2009 JOLLY ROGER IN THE TANK!

FIRST BATCH BREWED ON OCTOBER 29TH

Traditionally, Jolly is different every year (last year it was an Imperial Red). Morgan Phillips, Drake's assistant brewer, was given a big assignment by Josh & Brian. Formulate and brew this year's Jolly Roger!

This just in From Morgan:

"Everything went great with Jolly yesterday. It came in at 22.2 Plato so if the yeast attenuate at their listed capacity it will be about 9.5% abv. With beers this size it's hard to estimate because it could easily go either way as much as a half a percent. We should know for sure in about ten days.

As for the beer itself I'm very pleased with how it came out so far and it should be very good. It's an Imperial Brown I modeled off an English Brown recipe I've done before. Some of the ingredients are English and it is English inspired, but this big boy is very American. The color is a very rich maple brown that doesn't seem to have red or orange highlights, just brown. The flavor is rich toffee with toasty notes underneath which should give a nice play between malty sweet and dry flavors in the mouth. The mouth-feel with be full and a little sweet, but there are plenty of hops to balance that out. I went with Magnum for bittering and a duet of Chinook and Willamette for flavor and aroma".

Jolly Roger should be on tap at your local East & West Bay taphouses, starting around November 20th.

Thanks for reading!

-- John