It's White Pointer Week...but why?

Hi River Rascals, it's been a bit!  

I wanted to talk a bit about a beer we recently released that's very important to me, more so than the average hazy. Our beer, White Pointer Hazy Double IPA, is a nod to several things, but mostly the hobby of homebrewing... and sharks. That's two things that aren't typically related, right? Well, in this case, they are.

Back in 2012, I started into the hobby that would change the course of my life. My first batch of beer was on none other than the illustrious MR. BEER kit. That first batch could barely pass as drinkable, but the homebrewing bug bit me, hard. 

Fast forward some time and I was brewing full sized batches in my brother and his wife's kitchen. Our Amber Ale, Flood Waters, is a nod to these times, but that's another story. Around this time, Untappd came out and I wanted my friends and family to be able to check in the beer I was making if they wanted, so I thought of the name White Pointer Brewery for my homebrew brand.

You see, I'm a bit of a shark nerd. The numberof shark related TV shows, books, movies, and articles I've consumed over the years is pretty nuts. If you've been in our production area, you'll likely have seen a big poster of a White Pointer, more commonly known as the Great White, on the outside of our office.  Riverlands was pretty close to being named White Pointer, but the lack of sharks around St. Charles, IL, kinda sealed the deal on that one.  

As I got deeper into the hobby, and just beer in general, I decided to start a homebrew blog. Much to my surprise, some people actually read it. For any of you who are homebrewers, I just did my first post in years on that blog and added a scaled down homebrew recipe for White Pointer, the Riverlands beer, on there. Check it out. I was writing the blog basically right up to the start of Riverlands, and you can see the start of some of our beers there. 

While our beer Silt is directly descended from one of my homebrew recipes called White Death, another Great White reference, White Pointer is an all encompassing tribute to my homebrewing days, our sharky friends, and really just the homebrewing hobby in general. Our other Brewer, Nick, was also an avid homebrewer, so it's important for us to pay homage to those roots.

As for the shark end of things, our Taproom Manager, Jeremy, has some fun stuff planned for the next week revolving around this beer and a certain trademarked SHARK related WEEK of tv programming. We think you'll enjoy the fun and the tasty hops.

This poster graced Eric’s walls for far too long. Now, it graces the outside of our office.

WHITE POINTER WEEK HIGHLIGHTS:

All week long, we'll have White Pointer specials going on, programming on the TV, amazing and hilariously awful shark movies, an in-depth look at our head brewer's shark obsession, a giant shark pool floaty giveaway, and more.

Plus...a fully decked out taproom to set the mood.

WHITE POINT WEEK SPECIALS (good 7/23 thru 7/30):
- $2.00 off pints or $1.00 off 10oz pours of White Pointer Double IPA
- $2.00 off 4-pack of White Pointer 16oz cans

White Pointer Week Food Truck and Music Lineup:

Sunday 7/23: Sunday Sessions: Argonaut Company Seafood Pop-Up & Grant Milliren LIVE

Monday 7/24: BYOF, open 4-8pm with 15% off all other drafts and cans to-go

Tuesday 7/25: Hippie Gourmet Grilled Cheese Food Co.

Weds 7/26: Chuck's Wood Fired Pizza & BINGO NIGHT

Thurs 7/27: BYOF

Friday 7/28: The Nerdy Dirty Food Pop-Up & Nicole Devine Music

Sat 7/29: TacoMadre - Food Truck & Avian Aura- Music

Sun 7/30: Sunday Sessions: Fernando's Street Kitchen & Pete Jive plus Open Mic Night with Katie B. at 6pm

Memorial Weekend Food Trucks & Live Music Schedule

Memorial Weekend is almost here, and our schedule is PACKED...including extended hours on Monday for Memorial Day.

𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟓/𝟐𝟔, 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝟏𝟐-𝟏𝟎𝐩𝐦
5pm: Stix and Noodles Food Truck
6pm: Ken Slauf Live Folk & Bluegrass

𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟓/𝟐𝟕, 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝟏𝟐-𝟏𝟎𝐩𝐦
12-sellout: Cheezie Mac's Food Truck
6pm: The Turntables Band Live Music

𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟓/𝟐𝟖, 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝟏𝟐-𝟏𝟎𝐩𝐦
11am: 3rd Annual Ruck to Remember
12pm: Flyin Hawaiian Food Truck
1pm: Syahi Live Reggae-Rock
6pm: Open Mic Night with Katie B.

𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟗, *𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝟏𝟐-𝟖𝐩𝐦*
Special extended Memorial Day Hours 12-8pm
15% off drafts and cans to-go. BYOF!

Officially kick off unofficial summer with us this weekend and we'll make some memories together.

Sunday Sessions Return to our St. Charles Brewery this Summer

SUNDAY SESSIONS, our weekly showcase of local musicians and food vendors, return to our St. Charles brewery this summer running from Memorial Weekend through Labor Day Weekend.

John Till, one of our featured Sunday Sessions musicians, plays banjo, guitar, harmonica, and sings vocals.

That ‘s 15 (FIFTEEN!) Sundays of local live music and a delicious variety of food on the patio (weather pending) each and every week.

Weather not-so-good? The food and music continues indoors within the walls of our spacious taproom.

Check out this lineup and mark your calendars to be here every Sunday for a new, exciting, and scrumptious experience like no other in St. Charles.

SUNDAY SESSIONS AT OUR ST. CHARLES BREWERY

Food starts around 12pm, music at 1pm, every single week.

May 28:
Food: Flyin’ Hawaiian Food Truck
Music: Syahi

June 4:
Food: Tamales+
Music: Jason Benefield

June 11:
Food: The Argonaut Company Seafood
Music: Kristin Rose Kelly

June 18:
Food: Double R BBQ
Music: Andrew Huber

June 25:
Food: Flyin’ Hawaiian Food Truck
Music: Lucky Pickers Bluegrass Band

July 2:
Food: Tamales+
Music: Miles Over Mountains Duo

July 9:
Food: My Cocina Grill
Music: Ben & Jake Duo

July 16:
Food: The Curious Crow Pop-Up
Music: John Till

July 23:
Food: The Argonaut Company Seafood
Music: Grant Milliren

July 30:
Food: Fernando’s Street Kitchen
Music: Pete Jive

August 6:
Food: Tamales+
Music: Echo & Ransom

August 13:
Food: Cheezie Mac’s Food Truck
Music: Noah Gabriel

August 20:
Food: Fernando’s Street Kitchen
Music: Nicole Devine

August 27:
Food: The Argonaut Company Seafood
Music: Jim Green

September 3:
Food: Tamales+
Music: Keith Scott Blues

Riverlands Holiday Gift Guide

Find all your stocking stuffers and gift ideas at Riverlands this season!

Gift giving doesn’t have to be hard, especially for the beer lovers in your life. Take a look at some of our favorite gift options available this season and visit our online shop to reserve your gifts while you can!

Keep in mind that many of these items are locally made in VERY small batches, so sizes, colors, and item availability may be limited and subject to change.

APPAREL

Give someone’s winter wardrobe a BOOST with Riverlands apparel!

ORDER HERE>>

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Chunky Beanies

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Cuffed Work Beanie

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Dad Hats

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Blue Flannel

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Red/Gray Flannel

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Heather Maroon Trucker Hat

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Black Multi-Cam Trucker Hat

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Zip-Up Hoodies

STOCKING STUFFERS

Choose from a bunch of items on our store that sure beat a lump of coal in your stockings!

ORDER HERE>>

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Dickens Candles

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Hot Sauces by Gindos

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Coozie Bundle

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Glassware

Specialty Beers

What do beer lovers REALLY want?! BEER! Check out these limited offerings that are sure to be a big hit for the holidays.

ORDER HERE>>

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Fluvial Tsunami Imperial Stout

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Grimoire Barrel Aged Imperial Stout

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Tranquil Barrel Aged Imperial Stout

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Bean Man Barrel AGed Coffee Stout

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Business Class Breakfast Barrel Aged Stout

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Secret Burrito Imperial Stout

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Sparkling Mead

Gift cards

Whether you want to give a physical gift card or e-gift card, we’ve got you covered! Stop by the taproom to grab a gift card in person, or order one online to send electrically!

A "New School" Approach to the West Coast IPA

Head Brewer/Co-Founder Eric Bramwell

Today's Brewer's Corner is all about one of our favorite styles of beer: West Coast IPA.

What that means today though can be different things to different people. Some think piney, resinous hops with a solid malt backbone. Others think it's dry and intensely bitter. Neither of these are wrong, but the direction we're leaning is what we've seen recently coming out of California which is a "new school" West Coast IPA.

What exactly is a New School WC IPA, or "California Style IPA"? We are essentially taking some of the things we love about our hazies, but upping the bitterness and drying everything out. Our take on the modern West Coast IPA is creating the perfect vessel to deliver hops to your taste buds. We don't want malt based flavors or residual sugar getting in the way of those hop flavors and aromatics.

That's not to say these beers will be overly bitter, resiney pine bombs. We take a similar approach that we do for our hazies for our hopping. A restrained, but present bitterness, and a heavy focus on late addition kettle hops as well as huge amounts of dry hops in the fermenter.

The beer that results from this approach will be a golden colored hoppy delight. Bitter enough to cleanse your palette and keep you ready for the next sip. Fruit forward hop flavors without necessarily coming across as juicy. Little residual sweetness getting in the way of maximum hop flavor. A clean, crisp fermenting yeast that doesn't create much in the way of flavor or aromatics on its own, letting the hops do all the heavy lifting.

So this brings us to Hornet's Bite, the first of what we'd consider our approach to this style of West Coast IPA. We brewed this beer once before, but tried a different yeast that didn't pan out the way we'd hoped. This latest batch is dialed in the way we plan to move forward for the style as a whole. Hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Mosaic hops, this beer will have notes of white grape, citrus, blueberry, with a background herbal note and just enough bitterness to keep it refreshing. We REALLY like how this batch came out and we hope you will too.

While we will continue to brew and improve our haze game, we're very excited to further explore this version of West Coast IPA. Expect to see more of these on our taps and out in distribution. There's a wide world of hops out there, and this is another wonderful style to explore them.

Cheers!
Eric Bramwell
Head Brewer/Co-founder
Riverlands Brewing Company

Brewer's Corner: Get Ready for Your Barrel Aged Summer

Some things are worth the wait. With this edition of our Brewer's Corner, I want to talk to you about our barrel program, and what's coming down the pipeline this summer and beyond.

Since we opened in 2019, every time we brewed an imperial stout, we would fill and stash away a couple of bourbon barrels out of each batch. Two barrels here, two barrels there, over the course of that first year. SLOWLY, we began to build our stock up, but our first few releases were small by necessity.

As we got a better handle on our production schedule, we started putting a couple of full batches of stout into barrels to build supply further. During the pandemic shutdown, we took some of that dreary down time to further build up our supply of barrels. Now, we were able to do a few more releases, adding a third, sometimes even a fourth barrel per release, getting more beer into more people's hands. We even got some fun collaborations with some of our favorite brewers into barrels for future releases.

As time went on, we were able to tailor unique stout recipes specifically designed to stand up to the barrel aging process, such as the base for our non-adjunct stout, Tranquil. We were able to source barrels that are unique and from highly respected distilleries, and we've got a few that we're particularly excited about. As of this writing, we have over 80 barrels filled with stout, porter, a gose, and an experimental Acid Rainbow in a red wine barrel that we threw a ton of wild yeast into. 80 barrels will seem like small potatoes to some, a ton to others, but for us, we worked hard to carefully build and manage that supply.

That brings us to our Barrel Aged Summer, which may actually turn into a Barrel Aged Year. The fruits of our labor over the past year and a half are now beginning to pay off and we have a whole bunch of barrels that are ready to be pulled, packaged, and drunk. Over the course of the coming months, we plan to release a new barrel aged beer every month, possibly even more than one. Some barrel aged versions of some of your favorite stouts over the past year will see the light of day, including some pretty exciting collabs, and we'll have a few new ones too. We've been able to let these beers sit in the barrel for the proper amount of time, some being a year, others up to 18 months. Patience is the key when building these programs, and while that's not always easy, it pays off.

Barrel Aged Ice Cream Carton

Our first release of your Barrel Aged Summer: a Neapolitan Stout brewed with cacao nibs, strawberry, and vanilla, aged in hand selected Wild Turkey bourbon barrels.

The first release of our Barrel Aged Summer is Barrel Aged Ice Cream Carton. When we pulled the beer out of the Wild Turkey Bourbon barrels, our first thought was bourbon infused fudge. We're adding cocoa nibs to this beer, but it almost didn't need to. In addition to the nibs, big doses of strawberry and vanilla round out this Neapolitan Stout. We feel like the barrel aging treatment is a big improvement to what was already a delicious stout.

This release will happen IN-PERSON at our brewery in St. Charles, Illinois, at noon, Saturday, May 28. We’ve been longing to return to in-person, out-the-back bottle releases for quite some time. Join us, grab your bottles, and hit the taproom afterwards to try this and 15 other beers on tap.

Keep tabs on our social media for more info on additional Barrel Aged Summer (and then some) releases. There's going to be some fun stuff rolling out, and we can’t wait to share it with all of you: guests, friends, and collaborators.

- Eric Bramwell, Head Brewer and Co-Founder, Riverlands Brewing Company

Announcing Our New Ongoing Charity Drive: RMHC-CNI

At Riverlands, we’ve done our best over the past three years of operation to give back to our Tri-Cities communities and charities that hold a special place in our hearts. Through food and clothing drives, school supply programs and head shaving events for pediatric cancer research, we’ve found unique and fun ways to raise awareness and funds for various causes.

Recently, we asked ourselves…what’s a way we can give back on a daily basis over an extended period of time? The answer: COLLECTING CAN TABS FOR RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF CHICAGOLAND & NORTHWEST INDIANA.

For those who don’t know, RMHC-CNI provides “Housing, Support, and Community So Families with Sick Children Can Stay Together.”

WHY COLLECT CAN TABS? Several reasons:

• It’s something simple we can all do.

• It’s something we have PLENTY of access to.

• It supports our company values of continuously becoming better stewards of the environment.

• It helps support a GREAT and LOCAL cause by raising funds for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland & Northwest Indiana.

All collected tabs will be donated to RMHC-CNI. In turn, their partner United Scrap Metal buys the tabs at the current market value of aluminum and make an additional charitable contribution as well.

HOW CAN YOU HELP? Simple.

• At the taproom: Order a can pour! We’ll immediately pull off and donate your can tab when you finish your beer.

• At home and abroad: Start pulling can tabs off your cans, rinse and collect them. Once you have a full container (zip lock bag, small box, shoe box, whatever!) , bring them to our taproom where they’ll be added to our collection vase.

• Once we’ve gathered a sizable donation, we’ll weigh and turn them in!

OUR GOAL: Collect a million tabs (789.27 pounds!) and become a member of the Thanks-A-Million Program. With your help, we can do it! Start collecting tabs today and turn them in when you visit us.