Little Ol' Us at The Raleigh Rare Beer Festival!

Haw River Farmhouse Ales has been lucky enough to be invited to pour at the Raleigh Rare Beer Festival in Raleigh on January 26th, one of only two breweries-in-planning* (or maybe three, depending on whether our friends at Trophy Brewing get their doors open before the 26th), alongside some of the biggest names in craft brewing from around the state and the country.

To say we're both incredibly humbled and a bit anxious would be a slight understatement. The fact is that pretty much everything we could possibly pour could be classified by some as "rare beer", since you can't really get any of it anywhere until we open our doors next year. So in an effort to not be "those lame guys that think they can hang with the Big Boys & Girls", we put on our thinking caps and have put together a lineup of "alternate versions" of some of the recipes we're planning that we hope you'll enjoy. Here's what's on deck at this point:

• A bourbon-barrel aged version of our Flanders Red on Cherries, aged for a year in a Heaven Hill barrel we acquired early last year and nestled safely into a corner in our third bedroom on top of 50 pounds of Michigan-grown Balaton Tart cherries.
   
• A "breakfast" version of our Belgian-style Dubbel, brewed with a couple pounds of flaked organic oats and finished with roasted organic cocoa nibs and freshly ground Sumatra & Tanzania Peaberry coffee beans.
   
• A sour version of Hiverna, our Winter Harvest Saison, brewed with pumpkin, butternut squash and sweet potatoes and specially aged on Brettanomyces, Lactobacillous, and a handful of French oak chips.
   
• A 100% Brettanomyces Brux Trois version of our Cotton Pickin' Farmhouse IPA, dry-hopped with big fancy American hops like Citra, Amarillo & Simcoe.

We're also planning to bring a few surprises, including a few growlers of test batches of Communal, our ~3.2%ABV Table Beer, and perhaps some very limited samples of the results of our wild yeast collection experiments. We'll make a few last minute calls on whatever "extras" we have in tow for the day.

So as of today (December 14th), there still appear to be general admission tickets available, so make sure you reserve your spot now if you want to be there—it's pretty much guaranteed to sell out at some point! By the way, the festival is also a fundraiser for Pints for Prostates, so a portion of your ticket price goes to a great cause. We'll see you there! 

* By the way, the other brewery-in-planning is Quest Brewing out of South Carolina, who, based on what we've heard about what they have planned, we're really excited about. Check them out on Facebook and Twitter, if you're so inclined.