Don't get too excited, I don't have any official information about Bell's next 1000 batch celebration beer. I've just decided to simultaneously wear my beer geek hat and my regular geek hat while attempting to determine when Bell's Batch 9000 might come out.As you may know, every bottle of Bell's beer contains a batch number on the bottom of the back label. If you take that batch number and head over to Bell's webpage, you can enter that number (top-left corner) and figure out exactly when that beer was bottled. Using this system, we can make a pretty good guess as to when Batch 9000 will come out. Here are some bottling dates we can get out of the system right now:
Batch 8000 -- July 26, 2007The number of days between batch 8000 and 8750 is three-quarters of the way to batch 9000, so if we assume that they will continue bottling at the same rate we can make a guess for Batch 9000. There were 419 days between batches 8000 and 8750, so there will be about 559 days between batches 8000 and 9000. 559 days from July 26, 2007 is February 4th, 2009, the approximate bottling date for Batch 9000.
Batch 8750 -- September 17, 2008 (Porter)
Batch 8769 -- September 30, 2008 (Two Hearted Ale, most recent batch in the system)
Now that we've got a birthday for Batch 9000 what special recipe do you think/hope Larry Bell will use for this batch?
Barrel aged something.
ReplyDeleteI hope it's something similar to their Wild Ale that they had on tap during the Spring/Summer.
ReplyDeleteVery tasty...
That or something with some Brett Funk!
Yeah, I'd love to see something barrel aged too.
ReplyDeleteNothing specific about a recipe, but here's a note from someone on BA about Batch 9000:
I asked Larry Bell about this when I talked to him at the Great Taste of the Midwest, and he told me that they DID have a recipe, but that they don't reveal any information until the beer comes out.
They also said they have a plan for batch 10,000, and that 10,000 would be the last of the series. "Batch 11,000 just sounds like you're trying to hard," he said.
But that weekend the batch 6,000 barley wine was tasting damn good.
Here's the whole thread talking about Batch 9000.
Cool analysis, which is my job, so I like things like this. I just wonder how Oberon would play into all of this. If you apply your math that there are 559 days between 1000 batches. The question would be how many batches of Oberon fall in there. From 8000to 8769, you get at one season of Oberon brewing. From now to early Feb 09, there won't be any Oberon, because I think it is a late March release, so brewing would be mid to late February, so I am thinking a March to April release and something tart and dry like a Sour would work out great.
ReplyDeleteGood point RD. I had considered that but just decided to make the analysis short and sweet! There's also the delay from bottling to retail. I'd bet on getting our hands on a bottle sometime in March.
ReplyDeleteThere were at least a couple batches of Oberon already brewed and packaged. Maybe they're test/brewery-only batches.
ReplyDeleteRumor has it that Florida gets Oberon year-round, so that might explain the already packaged batches.
ReplyDeleteThere's a bunch of interesting (but older) Oberon info here - including confirmation of that rumor.
per Larry Bell on Beer Advocate
ReplyDelete"The saying goes,"give the customer what they want."
Remember 7000? Well that was kind of weak, so we are trumping up that recipe to make something bold. You want something for the cellar? You got it.
9017 is two hearted and it's yumm!
ReplyDeleteOberon started around 8997 (to be released 3-30-09) I'm drinking 9017 right now so 9000 is in limbo with no idea of what it might be, but I can't wait