We won the Best Of 2018 Awards for the Charleston City Paper again this year, for our six consecutive year at the title. We also won “Best Taproom” in addition to “Best Brewery,” so that makes us feel like all our hard work is really being appreciated by fine beer-drinking folks like you. Every year, the Best Of Party asks the winning brewery to brew a beer for the celebration, and after big hits like Sparkly Princess and Guns and Rosehips, we knew we couldn’t tread lightly on this year’s brew.
The party is a wild-west themed shindig, and we decided that just about the wildest and most western thing we could possibly think of was a cowboy, sitting around a fire drinking his morning coffee, but instead, his cup of joe is a beefy, delicious breakfast stout with coffee and maple syrup added in as the adjunct ingredients. What will we call this beer, that stands tall at 8.9% ABV, on top of a sturdy malt build of Pale, Crystal, Black, Carafa, Roast and Flaked Barley? How can we give it a moniker that is as noble as the East Kent Golding hops used to spruce this beer up just right?
We’ve always joked about a fictional clothing line, owned by none other than our brewer, Jack PItts. Jack’s got an A-plus in fashion, and the name of his clothing line that we’ve dreamed up for him is Aspen Cowboy, for all of your vest and flannel needs. That’s why we called this beer Aspen Cowboy, a nod of our ten-gallon hats to the renegades of the wild west, and to Jack’s mastery of the fashion world.