Sweet Stout – Our Winter Seasonal Ale

Wes Keegan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:15:12 +0000

It’s true San Diego. Winter is here. We were all made abruptly aware by the reported 400 traffic accidents reported the day of our first major rain storm. 400! How about a toast to our emergency responders? As a former beach lifeguard for the city of San Diego, I know they love their job. But it’s sometimes thankless. We at TailGate Beer say cheers!

Temperatures are dropping and holiday gift giving typically means an exciting time for beer drinkers. Holiday warmers and winter releases have been coming out sooner and sooner. Some companies releasing them in October! And why not? There are a number of delicious beers that we only get to sample a few precious months of the year. Why not stretch that availability? I love having more beer selection. That’s why TailGate offers 5 year round releases!

As has been our winter custom, Sweet Stout is our Winter Seasonal. It has developed quite a following and we have been receiving a number of inquiries about where to find it this year. I sadly have a good news/bad news situation. Good news is we are selling more beer than we ever expected to in our first two years of operations. You are responsible for that, thank you! Bad news? We’re selling so much beer that we needed to make an inventory decision this winter. To keep up with continued demand and in attempting to continue expansion, we need to focus on our main lineup of year round releases. At this point and time we will not be brewing Sweet Stout.

I personally am staying optimistic and hope to be able to brew a very special release batch of the Sweet Stout with the turn of the New Year. I would like to at the very least send out a small batch of 15-30bbl’s. Cross your fingers everyone and hope for a holiday miracle!

As a sidenote: we receive a number of emails and calls about where to find TailGate Beer. How to order by the case or even keg. Please contact our general email and we’ll make sure your stockings are stuffed this year!

Thank you everyone for your continued support!

Cheers!

Wesley Keegan – Owner

TGB’s first blog post

admin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:43:42 +0000

A completely new and incredibly improved web page! Can you believe how great this is?! Fully interactive links on every page geared to educate you and share with you some of our latest news and events. Big thank you and huge props to Digithrive formerly known as Imagium Web. Great company to work with, and we highly recommend them. Also, all photo work you see is complements of Dan Tentler, feel free to contact us and we will gladly refer you to both of these guys.

Now for beer. My name is Wesley Keegan; I am the owner of TailGate Beer. Yes, I am 23 years old. Yes, I did graduate from SDSU in the class of 2007. Yes, I live and work in San Diego. And yes, I will be writing a personal blog for your viewing pleasure. This blog will consist of updates of news, achievements, beer community press, and the ramblings of yours truly. Please feel free to respond, contribute, or even critique my terrible grammar via blog@tailgatebeer.com or of course post your comments on the blog post itself.

At TailGate Beer, we consider ourselves a local San Diego contract craft-brewery. While some might snub their noses at such a claim, it’s true! We do craft brew our recipes out of a brewery in El Monte, CA, and we are based in San Diego. All operations are done in Miramar, and all products are stored in Miramar as well. I live near Mission Valley, and used to be a beach lifeguard on the shores of Mission and Pacific beach. Our first account was Kristy’s MVP in Point Loma, and our longest running account is Lahaina’s Beach House in Pacific Beach. I pour hot cocoa and snuggle with a blanket at 60* F, and if the sun shows through no matter what time of year, I take the day off and hit the beach. That’s as true to San Diego as you can be.

Unfortunately, TailGate Beer does not have its own brewery. That doesn’t mean we’re not trying! A certain brewery in Boston started the same way we are right now, and they’re doing alright for themselves. If things continue to grow as they are and San Diegans continue to warmly wrap their mild mannered arms around us, one day soon – we’ll build our brewery here too. Then we’ll drop the “contract” portion altogether.

As this initial blog has already been rather lengthy and you, the reader, are probably salivating at the thought of a TailGate Beer draft, I’ll leave you with some brief thoughts.

We have debuted our first summer seasonal: Jay’s Blacktop Blonde. It’s named after my buddy Jay the Tailgate Guy. I’m stoked about this beer, it’s very easy drinking. Crisp, golden, refreshing and believe it or not flavorful. That flavor part might be new to a lot of the yellow beer drinking community. We use choice malts and the same hops in our Blacktop Blonde that we put in our IPA: Magnum and Chinook. This adds for a little zesty spice when drinking. It was my former homebrew recipe, and it was always pretty good. But going from homebrew to commercial is a whole ‘nother monster. I could not believe how great it tasted, cheers to our brew master Phil!

Beer festival season is upon us! We just completed a weekend at the San Diego International Beer Festival and it was hugely successful. Organizers Chad Stevens and Tom Nickel did a great job! Next we have the LA County Fair, which showcases the LA International Beer Competition, where we won the gold medal for, “Hefeweizen.” And the upcoming CA State Fair, where the CA Commercial Craft Beer Competition is, and we won 5 awards! Please come see us at either of these events.

Lastly, we do have a Twitter and Facebook. Follow and become a fan! It’s a great way to stay in the know, and receive personal updates about news and upcoming events.

So for now, and until the next blog, thanks for reading, thanks for drinking, and please:
TailGate Responsibly!

Wesley Keegan
Owner – TailGate Beer

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Sweet Stout – Our Winter Seasonal Ale

TGB’s first blog post