May 5th, Rich (left) collaborated with John Eagan (middle) from Mission Brewery, Lee Chase (Right) from Automatic Brewing Company and Tom Garcia (not shown :-( from Off Beat Brewing to create the Armada Saison brewed with San Diego oranges and Plumas County juniper berries.

August 8th, John Eagan, Dan Selis and Sarah Selis (owners of Mission Brewery) will be joining us at The Brewing Lair to duplicate the Armada Saison which we have named The Lair Mission Saison #2 aka Wonder Bread Wilderness Project.  Because the Lair is in the wilderness and Mission is in the old Wonder Bread plant in downtown San Diego.

HERE'S THE SKINNY

For many many years people have been drinking lagers in the 4-5% alc/vol. range.  Then along came the micro brewery craze and delicious high profile ales were born.  With the complexity of flavors also came higher alcohol contents.  

Today in the craft brewery realm we are seeing the rebirth of session ales.  These ales are brewed with the idea of enjoying a few with friends engaging in conversation.

The Brewing Lair has brewed up 2 session ales, our first; ODD JOB - a hoppy brown ale weighing in at 5% alc/vol.

Our newest brew to join the session team is SIERRA BUTTES SESSION BLACK - a nutty, chocolatee black-ish ale weighing in at 4.8% alc/vol.

Believe it or not these session ales are tricky to brew. It's much easier to brew a higher alcohol beer where off flavors can be masked. A session ale should have flavor, body and character but with a lower alcohol content.

Look for more session ales to hit the market and try them out, mornings just might be a better experience. Cheers!

We started off as Under Cover Ale Works because of our hidden in nature locality. Were changing our name but keeping the theme and location. 

Now you'll find us as:

Getting into a lawsuit is not our idea of fun. We would rather be HIKING and ENJOYING where we live, and REMEMBERING why we live here.  

When a cease and desist letter for the word “undercover” arrived we decided
to take the path of least resistance and change our name.

Combining the hidden nature of the brewery with hiking in the Lost Sierra we’ve decided on the name The Brewing Lair.

noun
a wild animal's resting place, esp. one that is well hidden.

• a secret or private place in which a person seeks concealment or seclusion.
  

ORIGIN Old English leger [resting place, bed,] of Germanic origin; related to 
Dutch leger ‘bed, camp’ and German Lager ‘storehouse,’ 

When we first found out that we were going to have to come up with a new name for the brewery (because of trademark issues) we instantly thought: there are so many breweries that share names this seems silly! After all, the conflict is with our brewery name and the name of a beer, so what’s the big deal? 

Well, come to find out, it’s a big deal if someone "owns" the word and chooses to enforce trademark rights.

Fortunately there are many breweries that enjoy sharing names/words. We thought our allies might be interested in seeing this page out of this month’s DRAFT magazine, it’s called DOUBLES. If you don't feel like downloading the DRAFT article, here's a list of the Doubles:

Stone Brewing Company                                        
Standing Stone Brewing Company                          

Burnside Brewing
Olde Burnside Brewing

Mother Earth Brewing Company
Mother Earth Brewing                             

Big Wood Brewing
Big Woods Brewing                                           

Epic Ales
Epic Brewing
                                                                  
Fire on the Mountain Brewing
Fire Mountain Brewing

If you are interested in helping us select an alias for UnderCover Ale Works, you can vote for our new name by Monday, November 12th. Vote here: http://svy.mk/TBbGEu

Cheers!

Rich and I drove the UnderCover sprinter van to San Diego for the Craft Brewers Conference and World Beer Cup.  We sold 6 kegs to Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens.  Incognito Saison was put on tap as soon as we arrived. Here is a pic of Rich sharing some with Sam (Dogfish Head Brewing) Greg (Stone Brewing Co.) Bill (Victory Brewing).  Incognito received the comment "I'd say you hit this one on  the nose, good job Rich" 

Here are some pictures from our first days of brewing.