St. Paddy's Day Stout

St. Patrick's day is right around the corner. Corn beef, leprechauns and green beer. Who doesn't like green beer? So guess what, we're doing green beer this year - with a twist though, naturally. Not of the green algae variety like our delaware-based compatriots.

Into our lucky pot o' gold, I mean, mash tun, we combined light and dark malts, a dozen or so pounds of oats. We added a variety of hops to the kettle and allowed fermentation magic to happen, but for old St. Patrick that wasn't enough. We decided to add nearly 4 pounds of coffee beans to the mix post-fermentation as well. How is it "green" you say? It's 100% Organic, all the way through. We might not be wind-powered but this is the greenest beer we've ever made.

100% Organic, hops and all.

Seven Bridges Cooperative, specializing in organic brew ingredients supplied the malt and the hops (even though the organic label does not require organic hops until 2012!) - but the coffee we sourced locally.

San Diego's newest coffee roasters Coffee and Tea Collective stopped by on the 23rd to "dry-bean" our coffee with us. Before we could add the coffee to the fermenter though, we had to have a cupping of course.

Hand-powered, Ceramic Grinding.

They hooked us up with the Ethiopian Harar bean less than 24 hours after they roasted it at their pico-roaster. It provides an enormous coffee aroma and flavor. If you like stouts and/or black coffee this beer will be right up your alley, main thoroughfare and side streets ahead.

Japanese Siphon Brewed.

So, what's it all mean? On Saturday the 19th, we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day at Hess. Music, food, all our awesomely regular beers and Fortuna Hiberniae (Luck of the Irish). We're even trying something new - nitrous. That's right, we're souping up this concoction with a 30 pound boost of nitrous-dioxide, all for your drinking pleasure.

That's fresh, baby.

We're making changes here at Hess, and one of them is better flow at the taps. We'll have two taps for all the beers up (including one regular tap for Fortuna and one on the nitro) so the line for beer should be at a minimum. We're trying our best to make sure you have a great time. To that end, we're bringing back Family Wagon who rocked for us at our grand opening back in August. For food this time we will have BBQ Republic featuring the following:

Babyback Ribs.

Two Pulled Pork or Chick BBQ Sliders, Two Pulled Pork or Chicken Tacos, or Three Meaty Babyback Ribs all feature BBQ beans on the side.

So from Noon till 6:00PM, bring your glass, a chair if you want to and let's celebrate St. Patrick's life and death.