Wonderland Tasting Party Recap

Last Friday night (12/6/13), 75-some-people gathered at Wonderland in negative degree weather to chow down on some crab n’ craft beer. Although the weather outside was frightful, we happened to have a delightful time.

To showcase our head brewer’s hard work and gather feedback from the community, the Wonderland Brewing Company team decided to throw an exclusive tasting party. Since our fans have been eager to taste our brews, we offered an exclusive invite for our 500^th Facebook fan to join the party and we randomly drew four other fans’ names that participated in our contest to help us drink beer and celebrate our progress.

Ping pong was played, BBQ from Famous Dave’s warmed our bellies, and four beers on tap helped us forget about the cold (at least for a little while…). We promised crab back in October, and although it was interesting to assemble crab legs in December in Colorado, we delivered! We were so happy to see all who braved the winter chill to attend the party and we hope you had a fabulous time.

The team is anxious for the day that we will be open to the public. For a little piece of the party, here’s a taste of how we got down on Friday night…

– We cooked crab a la kettle

 

– We played ping pong

 

 

– Our Facebook contest winners brought dates

 

 

– We rocked on

 

– We drank beer

 

– Girls showed up

 

– We imagined how our bar will look

 

– We could always find THIS guy…

 

– And the moon came out in Wonderland fashion

 

What Was Brewed in the Kettle This Week?

Joshua Willett ~ Mago Cerveza

Happy Friday, Wonder peeps!

This week at Wonderland, our boiler and conditioning tanks were delivered, amazing progress was made on the boiler room, and most importantly, our brewmaster brewed more beer.

What was brewed in the kettle this week, you wonder?  Below you will find our brewmaster’s recipe for a Belgian Tripel.

Tripels are widely open to interpretation, so in this version, we were interested in bringing out the earthiness that comes from the yeast.  To help this process along, our head brewer, Josh, fermented warm and added honey.  He also added a dash of coriander and the zest of 5 lemons to create a hint of citrus and acidity.  An O.G. of 1.081 would suggest a beer of about 9.2% ABV!

Belgian Tripel

Grains
35.0 lbs    Pilsner Bel 2-Row
1.00 lbs    Honey Malt
13.0 oz     Abbey Malt
13.0 oz     Wheat Malt, Ger.

Hops
1.00 oz     Magnum, 15.20%, 90min
1.60 oz     Tettnang, 3.90%, 30min
3.00 oz     Saaz, 3.83%, 5min

Yeast
Belgian Yeast

Spice
8.00 g        Lemon Zest, 5min
1.00 oz      Coriander Seed, 5min

Sugar
2 lbs 8 oz  Cane (Beet) Sugar
1.00 lbs     Honey

Brew Day Stats
Brewed:  10/14/13
Batch Size:  13.00 gallons
Boil Size:  14.79 gallons
Salt to Kettle (4g CaCl)
Boil Time: 90 minutes

Mash Profile
Sparge Water:  6.14 gallons
Sparge Temperature:  170°F
Total Grain Weight: 41 lbs 1.9 oz

Mash Steps
Mash In Temp/Time:  151°F/60min
Add 13.42 gal of water at 164.0°F

Notes
Added Wild Flower Honey

Beer Profile
OG:  19.190 Plato
IBU:  25.6
EST. SRM:  6.6
FG:  3.000 Plato
ABV:  9.2%

Welcome to Wonderland

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Lewis Carroll

Throughout our construction phase, so have we, Lewis…

As the newest brewery in Broomfield, Colorado, we would like to formally introduce ourselves. We are Wonderland Brewing Company and we are excited to be joining the stellar brewing community that thrives in Colorado. As some may know, we are currently under construction, but the crew is working their tails off (not literally Geebes [our resident rabbit]) to open our doors.

Speaking of the crew, so far our staff consists of some wildly awesome characters – Owner, Robert Lucero, Head Brewer and Beer Magician, Joshua Willett, Chief Engineer, Bud Rogers, and Marketing and Event Coordinator, Brooke Balsley.

The team absolutely loves creativity and cherishes joy here at Wonderland. We embrace nonsense, take pride in our community, and have a disturbingly amazing passion for great beer! Can you feel our gusto?

If you can feel it, we invite you to follow along as we forge ahead feverishly swinging hammers around our 9,000-square-foot building and continually brewing dreams for our new home away from home. Our unique suburban craft beer experience is being built as quickly as it can, which will include things like beer brewing classes, opportunities to grow hops (at your place) to make beer with us after harvest, basketball and ping pong leagues, classic car shows, Yoga at Wonderland, and a farmers market. We plan to have one of the largest tasting rooms around and over an acre of lawn to relax and enjoy a pint, so BYOLC (Bring Your Own Lawn Chair!)

Throughout our journey, we promise to keep you up-to-date on our company, humbly share our thoughts with you on the industry, make Wonderland announcements, offer tips and education, and hopefully make you grin often.

We have thrown everything we have into this rabbit hole and are looking forward to seeing you all at Wonderland Brewing Company soon.

We appreciate and encourage genuine feedback, but will not accept vulgar comments. If you would like to get in touch with us, you can email us at info@wonderlandbrewing.com or leave us a comment.