As a few of you may know, we are putting on a marathon/relay marathon in March. If someone would just wrap up the details on the on the registration website, we could start registration. #ThatGuyIsMe But anyways, this post is a little about our marathon and why we wanted to put on a race.
Since 1995, Boulevard and FreeState Brewing have been putting on a race to each others brewery. A fun run stretching over 40 miles and can have teams up to 10 run the course. WBC entered it’s first team of 10 in 2014. The idea is that everyone rides in a van together during the race and just drops off the runner for each leg. Then they will drive up to the next interchange and pick up that runner and drop off the next runner. This will happen until everyone has run their leg and you make it to the finish line and celebrate. Sounds simple and fun, right? Well, we tried making that simple process into a logistical nightmare. We somehow didn’t realize that if we all just get in a big vehicle and all ride together throughout the course it would be simple and fun. Each team can only have one car to drop off runners because of parking problems at the interchanges. So we put together this detailed plan on using two vehicles driving runners back and forth from our hotel in Lawrence. It was pure craziness and a massive headache coordinating the cars and runners. At the end of the day everyone ran their leg and we didn’t leave anyone behind. We celebrated our accomplishment of running the course but figured out that we weren’t very smart in our driving approach.
This year we had twenty people want to run on the WBC team for the brew to brew race. So we signed up two teams of ten to run. Being a little smarter than last year, we all met at FreeState in Lawrence and rented vans. FreeState was nice enough to let us park our cars at their production facility over night. We all piled in the two vans and drove to Kansas City for the night. We drove to Boulevard early in the morning and naturally had a beer to start the run. The first two legs of the run were a little challenging as it was during a cold thunderstorm. But rain or shine the race will go on. Luckily it cleared up after that and WBC team #1 dominated WBC team #2. We all met back at FreeState to enjoy some food and a couple well deserved beers.
We really enjoy doing adventurous things like this and want to bring that adventure to Wichita. So on March 13th, WBC, with help from GoRace Management and Timing, are putting on a certified marathon/relay marathon. The course will begin around WBC west and will stretch through Wichita and end at WBC east. If you’re a serious runner this will be a qualifying marathon. For the relay part, it will consist of teams of six. Each leg of the race will be slightly different lengths but you will want your strong runners at the beginning and the end. It will be $90 for a single runner and $40 per person on the teams of six. Each runner will get a participation medal and race shirt. Then after the race we will have a party at WBC east where each runner will get pizza and a couple of WBC beers. We will hand out awards for top 3 men and women, top team of men, top team of women, top 3 of coed teams, and best costume/team costumes. WBC is entering 3 teams to compete against each other, West, East, and Production. Production is the early favorite to take the crown.
Brew to Brew raises money for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF). We are donating money to Kansas Food Bank. http://www.kansasfoodbank.org/ is their website where they have plenty of programs that they run to help people in need.
A registration link right here would be amazing, but it will be done soon. Look for registration early next week. We will spell out some more details on that site as well. We are also going to be looking for some sponsorship and volunteers to help out with the race. If you’re interested in either of those please contact us at kbanick@wichitabrew.com or jhorn@wichitabrew.com.
Then up for grabs on our #wbcEPICxmas giveaway is a grey WBC hoodie! To be entered to win just tag a friend or friends on the Facebook page that this blog post is shared on that you would like to run with at the marathon.
Written by Kyle Banick and proofed by Jeremy Horn.
As brewers, most of our brewing starts off early in the morning. Which means we like to drink coffee to get our day started. So naturally we enjoy a hand crafted coffee beer. Last year we brewed four different kinds of coffee stouts using coffee beans from The Spice Merchant. The first coffee bean we used was chocolate mintcicle, which added a nice minty note to the coffee flavor. Then we used a coffee cake bean that added some sweet cinnamon notes to the beer. Our third coffee bean is a fun one to say, organic bali kintamani. This organic coffee bean added a rich coffee flavor to the stout poured on nitro. Our fourth bean that we used was papua new guinea peaberry. The owner of The Spice Merchant helped us pick this rare bean.
We are getting set to brew some more rich imperial coffee stouts, but we want your help. We want help picking out the coffee beans, being on our tasting panel to pick the best bean, and adding the coffee beans in the boil kettle! We need two people to come with us to The Spice Merchant and help us pick out five different coffee beans for testing. Then we need five people to sit on our tasting panel and find the perfect bean. We will steep the coffee into one of our beers and see which coffee flavor and aroma will be best. Then we want one person to help us add the coffee to the boil kettle the day we brew it.
If you would like to help us with our next coffee stout, just comment on the WBC facebook page that this link is shared on. Just comment on which part you would like to help at. We will also pick someone for our #wbcEPICxmas giveaway. Up for grabs is a women’s light blue zip up hoodie. We don’t have any hard dates on when this will take place, so please be flexible with us as we try and pin point some dates. More than likely we will pick coffee beans over the lunch hour. Then do the tasting panel after work around 6 or so. Then the day the beer is brewed, the coffee addition will be around late morning.
Written by Kyle Banick and proofed by Jeremy Horn.
Happy New Year's Eve Eve! Welcome to our freshly updated website. Feel free to click around and tell us your thoughts of the new layout. We would like to thank Nathan and his team at Baseline Creative for being great to work with and putting this together for us. We plan on running a lot of information through our website, including all our events, beers we package, and everything WBC. Our hope is that you know everything that we know, well maybe not everything...
WBC hopes that everyone had a Merry Christmas and is planning a safe and happy New Year. Like last year we will have just what the doctor ordered available on New Year's Day, BREAKFAST PIZZA AND MEGA BLOODY MARY'S! A nice addition to this year's lineup will include WBC mimosas.
The breakfast pizzas are the Flat Plains Pizza, the Dirty South Pizza, and the Springfield Pizza.
The first pizza is the Flat Plains Pizza, which is a Kansas omelette pizza. Capicola, breakfast sausage, scrambled eggs, cheddar sauce, steak, onions, red pepper, and mozzarella all on a thin crust with a base of our WBC red sauce. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
The second pizza is the Dirty South Pizza which is a breakfast bowl pizza. Get ready for this one. It is sausage gravy, scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage, hash browns, mozzarella, cheddar sauce, and sweet pepper bacon all served on our thin crust. A personal favorite of the WBC brewers. It will be your new favorite as well.
The third pizza is the Springfield which is a traditional breakfast pizza. Cheddar sauce, scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage, mozzarella, and sweet pepper bacon are perfectly positioned on our thin crust. Never thought I would say this, but I can't wait for New Year's Day.
Now for a little hair of the dog. We will have two awesome specials to help get you on track for 2017. The first one is the mega bloody mary. This is a bloody mary and a snack in one. It is our traditional WBC bloody mary served in a pint glass but then garnished with everything. The garnish includes this wonderful assortment; a hot link, pickle, jumbo shrimp, summer sausage, celery, cheese cubes, and olives. To make the bloody mary even better (how do you do that?) you sell them for $4.00 for the bloody mary and $4.00 for the garnish! That's a $8 dollar meal and a drink in one.
The newest addition to the New Year's Day line up is the WBC Mimosa. A classic drink that includes equal parts champagne and orange juice. Enjoy this kick starter for only $5.
Last but certainly not least is our draft lineup. Sunday is always $3 pints at WBC. We have 19 tap handles at both locations. Two of those taps are our own root beer and cream soda. That leaves 17 taps for the good stuff, WBC hand crafted beer. Here is our current lineup:
English Mild, Thunder Blonde, WBC Wheat, 5:02 Amber, One Hopper Pale Ale, Belgian Dubbel, V6 IPA, Valleyview Vanilla Porter, Bitter Ol' Banick, Game Day Wheat, What Winter Ale, Seal Team 6 Black IPA, Kilt Shredder Scotch Ale, Mass Hysteria Rye, Barrel Aged Mass Hysteria Rye, Barrel Medley, and Belgian Sour.
We hope you enjoy our new website and have a great end of 2016 and even better 2017.
Cheers from everyone at Wichita Brewing Company!
We are excited to announce that our marathon website is up and ready to go for runners to sign up! The marathon this year will fall on Sunday, March 10. The 2019 marathon party will not only take place at our east location but we will also be hosting people at our new event venue which is located in front of the east brewpub, at 6160 E. Central. The marathon benefits The Kansas Food Bank; last year we donated $17,000 for the cause to fight hunger.
If you are interested in signing up for our marathon, visit our marathon page here. There are two options for signing up, the individual marathon or the relay marathon which consists of teams up to six. We will also be looking for around 100 volunteers to help this event run as smooth as possible.
We are also excited to announce that we will be opening our production facility to the public on December 29th from 12 P.M. to 5 P.M. for beers and tours. Along with beers on tap you will be able to purchase cans of beer to go. We will also be selling merchandise, including some bargains that are not available at the brewpubs. Our production facility is located at 727 E. Osie.
If you want to get to know our production team that makes all the beer magic happen, below are some fun facts about our staff.
For our December 24th #wbcEPICxmas we will be giving away two gifts. The first gift is a Wichita Brewing Company gift basket which will be filled with cool WBC swag. The second gift will be a team to be entered into the marathon, free of charge. To win the WBC gift basket, comment on the Facebook post that led you to the blog with the WBC staff person below who is most relate-able to you. For example, on Facebook if you think Jeremy Horn's bio is more relate-able type his name to be entered to win. To win a team in our marathon, share this blog post with the teammates you would choose to be in the race with you. We will pick both winners on Christmas Day!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Wichita Brewing Company Team!
We are excited to announce our lineup for our social media giveaway, The Wichita Brewing Company EPIC Christmas or for short #wbcEPICxmas. This is where we give away brewery swag and merchandise everyday leading up to Christmas during the month of December. This is just a small thank you for being such gracious followers of ours on social media. If your friends or family members don’t follow us on social media, tell them that now is the time. We will give out items ranging from pint glasses to shirts,with a grand prize on Christmas of a race team entered into our annual marathon on March 10th, 2019. Listed below is everywhere we will make a post for the day and randomly pick a name the next day. We have added our Event Venue to the list of places that we will offer the giveaways at. Make sure to like and follow the brewery sites and the event venue sites. We will contact the winner for the day and they can pick up their prize at either brewpub with the manager on duty. We haven’t confirmed with Santa yet on when he will make an appearance, but we will update you when we find out. We hope that you have a great Christmas season and that you win a prize. Cheers and good luck!
Christmas Giveaway Social Media Schedule:
Saturday December 1st – https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Sunday December 2nd – https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Monday December 3rd - https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Tuesday December 4th - https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Wednesday December 5th - https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Thursday December 6th - https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Friday December 7th - https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Saturday December 8th – Twitter – https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Sunday December 9th - https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Monday December 10th - https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Tuesday December 11th - https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Wednesday December 12th – https://twitter.com/WichitaBrew
Thursday December 13th - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Friday December 14th - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Saturday December 15th – https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Sunday December 16th - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Monday December 17th - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Tuesday December 18th - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewing/
Wednesday December 19th - https://www.facebook.com/wichitabrewvenue/
Thursday December 20th - https://www.facebook.com/wichitabrewvenue/
Friday December 21st - https://www.facebook.com/wichitabrewvenue/
Saturday December 22nd - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewvenue/
Sunday December 23rd - https://www.instagram.com/wichitabrewvenue/
Monday December 24th - https://www.wichitabrew.comblog/ via https://www.facebook.com/Wichitabrew/
Anniversary #9, but not Anniversary Party #9. Normally we would have a big write up of a cool music lineup for a big gathering at both brewpubs to celebrate another year in the books. We would explain how many different beers we would have inside vs what beers would be outside. What food we would serve outside as the party gets going. We would keep a good eye on the weather to make sure that we could pull everything off. Internally we would be debating how many servers and bartenders we will need to make sure we take care of everyone in a timely manner. How many kegs and cases of beers we need to cram into our small brewpub coolers. How many bags of ice are needed to keep beers outside cold? Who must set up everything and who must stay late and make sure everything gets put away? What could we do to make this year’s anniversary party bigger and better for everyone? Well, that is not the case this year. Insert pandemic here.
So why even have an anniversary if you cannot have a big party? Celebrating our anniversary is more than just cramming as many people into our brewpubs on one night or weekend as possible. It is more than hanging out on the patio listening to local music. It is more than sharing a pint or two with friends on a night. Do not get us wrong, we love and miss all those things as much as the next person. Having the anniversary this year is now just a way for us to show gratitude to some of the most loyal customers in Wichita and around. It is a time that we can reflect for being so lucky to have amazing people support us during a difficult year. It is a time that we can be thankful for all the little things that we take for granted every day. With that in mind, thank you.
What will this year’s anniversary look like then if it’s not going to be a party? The best part of all our anniversary party is our beer lineup. This year is no different than previous years. We have saved the release of some exciting beers for Friday, the 31st. I think the most anticipated beer on the beer lineup is Key Lime Pie. This was formerly Tallgrass Brewing’s more popular seasonal releases that they did. Did not know we were making Tallgrass Brewing brands? Where have you been? Just kidding, we are and that is story for a different blog. Everyone will get their first taste of it this weekend. Just think Key Lime Pie in a glass and you will not be disappointed. We also are releasing the first beer in a new series called Sour Psychology. This is a barrel-aged sour red ale with black cherries. The combination of all the flavors in this beer meld together perfectly. Another exciting summer release is our newest Wichita Hard Seltzer Black Raspberry. Light in every way possible except in flavor. Seltzer beers are not going away anytime soon and with one drink of this one, you will agree. We have a couple specialty anniversary seltzer kegs to tap on Friday. The east brewpub will tap a lemon green tea flavored seltzer. The west brewpub will tap a pineapple seltzer keg. We only have one keg of each. If anyone is into big beers and big flavors, we have that covered too. Hatch Green Chile Barleywine is one to satisfy the biggest flavor seeker. After Johnson Garden Center had to cancel one of our favorite events, Iron Head Hatch Green Chile Fest. We thought we would pay homage to them and their event with this beer offering. If you like a little salt in your beer, we have that as well. Pineapple Lime Gose will be freshly kegged on Friday morning right before the doors open at 11. One beer that is becoming an anniversary staple, Grapefruit V6. V6 infused with some of the biggest grapefruits on the market. A juicy hopped up IPA that comes around once year. Like all these beers? Be the first to try it.
It still sounds like you are trying to get a bunch of people to your place and not be socially responsible? We are offering all these beers to go and our amazing food to go as well. Any single topping pizza ordered to go will only be $9. Anniversary #9 with $9 single topping pizzas to go…Creative, we know. We will be fully stocked with cans, growlers, and pizza boxes ready to help you celebrate wherever you want to celebrate. So many can options, that it is too many to list. Well just list on here, an appropriate beer lineup will be able to do that. We are open for dine in and having a beer inside. We just want everyone to keep in mind that everything is available to go. Like everyone or almost everyone, you will need a mask to enter and move around at the pubs. And of course, you do not have to wear a mask while you eat or drink. It is just too messy to do that.
What else can I (customer) do to help WBC celebrate their anniversary? We (WBC) want to share your story on your favorite WBC beer, pizza, experience, event, anniversary, or anything related. Tell us on social media by tagging us in your favorite story and we will share it on our page. Do not have social media? Email production@wichitabrew.com your story that you want to share. To show appreciation of your story, we will pick 10 people’s story and give them a WBC shirt of their choosing. Already have every single shirt we have made. We can find something for you, do not worry. You can send those stories over Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. I will give you an example of a story of mine. One of my favorite beers we ever did was the first time we made Barrel-Aged Seal Team 6. We had just picked up four freshly dumped Leopold Whiskey barrels from Colorado and filled a couple of them with Seal Team 6. My mind was blown on how much barrel and whiskey flavor seeped into the strong Black IPA. One of many favorite beers we have done over the years.
Thanks for reading and cannot wait to read some of your stories. Cheers to you and thanks for helping us turn the big 9. We are grateful for your support, especially in these trying times.
Respectfully,
Wichita Brewing Company
Kyle Banick
