In collaboration with Love Pittsfield, Hot Plate Brewing Co. will celebrating the 13th Anniversary of the 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival with 10 small batches of beer, released over the span of 10 days. For each small batch release, they will be hosting a launch party inspired by the history and recipes of each of the new beers.
February 22 — The High Priestess Pomegranite and Black Current Sour
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Beer launch begins at 5 p.m. and concert begins at 7.
Launch Party Details:
Similar to the Witchy Wednesday event Hot Plate held in late October, they will have a metaphysical celebration in the taproom with a few Berkshires-based witches, a Tarot card reader and a crystal and jewelry maker who will all share their talents together.
Background
Hot Plate Says:
European Sour Ales are traditional styles of beer that originated in what is now Belgium and Germany, and often have wheat added to the grain bill. In the case of both Berliner Weisse and Belgian Sours, the beers are often sweetened or flavored to balance the sourness, and in most modern breweries, fruited sours have been the most common.
With modern machinery, a lot of breweries produce what is known as a “kettle sour” which means that they have added bacteria to the wort and held the boil kettle at a specific temperature for twenty-four hours before bring the wort back up to boil and completing the brew. The energy required to complete a two-day brew is part of the reason we haven’t made a commercial sour—until now.
Using a yeast that contains a souring agent that can create those same tart flavors during the fermentation process, we’ve brewed our first-ever sour using pomegranate juice as well as pressed blackcurrants, which we sourced from our friends at C. Cassis in Rhinebeck, NY. (C. Cassis happens to be a woman-owned and woman-led distillery, and the makers of the C. Cassis Spritz, which is a favorite among many Hot Plate guests.)
What’s in a Name?
Hot Plate Says:
While it may seem like women working as fermenters and distillers may be a modern occurrence, women have been producing alcohol throughout most of history, and because of the strong association between women and brewing in the pre-modern times, a lot of negative associations with witchcraft grew out of that time period.
Instead of running from some of those caricatures, we’ve decided to embrace the relationship between feminine energy, brewing, and alchemy in general, and we want to celebrate the craft of all sorts of women. In addition to Sarah, our head brewer, and Rachel, the owner and distiller at C. Cassis, we’re honoring all sorts of alchemists, witches, makers, and healers—which is also a reason why we added pomegranates to this sour, beause of their symbolic connection with metaphysics. In fact, the name itself—The High Priestess—is a card in Tarot, and helps brings together all of these points of inspiration into a single weave.