Hi River Rascals,
Happy birthday to...well, us! Our fifth to be exact. While age is just a number, marking our fifth anniversary can't help but feel special. It would feel special under normal circumstances, but we opened up in 2019. Two days after our One Year Anniversary Party, the Covid 19 lockdown began. No one in the brewing industry had any idea what was going to happen, but our local community here in St. Charles came out IN FORCE buying to-go beer, gift cards, and merch to help support us during those unprecedented times.
The next couple years saw things slowly returning to a sense of normalcy, and all of our favorite familiar faces were back in the taproom. Now at the end of our fifth year, I can't help but be grateful to all the people whose support over this time has enabled us to keep going.
And keep going we have. In a trying time for beer, we've actually been able to expand our production with the addition of two fermenters, a brite tank, and two horizontal lager tanks that we didn't have when we opened. Those tanks let us brew more beer, trying to improve our process, recipes, and execution with each new batch.
Five years in, we feel good about where we're at, but never complacent. Dialing in a couple flagship beers like Dean Street IPA and Kayak Pils has been a wonderful challenge, but now we get the challenge of making them consistent. Our goal is to always have these beers on tap, or as close to that as possible. The good thing about the additional tank space we've acquired over these years is that we get to keep doing these two fan (and staff) favorites while also having plenty of space in the schedule to do new things, as well as rotate in yearly favorites. That won't change going into Year Six.
While our fifth anniversary was officially March 15th, we decided to set our annual party for today, March 23rd. It's going to be quite a day. No tickets, no sessions, just come party with us. With food all day from our good friend Chuck’s Wood Fired Pizza, music by Completely Dead 2-5pm and the Semple Band Duo from 7 -10pm, and a whole lot of fun in between, there are plenty of reasons to stop by today.
To assist in letting the good times roll, we have three anniversary beers to mark the occasion. First, on Thursday we released our yearly Anniversary IPA, again a Hazy Triple IPA, with a new blend of hops. This one, hopped with Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, and Nelson Sauvin, is our favorite to date.
Next, we have our yearly non-adjunct anniversary stout release with Riverlands V. Aged for two years in Buffalo Trace Bourbon Barrels, our stout base, brewed specifically for barrel aging, shines with its rich notes of fudge, molasses, and coffee.
Last, we have something truly special: Riverlands V Double Barrel. A first for us. We took the same stout base in Buffalo Trace Bourbon Barrels and pulled the beer out after a year and put it into a second set of Bourbon Barrels from our friends at Whiskey Acres in Dekalb for another year. The result was an elevated oak presence with notes of vanilla and maple from the barrel that compliment the chocolate notes from the stout base. This is one of our favorite beers we've released. We hope you like it too.
We can't wait to see you all, cheers to FIVE YEARS.
Eric the Brewer