AleSmith bottling beers new and old

AleSmith Brewing Company (9368 Cabot Drive, Miramar) is a local brewery with a line-up as steady as its stellar reputation. For many years, owner and brewmaster Peter Zien has gone about his business in a very predictable way, producing large batches of the same core draft and bottled beers augmented by special seasonal releases including a winter and summer version of YuleSmith, red ales to celebrate Valentine’s Day and Halloween, and annual over-the-topper Decadence Ale.

Not too long ago, AleSmith began bottling its popular tap star Nautical Nut Brown under the new and simple handle AleSmith Nut Brown Ale. Versions of the company’s beautiful barrel-aged Speedway Stout, Wee Heavy, Grand Cru, and Old Numbskull barley wine have also made it to market in bottles, a result of Zien investing a small fortune in a state-of-the-art European bottling machine that’s essentially the Maserati of glass cappers. But for the most part, it’s been more of the same…until now.

Zien is taking more steps to get a greater variety of his beers, new and old, into the hands of AleSmith fans, and he’s taking those steps at a much more rapid gait than in the past. For the first time ever, the previously mentioned Halloween brew, Evil Dead Red Ale, will be bottled. Coming in at 6.66% ABV (clever, no), it will hit shelves in late September.

But the news that has the company’s fans most excited is the announcement that AleSmith Old Ale, the beer that served as the first Decadence Ale back in 2005 (and made a repeat appearance in 2010), will be bottled as a yearly seasonal and released in mid-summer. On top of that, Speedway Stout, a beer regarded by many as the best imperial stout in the world, will soon be available two ways—the classic recipe and a version brewed with Vietnamese coffee. The latter has been offered at AleSmith’s tasting room for some time and has provided me cause to return to that mid-county venue many times over.