Local(ish) Brewery to Participate in Special Rare Beer Festival

In times past, exclusive beer festivals were among the best ways for very small breweries to get on the radar of beer fans who didn’t happen to live in the same area as the brewery — kind of the same way a local singer can break big by snagging an opening spot on a national tour. Tiny breweries can get in front of the trade media and potential new distributors by pouring side by side with the big boys at beer festivals. 

The annual Pints for Prostates is an organizer of some of those events, inviting a global roster of talented brewers to events like the Denver Rare Beer Tasting, NC Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting and Northern Lights Rare Beer Fest to raise money for prostate health awareness. At last year’s Denver event, a wee brewery out of Smithville was one of only two Tennessee breweries invited to pour in Denver, and this year they’ll be the only one at the virtual version of the event.

Von Seitz TheoreticAles is a microbrewery specializing in wild fermentations, sours and herbal beers made on a four-barrel system with releases of fewer than 25 cases per batch. Their experimentative spirit has earned them fans across the industry, including the organizers of the Denver Rare Beer Tasting who have been inviting breweries to pour at their own taprooms to raise money for Pints for Prostates.

Unfortunately, Von Seitz doesn’t have a taproom, but some of their industry friends have volunteered to free up some tap space to help out with the effort. Beginning Thursday, Sept. 24, and running until the kegs kick, Von Seitz will be pouring their Deputy Blueberry at Panther Creek Brews in Murfreesboro and a collaboration with Mayday Brewery at that brewery’s taproom, also in the 'Boro.

Now, I like to think I know a little bit about beer, but when you get deep into the innovative experimentation that Von Seitz trades in, it eventually goes over my head. So I’ll let them describe the beers for you:

The beer at Panther Creek is Deputy Blueberry, a collaboration with Evil Twin for BlaeberDay in Copenhagen. Eleven breweries around the world were selected to make a beer to join Cantillon. It’s a dark sour aged in a puncheon that held a top-10 rated wine and then aged on 7 lbs. of fruit per gallon. Blueberries, cherries, nectarines and Muscadine grapes. Only 2 kegs are available in the US.

OK, I got most of that. Cantillion is a famous Belgian brewery that’s on every beer tourist’s bucket list, so it’s a big deal to be asked to make a beer for them. And a “puncheon” is a big-ass barrel that formerly held some great wine and then was used to age this beer with a bunch of fruit. Panther Creek will be pouring literally half the extant inventory of this beer, so don’t miss it. Now on to the Mayday beer:

We made a small batch with Mayday. “Karen’s Revenge” is an amber ale fermented with 2 Tennessee native yeast strains. One from an honeysuckle and the other from a Moonshine Cherry. They add red wine, black pepper and cherry esters to the beer. Only 15 gallons were made.

This one’s a little more straightforward, especially if you already like amber ales. The unique yeasts add nuances of flavor to the beer, so it’s not like they actually poured red wine, black pepper and cherries into the tank. This sounds like it could be really interesting.

Von Seitz TheoreticAles may fly under the local beer radar, but their reputation is global. They are distributed to more than 30 countries, including through several online beer outlets, so you might be hearing even more about these guys soon.