CLEVELAND, OH (Nov 2012) - Great Lakes Brewing Company (GLBC) will add two new members to their exceptional family of beers in 2013. Alchemy Hour Double IPA and Rye of the Tiger IPA will satisfy hopheads and adventurous craft beer enthusiasts with bold but balanced flavor profiles. Alchemy Hour Double IPA: Style: Double India Pale Ale First Available: February Packaging: 4-Pack, 1/6 BBL, 1/2 BBL ABV: 9.4% ABW: 7.5% IBU: 80 Flavor: Hop-forward with a balanced blend of Mosaic and Nugget hops. Name Origin: On the West Coast, surfers have a term for that perfect time of day, when the waves are breaking just right and it feels like you can ride forever. They call it Alchemy Hour. Alchemy Hour Double IPA pays tribute to the North Coast’s unlikely surf bums and the ancient quest for liquid gold, wherever it may live: on the ocean, in a lake, in a bottle. Rye of the Tiger IPA: Style: India Pale Ale First Available: April Packaging: 6-Pack, 12-Pack, Draft ABV: 7.5% ABW: 6.0% IBU: 92 Flavor: Strong citrus and pine presence with a clean, dry finish. Name Origin: Named for its fierce hop profile and sharp rye content, Rye of the Tiger is a thrilling India Pale Ale with bite. If you can handle this hopped-up cat, you’ve earned your stripes. Great Lakes Brewing Company’s 2013 Seasonal Program: January—Conway’s Irish Ale February—Alchemy Hour Double IPA April—Rye of the Tiger IPA May—Lake Erie Monster Imperial IPA June—The Wright Pils July—Oktoberfest August—Nosferatu Imperial Red Ale November—Christmas Ale November—Blackout Stout Great Lakes Brewing Company, which is comprised of a brewery and brewpub, was founded in 1988 by brothers Pat and Dan Conway as the first microbrewery in the state of Ohio and today remains Ohio’s most celebrated and award-winning brewer of lagers and ales. Great Lakes Brewing Company’s distribution area extends throughout the Great Lakes region and surrounding areas. For more information or to learn more about the company, visit greatlakesbrewing.com. ###
What I want to know is why in the hell they have Lake Erie Monster (absolutely amazing), and they are bottling this Alchemy Hour DIPA (same exact style whether you call it Imperial or Double). They need to put out Market Street Wheat instead of another incarnation of the same style already in bottles. Market Street Wheat would be perfect, plus they wouldnt have to deal with competing against Hopslam and Double Trouble. Just seems like a stupid move from a normally genius brewery. Poorly played, guys.
No dopplerock?!?? Well def interested in alchemy. I'd have to say blackout and rye of the tiger are my favorite with their Oktoberfest coming third. I would loooooove to see their farmhouse saison in bottles, that shit was amazing on tap!
I personally think it's a smart move if Alchemy Hour is true to the westcoast style. This beer has potential to show a whole new side of GLBC. It could be the ying to the malt forward yang that is LEM. I was hoping for some Alberta Clipper bottles, but Alchemy Hour has a ton of potential.
yea I was praying for Alberta Clipper too. Market Street is just a different style that OH has yet to make a great bottle of (Market Street was much better than Whippet Wheat).
They have bottled it before. The bottled version of that beer was a shell of what was on tap at the brewpub. As a result those bottles sat around for months before finally disappearing. I'd love to see that beer in bottles if it actually tasted like what they put on tap. http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/73/45558
Dunno if that's the same beer...I've had Grassroots and Hale's back in the day, but the Farmhouse Saison they had on during Cleveland Beer Week was really clean in comparison (no lemon or basil tastes). Could be a tweaked recipe or renamed beer but wow it was 100% different & better!
No Doppelrock? Thats sad. However Rye of the Tiger is AMAZING on tap and im sure their other DIPA will be on par with ol' Nessie. I prefer west coast style DIPA's anyways.
I won't miss Dopplerock too much but I think they should consider bottling Tripel Dog Dare...just sayin
Great Lakes was the first craft brewer I Really started to follow. I admire their style and quality. For me they have the World's best porter in Fitzgerald, a solid ipa and pale ale, a good RIS in black out, have a great overall lineup and they are probably the best American brewery that make the lager styles. Dortmunder and Eliot Ness are the best of their style, and some may argue but their Oktoberfest is the best marzen in the world. Throw in a nice Czech Pils(The Wright pils), and doppelbock and you have the best group of lagers any American brewery can offer. But with today's craft brewing world a brewery has to have big hoppy beers to be considered great. I don't think this, but I do love hops. I'm not sure GLbC should have dropped The Doppelrock nor Holy Moses as both were damn good beers and worthy of being in anyones lineup. That being said, Rye of the Tiger is top shelf and I'm sure the other is as well. This will bring a new group into GLBC and hopefully more folks appreciate this true world class brewery. But couldn't they have released these 2 new brews and still kept their traditional lineup in tact? Why not continue to release the same ales and lagers in their respective 4 and 6 pack offerings while introducing 2 of their creations to the craft world as a whole? Why not put these 2 new beers a rye beer and another big ipa in 22 oz/1 pint 6 oz bombers and ship them out in between releases? GLBC have proved they can release beers close together or basically at the same time and sell both. Christmas Ale and Blackout Stout are a perfect example. Both Arrive here on the same truck, the same day. I just don't think we've seen the last of doppelbock and holy Moses. I hope GLBC come up with a plan to make something like this work. Make your 5 year round beers in Edmund Fitzgerald, Burning River, Commodore Perry, Dortmunder and Eliot ness. Release your standard seasonals in conways, the doppelrock, holy Moses, wright pils, lake Erie monster, nosferatu, Oktoberfest, Christmas ale and blackout. Then release some of those pub greats like the 2 they are going to release. Maybe even 4 every year. I hope they don't do away bottling 2 of the old favorites. But the good news in all of this is people will get to see 2 new brilliant brews from GLBC and hopefully this is the start of great brewer becoming greater. I know one thing, I'd love to see Wolfhound Stout get its bottling premier. Now you talk about a damn good stout. Wolfhound is it. I say bring it all on. Let's appreciate the boys from Cleveland. They deserve it
I agree, it seems like each year Ofests are out earlier and earlier. To me they do not hit the spot until there is a crispness in the air. I can't drink one when it is 80 or 90 degrees outside. I just picked up a Nosferatu from my local shop that got lost in the mix. A nice treat in January for sure. I look forward to the IIPA in a month!
I don't know the deal with Alchemy Hour, but Rye of the Tiger predates the Rye'da Tiger. In any case, I'm excited to try both of them.
Rye of the Tiger! YES!!!!! I had this at the brewery a couple years ago, and was lamenting the fact that it was a draft-only/brewery-only offering. I hope this gets put out as a sixer with pricing more in line with their year-round stuff though; not sure I'd want to pay $11-12 for a four pack.
I wish they would introduce Cleveland Brown Ale in the late summer/early fall in time with the kickoff of the NFL season and push Oktoberfest into a more appropriate (read later) time frame. Also, I agree that introducing not one but two new hopped-up IPAs into a seasonal rotation that already includes Lake Erie Monster is not a great marketing move (i don't really care cuz I love my IPAs). I think they should diversify a bit and start bottling other pub-only favorites such as Abbey Ave Dubbel. Jabberwockey, or Rackhouse Ale. And while we are on the subject of GLBC, who's excited for the Deschutes collab? l am...
Always wanted to try Alberta Clipper...really enjoyed Big Black Smoke, wouldn't mind seeing that out on the streets. It was nice to see Cleveland Brown Ale back out and around town on tap, I agree w/Stinger's comment to release it @ the start of Browns Preseason
YES. I lived out West for a while and the misses and I probably bought more Black Butte six packs than anything else. It's one of the brews that got us into craft.
I could be remembering wrong but I believe that was replaced with Wright Pils last year Really looking forward to Alchemy Hour hit shelves soon tho
So, I notice that on the seasonal schedule, Conway's Irish Ale is the first one scheduled for release, in January, and I just started to see that in my neck of the woods (central NY). Does anyone know when in February we might be able to expect Alchemy Hour? That and Rye of the Tiger have got me rather interested. (And the annual release of Lake Erie Monster, of course, which I still contend is among the most underappreciated, widely-released DIPAs in the East. Though I am sad to see the Dopplerock go . . . )
Witbier is not one of my favorite styles, but Holy Moses was definitely the top of the style heap for me. GLBC is one of the few breweries that actually leave me longing for beers when they take them off the market, even if I didn't buy them as much as some of their other offerings. So many beers so little time. Enjoy while ya can I guess...
Excited to try the new IPAs, but sad to see Dopplerock and Holy Moses go. They were both really good beers and HM was the beer that got my fiance into craft beer, so it will always hold a special place for me. I live in Cleveland, so hopefully they'll still make small batches of those brews for on-draft consumption at the brew pub. I do understand why GL is doing this. IMO, GL has one of the highest quality, well-rounded line ups in the country. But if you have to point to any one thing their bottle line up is lacking, it has to be big hoppy IPAs. Commodore Perry is great, but definitely not a hop bomb—it's an English IPA. And for whatever reason, Lake Erie Monster has always reminded me more of a barleywine than a DIPA. As we all know, a large portion of the BA community is obsessed with hops, so these new beers should expand GL's sales even more. Rye of the Tiger has been on tap at the brewpub a number of times over the past couple years and is delicious, so I am sure that will be a success. And knowing Great Lakes, I am sure the other one will be delicious too.
just looked at the 2012 list, guess i was wrong >.< will be sad to see HM go, but i don't think our area even got any last year because i dont remember grabbing any like i did the year before
Just received this e-mail from Great Lakes, in response to my inquiry: Good morning Francis, Thank you for your inquiry! At this point in time we do not have an exact release date for our seasonal brews. It typically depends on the area you are in and when it reaches the distributors/retailers/shelves. You should expect to see Alchemy Hour by mid-February, however, it can take a little longer. I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Cheers! Well, mid-February sounds good to me.
I read once that GLBC rotates their seasonals on a biannual basis. I would not be surprised to see doppelrock, holy Moses, and some others in 2014.
