2beerguys beer blog

Event Recap: Cheers to 30 Years night at Redhook (NH)

@redhooknh, #beer, #30th

Last night, we were invited to attend a celebration for Redhook’s 30th anniversary at the brewery in New Hampshire.

To kick off their North East celebrations, Redhook hosted a gathering of the minds to showcase the new changes that are coming your way.  Here are of the new changes:

• New Bottles: Redhook is moving away from the standard long neck bottle to a custom, old fashion bottle (it’s pretty cool – see picture above).
• Canning: Redhook has teamed up with Cold Spring Brewery in Minnesota to CAN the Coopperhook for the 2011 summer release. Founded in 1874, the Cold Spring Brewery isn’t new to the brewing scene, but is a new partner of Redhook — expect to see Copperhook in a CAN year round.
• New Style Release:  Look for the out the new, crisp, refreshing Redhook Pilsner in a store near you!!
• New flashy look
  
• Something under the cap: Pop the top of the new bottles and you’ll find a surprise under the cap.
• The Man Cave at RedhookNH: The upstairs area outside of the brew house is being redesigned to fit a cozy Man Cave.

Although it sounds like an easy concept, these changes required a lot of patience and hard work.  For example, the new bottles started with a simple idea (… I’m sure there were many different opinions that had to be brought together),  then the bottle had to be made.

After the design concept and bottle manufacturing was completed, they were only at the beginning of the long journey.   The bottling team is now working out the kinks to ensure that they can effectively insert beer into the new bottle.  They will be reminded every week of this change, as they will need to switch the bottling equipment often to keep up products with all of their Craft Brewers Alliance brands.

During the event, we were invited on a group tour, hosted by brewer Andy Schwartz.  He gleefully took us on a backstage tour through the brew house (where they were mashing and brewing Widmer Heffeweizen — it smelled awesome!!!), through the bottling line (which has been working 6 to 7 days a week to keep up with demand) and through the land of the giant fermenters.   The tour was great!!

Here are some of the pictures:

We send out congratulations to the Redhook Staff for all of the hard work!!

Also, it was nice to see our friends there from the Ale Street News, Yankee brew News, @SeacoastBevLab, @BeerZenGirl, @Lisa_m_Smith, @AndoverLiquors (sorry if I missed anyone).

About Redhook

This year, Redhook hits the big three-oh. Sure, it’s a milestone, but don’t expect him to take up macramé or coupon-clipping any time soon. Or ever. He’ll still be everywhere you’d expect to find him: tailgating for UNH games, tinkering in the garage, or picking up the next round while you re-rack. He’ll take one for the team when the situation calls for it, yet be the first to call you out. Sometimes, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Cheers to that.