Juicy Tree

Origin Story

Back in early June, when the folks at the plant were getting ready to brew the highly anticipated specialty beer, India Spruce Pilsner, Tony and Joe got to talking about another, potentially fun, beer that would allow them to expand on this personal favorite for many people working at Short's. In order to make the Spruce Pilsner each year, a handful of people (Summer and Jack) have to go out and harvest the newly grown blue spruce tips. According to Joe, this is the best time to make this pine infused beer, because in the spring the tree is putting forth a majority of it's energy in to growing new tips. Therefore, when harvested at this time of year, the tips contain all the intense resins and flavors that the brewer wants to impart into the beer. It was during this year's harvesting, while smelling all of the rich sweet piney aromas, that inevitably, the guys got to talking about Christmas time and how another spruce themed beer could be a really fun release. All they would have to do is harvest some extra blue spruce tips, freeze them, and they would be ready to go when it came time to make this beer during the cold winter months. As the year went on, and spring turned to summer, summer into fall, the idea grew and expanded into a really promising ale that would surely be a treat for anyone visiting the pub during the Holiday season. Alas, time has a tendency of getting away from us and the next thing we knew, the Holiday season had passed, and we had missed our opportunity to showcase this exciting new idea that Joe and Tony had come up with. However, there were still the frozen spruce tips from June that needed to be used or thrown away. Rather than waste the time and energy that was invested harvesting the extra spruce tips, Tony simplified the idea, gathered a few of the other ingredients that were going to be featured in the Christmas themed beer, and came up with a perfectly good experimental IPA that is still very seasonally appropriate. Always intended to be a Short's Christmas time ale, we unfortunately didn't get at chance to brew and feature Juicy Tree at the pub until February of 2012, missing the Holiday season by two months. However, the beer was an awesome success and we were able to showcase it a handful of beer festivals to see if we had a keeper for a potential holiday staple. The resulting feedback was so promising that not only were we able to brew Juciy Tree in time for the holidays this year, but it also made its way into our 2013 bottle release as a limited specialty offering. .