Hi There!
I hope you’re enjoying this weather as much as we are. Kristy’s birthday was last Friday, and we’ve been celebrating both her birthday and the great weather. While birthdays are special events, we’re probably most excited about Main Street closing for the summer and fall. City staff is almost finished so our area may even be finished today – for sure tomorrow.
From what you’ve told us, many of you will be quite happy to know that we are re-releasing our Irish Red again today for this Thirsty Thursday. If you haven’t had it, it’s a great beer for this week’s weather, whether it’s coolish or rather warm.
Our 11th Anniversary is coming up soon – May 13th. As many of you know, it is also American Craft Beer Week that week (not sure if they always do it the second week of May because it’s the week we opened the brewery or not, but we’ll take whatever we can get). We’ve decided to celebrate through the weekend, so watch for things going on Thursday through Sunday (maybe more).
Since we were unable to celebrate our 10th anniversary last year, as we were closed because of the pandemic, we’re definitely making plans to celebrate our 10th Anniversary this year. Because a 10th Anniversary is a big one, we’ve decided not to combine it with our 11th. We’re going to wait until it warms up a little more and the covid restrictions diminish. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.
With the Main Street closure, we plan to have a seasonal bar in the beer garden, both because that sounds fun and because we think it will help us to give better service. Right now, we’re planning to offer all the beers we have on tap inside in the beer garden as well. Wish us luck. And if that proves too difficult, we have some other ideas up our sleeve. We’ll also be serving beer in glass this summer. I’ve never been keen on serving our beer in plastic glasses, but last summer it was almost a necessity in order to keep us compliant with Covid.
While we don’t have plans to open the brewery taproom anytime soon, we have been working to make improvements in the brewery, which will allow us to make more beer. Soon, we will add a 60 bbl fermenter to the brewery. We’ve already added a labeling machine as I told you in an earlier newsletter. Colin has been working hard to make this happen and to make sure we have enough packaging materials to keep packaging our beer. Colin, you’re amazing!
Speaking of Colin, did you know he recently got married? Yes, he did – to a wonderful young woman, Sarah. We at the brewery are so very happy for him and his bride and wish him the very best for the years to come. Colin’s the second of our employees to get married. Ryan and Amber were the first. They are expecting their first child in July. To top that off, it wasn’t long ago that Deidrick got engaged to an amazing, talented, beautiful, strong, engaging, hard-working, intelligent young woman, Jacey! We have a lot to celebrate.
We’ll be getting our flower garden ready soon – the flowers will arrive May 26th. The excitement just never ends at Crystal Springs. Upcoming beers: a sour Kveik (as per your request, but we’ll be improving it in future batches as we learned another little tweak with this brew) – looking forward to hearing what you think; a new mid-coast style IPA; Hudson IPA is coming back for a while; AND a Belgian Wit – I’ve been able to source some incredible orange peels for it so we’re pretty excited about this one; and 13 IPA will soon be on tap again.
I hope you have a great weekend. Come on down and check out the Main Street closure, enjoy come great beer and Shopey’s food offerings – we’re offering their full menu now, ask your server. Looking forward to a great summer and the chance to see many of you again.
Cheers, Tom
