Hot Takes from the Shorts'iverse
Search News
Filter Tags
The first two specialty releases of 2012 have made it to store shelves around Michigan: Good Samaritan and Woodmaster. These two very unique beers will be pleasant surprises for the weary winter…
We’re pleased to announce the 12 oz. bottle release of yet another beer from our 2007 Imperial Beer Series: Publican Porter. Defined as an imperial London porter, Publican Porter contains…
We are pleased to announce that we have decided to introduce Pontius Road Pilsner as a year-round bottled product. Pontius Road Pilsner was the first Short’s Brew created at our Pub, brewed by Joe Short on March 5, 2004. The pronunciation of Pontius is Pont – ee – us (not Pawn-chus). The real Pontius Road is located in Kalkaska, Michigan. It is where Bill Sohn, the person who encouraged Joe to “go for it” and open his own brewery, lives. When Joe opened Short’s in Bellaire, he knew that if Short’s was going to survive, people would have to be willing to seek out quality beer. Thus, the slogan for Pontius Road Pilsner is “Quality Lies Just off the Beaten Path.” We are happy that, starting soon, you won’t have to go so far off the beaten path to get this original Short’s Brew.
Part of what attracted Joe to brewing an American Pilsner was the historical nature of this style. The colonial settlers and first immigrants to America longed for their familiar, European lager beer, but did not have ready access to the same ingredients. In order to stretch their supplies, Americans added flaked maize to their pilsner beers. True to this tradition, we brew Pontius Pontius Road Pilsner with pilsen malt and a substantial, though not overwhelming amount of flake maize. Pontius Road Pilsner is a light, sessionable beer that still possesses a hoppiness suited to Joe’s tastes (he’s the guy that created Huma Lupa Licious, after all). Yet, while the hop bitterness of Pontius Road is somewhat prominent, the wonderful flavor and aroma of the flaked maize and pilsen malt do not get overshadowed. Our official description of Pontius Road Pilsner is “A true American style Pilsner where the malted barley, when blended with flaked maize (corn), produce a deliciously distinct flavor. It is light in body and color, with a surprisingly full flavor that gives way to crisp refreshment. Handfuls of hops provide pleasant aromatics and a wonderful dry finish. 4.5% ABV, 18 IBUs.”
After much consideration, we have decided to move the Magician to a seasonal specialty release, so that we can remain at a total of five year round flagships. While we love the Magician, we felt that the diversity of our flagship portfolio would be enhanced by this change. Magician fans should not despair, however. We will continue to brew the Magician and do our best to ensure its availability in kegs. We also intend to bottle the Magician as a seasonal specialty release, most likely as a limited fall selection. Meanwhile, the Magician is still available in stores while supplies last. Stock up now!
– Jon Wojtowicz, Short’s Beer Liberator
The Liberator — our American Double India Pale Ale made with lemon and orange zest — is back. With an ABV of 7.5%, the Liberator packs a mighty 95.5 IBUs (on a scale of 100). We use eight different hop varieties in the Liberator. Seven of those are used in the boil and again in the dry hop, along with the eighth variety that is only used as a dry hop addition. To put it into perspective, we use more than twice the amount of hops (by weight) in the Liberator as we do in Huma Lupa Licious. In order to cram all of these hops into this one awesome beer, Tony devised a plan to add approximately 1.5lbs of hops every 4 minutes, during a 120 minute boil, so the total number of additions would equal 30 (in honor of Joe’s 30th birthday). Tony and our other Elk Rapids Brewers, Curt Guntziller and Aaron Smith, replicated this process on a much larger scale for this year’s bottle release.
The Liberator was originally brewed in November 21, 2008 at our Pub in Bellaire. The first batch was made in secrecy by brewer Tony Hansen who wanted to create a special beer for Joe and surprise him with it on his 30th birthday. In order to keep it a secret, Tony had to juggle the beer between multiple fermentors and conditioning tanks, each time intentionally mislabeling the beer so that Joe wouldn’t suspect anything. Finally, on Joe’s birthday, a lone growler of the Liberator was brought to our (then) newly acquired production facility in Elk Rapids, where Joe was already overseeing the immense construction project at hand. There, Joe and a few of our brew staff tasted this epic double IPA for the first time. Everyone agreed that for such an immensely hoppy double IPA, the result is very drinkable and refreshing. You may find that, as hard as this beer is to resist, you will want to keep some in the back of your fridge for a hot July day.
The label art for the Liberator was originally designed and used for a Short’s Great American Beer Festival sponsorship t-shirt. People who paid $100 to help send us to the GABF in 2007 received $1.00 pints at the pub for an entire year and a snazzy tee shirt. If you look at the bottle label, the city depicted in the background is actually Denver. We all liked the artwork so much, that when it came time to bottle the Liberator, it seemed like a perfect fit.
Even as we publish this release, you should be able to find the Liberator in a store near you. We hope that you enjoy this year’s batch as much as we enjoyed brewing and bottling it for you! Oh, and one more thing: Happy Birthday Joe!
– SBC Brew Staff
We have begun bottling Good Humans in preparation for its re-release as our Winter Seasonal. Whereas we release single batches of many specialty releases each season, we have four seasonal beers that are brewed continually throughout their respective seasons, making them temporarily as widely available as our other flagships. These Short’s Brew seasonal beers are: ControversiALE (Spring), Nicie Spicie (Summer), Autumn Ale (Fall), and Good Humans (Winter).
Good Humans is a dry hopped double brown ale made with Briess Malting Company’s Carabrown Malt. Short’s was approached by Briess in 2009 to brew a beer that would showcase this new malt variety. Short’s was one of only two breweries given an opportunity to brew with Carabrown malt before it became available for commercial sale. The other was Dry Dock Brewing in Aurora, Colorado. Samples of Good Humans were used to showcase this new malt variety to other breweries.
As a dry hopped double brown ale, Good Humans is unique in part due to the ample dry hopping that takes place after fermentation, giving the beer a floral fragrant hoppy aroma uncommon to most big sweet malty beers. As you take your first sip, sweet malty aromas harmonize with toasted caramel and toffee flavors. The caramel sweetness is mingled with the slightly fruit-like flavors and aromas of hops. The finish is dry and satisfying, making this a beer that pairs well with food. Crackers and cheese, especially topped with a sweet or spicy jam, really bring out the flavors in Good Humans.
So, why do we call it Good Humans? Having achieved enough success to open a production brewery in 2009, Joe wanted to dedicate a beer to all of the “good” influential people who helped him along the way. Joe was inspired to select the name Good Humans when he heard musician Seth Bernard sing the lyrics: “We’re humans – and we’re the best thing ever.” When Joe described the concept to Seth, Seth hand-drew the label art on a napkin at our Pub. Joe later scanned the image into the computer and worked with Seth and Brad Kik to finalize the finished piece.
Good Humans has quickly become one of our most popular beers. When it was initially released as Winter Seasonal in 2010, it outsold of all our other flagships except for Huma Lupa Licious. We hope that you will enjoy drinking Good Humans this winter!
–Jon Wojtowicz, Short’s Beer Liberator
The 2011 batch of one of the most sought after Short’s Brews, Cup A Joe Coffee Creme Stout (ABV 6.5%), has been released and should hit store shelves and taps within the next couple weeks. This is only the third time that we’ve released Cup A Joe in bottles.
Cup A Joe dates back to Joe’s home brewing days. His early home brew logs indicate a “Java the Stout” was brewed sometime in November of 2000. Later, Cup A Joe was the first stout ever brewed at Short’s Brewing Company. Our records indicate that the first batch was brewed on March 8, 2005.
Cup A Joe is brewed with locally roasted fair trade espresso beans from Higher Grounds, a coffee bar and roastery located in Traverse City, Michigan. This year, 80lbs of ground espresso were used to brew three batches. That’s approximately 1.5oz of coffee per gallon!
Cup A Joe is a true Coffee Cream Stout, in that we add powdered milk sugar during the brewing process to give it a slight creaminess throughout. We describe Cup A Joe as follows:
A brew uniquely different from most coffee stouts, we cram Higher Grounds roasted fair trade espresso beans into every facet of the brewing process. Prominent aromatics of malt, espresso, and cocoa are abundant and create a flavor robust with big malt characters fused with cream and coffee. The perfect morning night capper.
Cup A Joe is a cornerstone of our stout series, and it goes on tap each November during our annual Brewski Bash party. This year’s Brewski Bash will take place on Saturday, November 26th at 8:00 p.m.
– Jon Wojtowicz, Short’s Beer Liberator
Joe Short brewed a series of 13 imperial beers in 2007 that yielded some of the most popular and fantastic specialty brews in our lineup,including India Spruce Pilsner, Woodmaster, Bloody Beer, Black CherryPorter, Soft Parade, Publican Porter, Good Feller, and Ginger in theRye. All beers from the 2007 series were hand bottled in 750ml bottles and came with a collectable card that was numbered and autographed by Joe Short. At the time, it seemed that Joe’s investment in brewing these outrageous beers, which he’d dreamed upand written recipes for but in some cases had never brewed before, was crazy! Looking back, however, the Imperial Series was a big part of what put Short’s on the map. Beer drinkers from around the country heard about these delicious and totally distinct beers and wanted to try them.
Ginger in the Rye is just the latest in our effort to bring back the 2007 series beers. It is a Rye Munich Weizen Ale with approximately 2 oz of fresh ginger per gallon and an ABV of approximately 7.0%. Below is an excerpt from the original narrative written by Joe about this experience brewing Ginger In The Rye:
Making this beer was definitely one of the top 3 worst brew days I have ever had. I have always been reluctant to use rye malt without a lautering aid in fear of a stuck mash. I went ahead and brewed itanyway and got myself into a seriously stuck mash. The rye seemed towork like a giant glue stick in the mash tun. I thought if I proceeded really slow I could cheat the inevitable “stuck” mash, but I could not. I tried everything. No method other than waiting for gravity to pull the slow trickle of sweet wort from the grain bed would suffice. I had to rig up a special heating unit under my sparge water tank to keep it warm through the duration of the slow transfer of liquids. I was hungry, tired and ornery as hell. Eventually, I cut off the flow of wort into the kettle and boiled it hard and long.
I used the Weihenstephan yeast strain, which happens to be the most preferred yeast for making wheat beers by German Brewers. It was the first time this yeast strain had entered our facility. I thought it would work well for the rye and Munich malts I used. Toward the end of fermentation lost and lots of ginger was shredded and added to the fermenter. Ginger is a magical rhizome rich with healing powers thathas been used since ancient times. The volatile oils and phenol compounds are the active components which are great for relief of nausea and motion sickness. It was also used as a cough suppressant and digestion aid. It is one of the earliest spices known in Western Europe and is said to be a spice used against the plague. Nineteenth century bars and taverns kept small containers of ground ginger available for sprinkling into beer. I find it adds a nice spice and balance to the beer, giving it a pleasant finishing “zing” and complimenting the character of the beer as a whole. I think you will too.
Some of the artwork on Joe’s original collector card is shown, as well as a picture of Summer (one of our employees) with a huge piece of ginger that was ground up and put into this year’s batch. We hope you enjoy it!
– SBC Brew Staff
Still trying to get your hands on Cornholio, our Dogfish Head/Three Floyds collaboration beer? How about Captain Fantasy, our 2011 Half Acre collaboration beer? We have 6-packs of each for sale at our Pub in Bellaire, but they are going fast.
Cornholio is a Baltic Porter, which is brewed with lager yeast. This dark beer has a distinctly crisp and refreshing finish. Each participating brewery brought an ingredient from their home state to add to the brew. Short’s contributed Horehound, an herb that has been used for centuries as a medicinal remedy in cough drops, an ingredient in hard candies, and even in beers according to certain historical brewing records. From Delaware, Sam (Dogfish Head) brought beach plums. Nick Floyd contributed a unique red variety of popcorn, which was roasted and then “dry popped” into the beer. As you take a sip of this beer, you will note an aroma of rich roasted malt with hints of coffee and chocolate. The big initial flavors are of sweet plums that eventually become offset by the robust malt and unique herbal accents from the horehound. A subtle burnt bitterness lingers in the aftertaste, but it’s the surprisingly dry finish that ultimately leaves a lasting impression.
Captain Fantasy is our latest collaboration brew with Half Acre Brewing Co. from Chicago, Illinois. Half Acre is the same brewery that we joined forces with to create Freedom of ’78 guava IPA. This time around, the brewers decided to make a saison, but wanted to dress it up a bit. They added pear and some very exclusive hops from Japan called Soriachi Ace. The result is a lighter bodied ale with a pale goldenrod color and subtle haze. Satisfying aromas of nutmeg and spice blend with bright fruity hop fragrances. A lively amount of carbonation cleanses and refreshes while leading into flavors of sweet pear, tart lemon, and pleasant herbal subtleties. The overall fruitiness is abruptly interrupted by an assertive hop bitterness that dominates the finish, turning noticeably dry. Due to the unique nature of this brew and the incredibly limited availability of the Soriachi Ace hops, we were only able to make a single batch of this beer. As such, it’s availability has been extremely limited.
We hope that you will stop by our pub to obtain these extremely rare and limited edition Short’s Brew releases while they are still available! Each are priced at $13.99 per six pack.
Cheers!
-SBC Brew Staff
We just bottled Beach Wheat for the first time ever! In case you’ve never had it at our pub, Beach Wheat is a light, clean, easy drinking Hefeweizen. Esters of banana and clove are evident in the nose. Simply put, it’s totally yummy and refreshing and will leave you hankering for more when your pint glass is empty. We recommend that you take a 6 pack to the beach sometime soon! Life is Short’s, ya know?
We promised to keep you posted on the status of one of our most anticipated specialty beer releases: India Spruce Pilsner. As the people who have been anticipating this beer know, the “popping” of the spruce tips needed for this beer happened late this year, pushing the brewing date back about a week and a half. But today is the day, and the beer has been bottled. We took some to the pub today, so it is currently available for sale at that location. It should hit stores next week.
If you love this beer, be sure to stock up because it won’t last long. However, due to demand, we brewed almost 3 times as much this year as we did last. To read our earlier post about Spruce Pils, click here. To view all of our 2011 Spruce Pils production photos, go here.
Last year we brought back one of our favorite beers from the 2007 Imperial Beer Series: India Spruce Pilsner. It sold out almost instantly and everyone started asking for more! However, like so many of the beers we produce, Spruce Pilsner can only be brewed once a year because a key local ingredient, in this case spruce tips, can only be harvested once a year for a short time.
Here in Northern Michigan, the harvest window changes from year to year. Last year, the spruce tips popped early due to warm temperatures. This year, Joe has been checking the trees every morning, but the tips haven’t been ready. However, this morning we got some great news via video message from Joe. The spruce tips have finally popped. This is great news for Spruce Pilsner fans… it means that we can begin harvesting spruce tips and brewing this beer right away.
Last year, Draft Magazine chose Spruce Pilsner as a “Pick” in the November/December issue. Editor Chris Staten described it as follows:
Robust hop bitterness accentuates the base pilsner’s crisp finish, while a hefty dose of Northern Michigan blue spruce tips deliver the forest to your glass. With bright lemon and grapefruit notes singing through the swallow, this beer is about as refreshing as it gets.
We will continue to update you on the progress of this beer as the season continues! You won’t want to miss it!
-Short’s Brew Staff
When we aren’t hard at work brewing, summer is a time for us to enjoy water skiing, softball, and Nicie Spicie. There’s nothing more refreshing than Nicie on a hot afternoon! We just completed our first bottling run of Nicie for 2011, so look for it in stores soon!
Nicie Spicie is a wheat ale made with a 50/50 blend of malted barley and malted white wheat. It is infused with fresh citrus zest, then spiced with coriander and a four peppercorn blend. This light bodied ale is very easy to drink for being as complex as it is. Exemplified by its gorgeous golden color, this beer is crisp and refreshing.
-SBC Brewing Staff