On Monday afternoon, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and brewers and founders from Ardent Craft Ales, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery and Stone Brewing Company raised a glass at Stone’s facility in celebration of the release of their first collaborative beer, Give Me Stout or Give Me Death.
On Monday afternoon, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and brewers and founders from Ardent Craft Ales, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery and Stone Brewing Company raised a glass at Stone’s facility in celebration of the release of their first collaborative beer, Give Me Stout or Give Me Death.
Give Me Stout or Give me Death is a dark brown 9.5% imperial stout that incorporates Virginia grown raspberries, blackberries, hops and malts and is a collaborative effort among the breweries and the governor which they began earlier this summer. This brew marks the first local collaborative release for the Stone’s Richmond facility on Williamsburg Avenue, which opened in February.
Director of Brewing at Stone Peter Weins discussed the collaboration first to a small crowd, followed by Secretary of Commerce and Trade, Todd Haymore, and ultimately, Gov. McAuliffe who spoke on his love craft beer and being involved in the collaboration with the local breweries.
“I do want to thank Ardent, Hardywood and Stone for their great collaboration on this, this is a very bold stout,” said Gov. McAuliffe. “They asked me what kind of beer, I said, ‘I like big and bold and strong and local’ and we have this here with this beautiful beer here today. “There’s nothing more I love than selling our craft beers all over…”
McAuliffe also briefly touched on the impact craft beer has made on Virginia tourism, which now is home to more than 160 craft breweries.
“Do you understand the value of this to our Virginia ag {agriculture} business is really tremendous,” he said. “What this means to our tourism business, last year $24 billion of tourism to the Commonwealth of Virginia, last year our trade exports $36 billion, this all goes hand in hand.”
Director of Brewing Peter Wiens said the team really wanted to source local for this brew. For the stout, the breweries used raspberries and blackberries from Agriberry Farm in Hanover, malts from Virginia’s Copper Fox Distillery.
Belma hops, were also used for the brew, which were sourced from Washington state.
After deciding to work with Hardywood and Ardent, Wiens said they began production on the brew in August.
“When we first came out here we started going around town and hitting some of local breweries and these were the two of the first ones that we hit up, they’ve been very supportive of the whole process,” he said. “They are also some of Gov. Auliffe’s favorites too so he wanted to work with them.”
Gov. McAuliffe became involved with the collaboration after a few members of the Stone team attended a dinner at the Governor’s mansion one evening.
“We did a pub crawl, and some of us went to have dinner at the Gov.’s mansion so our COO, Mitch Steele, our brewmaster at the time, myself, our lead brewer from Escondido, and our CFO were there, so Pat Tiernan, our COO pitched the idea and said, ‘hey we should do a brew with you’ and that’s when it started who else we should brew with.”
Hardwood co-founder Eric Mckay said he enjoyed getting to collaborate on a brew with the two fellow Richmond breweries as well.
“It was fun working together we’ve been friends with these guys since they were brewing in their garage in Church Hill,” said McKay referring to Ardent Craft Ales. “Long time admirers of Stone and enjoyed many of their collaboration beers and I don’t know how many breweries have ever made a beer with the Governor so that was cool.”
Distribution for Give Me Stout or Give me Death will be limited, but a second collaboration from the breweries, Give Me IPA or Give Me Death, a 8% red IPA, will follow in February.
