goals — some we hit and some we did not.  We made pretty awesome beer.  We made a shitty beer. We’ve grown, a lot. One thing has been consistent though since we started — All of our beers have been Belgian. I’m not sure why it’s been that way to be honest.  I have nothing against hops, but I think when I started brewing for Backlash I was just burned out on IPA.  I...

  Oh boy. Talk about screwing the pooch — we’ve out done ourselves this time, ladies and gents. As you might know, we’ve been debuting new beers as our four-part Apocalypse Series for the last few months.  So far Conquest and War have been well received, and Famine should be hitting the shelves in the next few days.  Although the timing wasn’t perfect (we had initially hoped to release all four in 2012), the beers themselves have been promising.  The last in the series, Death, was slated to hit the market around the end of this month. That was the plan. The thing is, you can plan until you’re blue in the face but things don’t always work out...

So. As you may or may not know (depending on how connected you are to the FB and Twits), we have some cool shit coming up in the next few months.  What am I talking about, specifically?  I’m talking about our Apocalypse Series. I know you probably have a bunch of questions right now, so keep with us here.  I’ll try to address the major ones. What is the Apocalypse Series? So the idea is to craft 4 different beers in each month leading up to the end of all humanity as we know it.  The Mayan calendar predicts that we’ll all meet our maker on the 23rd of December, so we thought it would be interesting to model...

Before you even begin reading this post, let me set the stage:  I’m not here to name names, point fingers, or put anyone on blast.  If you’re looking for insider industry drama, you’ve come to the wrong place. With that said, and at the risk of sounding like a complete douchebag, here we go. The past year has seen a shit load of new faces enter the craft beer market here in Massachusetts (with us being one of them).  What’s even crazier is that there are hundreds more companies waiting in the wings for more capacity to open so they too can bring new beer to market.  Nationally, there are around 1,000 breweries in planning. Growth which is by all measures...

  Sometimes, the silver linings find you. Allow me to explain, and it goes a little something like this: Last week was a bit of a shit sandwich for yours truly.  Driving to Holyoke from Boston 5 days in a row to label/wax dip bottles of beer isn’t exactly the most fun thing to do, especially when it’s balls hot.  It also doesn’t help when you’re by yourself for 3 out of 5 of those days, and all 8 hours you spend at the brewery seem to barely make a dent in the task at hand.  A bit demoralizing at times. On Thursday, in the midst of the mindless repetition, approaching my “fuck this shit” point, I was served...

You might have seen something about this recently. A few days ago, MolsonCoors announced that they will be launching Coors Light Iced T in Canada and possibly rolling it out to the US after that. At the same time, Budweiser’s parent company, InBev, will be launching Michelob Ultra 19th Hole Light Tea and Lemonade. Should you be surprised? No. Should you be grossed out? Absolutely. Looking at the track record of the big 3 beer producers (Bud/Miller/Coors), it seems they launch a new, shitty product every other week. Bud just launched Bud Light Platinum a month or so ago, and you don’t have to search far to find all the other weird permutations of low calorie, fruit crap that...

A couple days ago, I got a QR code review that bothered me a little bit.  Here it is: Appearance: 1 Aroma: 3 Taste: 2 Overall: 2 Comments: “Why they hell is there a snowstorm of white particles in this beer? I’m pretty sure it’s wax, and that’s f*cked up.” In typical me-fashion, I took to Twitter and made a joke out of it, ridiculing the reviewer for not knowing what the particles in a Belgian-style beer are: But then, my voice of reason (aka Maggie) reminded me that not all people understand Belgian beer/yeast properties etc.  It may have just been someone who is new to craft beer and bought the beer because the bottle looked cool. I...

  Labors of love — we have plenty. We try to impress a hands-on feeling to almost everything we do. Whether it’s hand labeling, wax dipping and hand stamping all our bombers, or making homemade candi sugar for our beer, we do what it takes. It’s not always the easiest way, and almost never the most efficient way — but it’s what we believe to be the right way, and that’s all we give a shit about. Today’s example: carefully peeling a shit ton of lemons. Wait wait wait, let’s back it up. I hear you already: “Helder, why the fuck would you do that?  They sell lemon peel in bulk, like this right here on Amazon . One click purchase...