RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR)–If you want to try some of Hardywood’s Bourbon Gingerbread Stout, then plan to visit the brewery on Saturday, because there isn’t much left after a recent catastrophe.
On Wednesday the team watched dismally as the clamp failure on a fermenter created a beer rocket. On Facebook they compared it to “opening a shaken up can of coke 21 thousand times that size.”
The loss was painful, coming in at 50 barrels. Hardywood was preparing for a Saturday release of a beer similar to the famed Gingerbread Stout that was tapped with a perfect score from Beer Advocate magazine.
Hardywood co-founder Eric McKay said the base of that beer is from a recipe they’ve been brewing for years, and it was accented with ingredients from local craftsmen Bearer Farmers, who make honey, and Casselmonte Farms, who grow ginger.
The bourbon specialty reserve series is a variety of that, but aged for several months in bourbon barrels.
The good news is that there will be some left, just very limited quantities. The reserve and barrel series of beer is sold in 750 milliliter bottles. They will have some tapped in the Tasting Room.
The brewery still has some promised to other venues and said on Facebook that they are “doing our best to honor prior commitments with what we could salvage.”
The bottle pre-sale starts at one p.m. and the Tasting Room doors open to the public starting at two. The lines for this beer variety are famed, sometimes wrapping around the building. Hardywood is located at 2408 Ownby Lane.
So run, run fast as you can—if ever you wish to hold a Bourbon Gingerbread Stout in your hand.
