Royal Beer or No Beer

Just when you thought that there was no relation between craft beers and the royal wedding, I have found a few nuggets of information to share with you that proves even our industry is just as involved with William and Kate as every other member of the living world today whether they are force-fed the feelings from the press or not.

Scottish dwelling,  Brew Dog Brewery has gotten involved with the royal wedding by introducing the first craft beer laced with Viagra and a lot of their sense of humor.  The beer is called Royal Virility Performance and costs almost $16.00 a bottle.  It is true the beer is an IPA made with an herbal Viagra as well as Goat Weed and Chocolate.  Its a strange concoction that was made in a limited 1,000 bottle batch.  You can still buy the beer from their website if you'd like and it will be shipped out the day before the wedding.  They decided to send along a bottle to Prince William for his wedding night and if he wasn't clear of the intention of this bottle it is comically labeled with the phrases, "Arise Prince Willy," and "Celebrate Big Willy Style."  Who said brewers couldn't throw out some sarcasm in the name of royalty.

I'm sure Prince William is not going to be interested in drinking this beer because outrageously beer has been banned from the Royal Wedding and guests are forced to suffer through the same watered down liquor and cheap wines as the rest of us do at our most favorite weddings.  Personally I think cheapening the beer as being not good enough because they do not have the taste for it is just the couple ignorance to the fine flavors and complex construction of craft brewing.  The thought that goes into even the simplest brews is beyond just following the recipe.  It's passion that makes great beer, it's excitement and creativity that adds character, and it's the time and process that makes the drink a fine drink.  I would say they are missing out, but maybe they haven't tried some of the newer craft brewing and are simply blind to the uniqueness and complexity that adds depth to carbonation of selected hops, malts, flavors, and mashes in all of craft brewing.  So I wish the couple the very best and if I am awake at 4am to watch the wedding live I'll be sure to enjoy a glass of Purple Healer because really...it is the finest drink I could have to enjoy a fine celebration.

However, I am not so sure about the Viagra beer.  They say it takes three glasses for the effect to work and I'm sure at that price it would just be cheaper to just contact your pharmacist if you wanted that effect.

Spring Means New Projects

Its nice to see the sun shining again this afternoon after an extremely long run of clouds, cold, and showers.  Even though the dreary weather kept us all in to enjoy our brews and we resorted to enjoying laughs with friends and family indoors, Larry at Purple Healer has been busy on a few projects of his own.

We are happy to announce the newest addition to his household, the converted freezer unit into a Keg-o-rator. 
Larry converted his new shiny tapping system from a black chest freezer, a stained wooden panel, and of course a kit from one of our suppliers Keystone Homebrew.  If you like what you see here you can also purchase one of these kits here and take on the satisfying and rewarding project yourself.  Other kits and conversion items can be purchased through the Keystone Online Catalog or at either of their locations in Montgomeryville, PA and Bethlehem, PA.


Larry has been spending extra hours in the brew room for a few new projects.  Currently boiled and in the fermenter is a fresh batch of our Auntie M's amber.  I caught Larry mid brew playing a few classics by Jethro Tull and glowing.




Lets face it folks the man was born to make excellent beers for all of us.

Rumor around the tap is the Larry is also working on a NEW beer: a Russian Imperial Stout.  For those that may not know what makes this particular Stout special let me give you some stats.  This stout was designed by brewers in the 1800's to impress the Russian Czar and has been coined a beer that is fit for a king.  It has a distinguishable malt flavor and a higher alcohol content.  In fact all of the flavors in this delicious glass of drinking pleasure are dark and rich and with moderate carbonation it is a smoother version of other stouts.  Larry is working very hard to get the right balance of flavor so that this dark, rich, impressive beer can impress all of our loyal fans all the while being a beer to satisfy all sorts of cravings and calm the soul like chocolate does.

Thank you to everyone who has participated in our NAME contest (ahem Jay) and please keep on sending some great ideas.

That's all the news on the brew front.  You are going to have to sit there and anxiously await another issue of our brewing bittles.  And don't forget your furry friend this Easter, there is still some time to pick up a pack of Puppy Hops all natural freshly baked cookies to put in your best friends basket.

Whats in a Name?

Good beautiful spring afternoon to you all!!!!

I was meaning to post this contest earlier but I got so caught up in WINNING that best in show award that I simply didn't want to overshadow the event but now it is time to get back into business....and we are asking all of you to help out!

As several of you know we have named all of our beers from pets, family members, lucky numbers, and other "inside" tidbits.  Naming our beers has been easy until recently.  For our two newest brews we seem to have hit a brick wall in our creative juices and have decided to extend the invitation to all of you in this terribly daunting task of giving our great beer a great name.

The beers needing named as you can tell from our website are our Munich Helles and our English IPA. 
So to make your job a little easier here is a brief description about each of the nameless beers.

Munich Helles:  This is a bavarian-style lager that is perfect for sweet summertime drinking.  It compliments lighter foods and has notes of lemon inside a medium bodied and mild grain style batch.  It accompanies seafood, pasta, and chicken dishes well especially if they are grilled. 

English IPA: This moderately bitter ale really captures the flavor of our English-style hops and is notably our "hoppiest" in the batch.  This beer is also delicious in the springtime and summertime and pairs well with a nice hearty meal as it is a higher concentration of alcohol per glass.  Who says the English didn't like a good buzz when drinking.  We are looking for a name of this beer that would include bunnies being that it is so "hoppy" and that its about this time of year you see more of them hopping about.

So I suppose we should include a few guidelines for this contest.  All entries can be submitted to brewmaster@purplehealerbrewery.com or as a comment to this post.  We would like to come up with a name soon so all entries should come our way by May7th.  With your entry please include the NEW beer name, reasoning why you made up that name, your name (it would be nice to give you credit) and a valid (why wold you fake it anyway) email address in which we can send you a big HOORAH if your beer name is chosen.

Winners will receive.....mad props for their creative ingeniousness and some sort of cool compensation probably in a drinkable form.  Winners also receive the golden opportunity to boast and brag to all of their friends that our fabulous beer earned its identity from your awesome, incredible brain.

So drink a few think of some ideas and send them our way.

Taking on "Taming of the Brew"

Yesterday Purple Healer Brewing Co. made its first public appearance at BTE's Taming of the Brew in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.  The event had around 27 Beer vendors and 27 Food vendors and was sold out of its 500 tickets to the public making for a nice, crowded, toasty, good time for all.  Among other breweries at the event, Purple Healer was in a competition for best brewery between other larges scale breweries including: Sly Fox Brewery, Ottos Pb and Brewery, Bullfrog Brewery, Weyerbacher, Marleys Brewery and Grille, Old Forge Brewing Co., and Troegs Brewing co..
Preparation for the event involved bottling around 10 cases of our crowd pleasing, "Ripinator" Dopple Bock, getting signage made, and rounding out an incredible staff including Larry, Marianne, Adam, and Pete all dressed perfectly and smiling ear to ear.

Larry was one of the first to set-up and arrive to the event and after much ado over finding magical tape to hang our banner and searching for scissors to lay plastic down to preserve the floor from any "spillage," we were set and ready to pour.






The beers were cold and the crowds began pouring in as Purple Healer made many new friends.  In fact many came back for seconds and thirds hoping they could gain a good beer buzz from our very good beer.



The only problem we ran into was telling folks that we didn't yet have a place to purchase more of our fine crafted brews.  Folks understood the nature of the business and took cards and promised to follow our updates online.  Pete made a few friends who worked the event including the person in charge of cleaning out the dump buckets.  We wont say which beers got dumped but the glasses stayed full of Ripinator and the smiles stayed plenty.
I think the crew was just as please with the response as folks filled out their voting cards and surprisingly to all of us many chose us.
In fact Purple Healer tied for Best in Show with Ottos Brewery with both breweries taking over 80% of the total votes.  Not too shabby for a brewery that started in a second kitchen of an old home on Center Street, huh?  Needless to say Larry was surprised, excited, and thoroughly pleased with the results as he accepted his Medal of honor. 





Here comes the Purple Healer Train and we certainly are taking on the town one finely crafted brew at a time.  We look forward and are open to joining any other food festivals, events, and competitions with our hops a shining!  Thank you again to the BTE for hosting such an incredible event and thank YOU for all your continued support.  Keep spreading the word and checking back....it wont be long now until our beers can be purchased and be a part of YOUR family event.

Larry Speaks with WILK and Friends on MYbeerbuzz on the Radio

Today has two monumental occasions to celebrate, Larry the Brewmasters birthday and Purple Healers first on-air radio interview with 103.1 WILK.
Interviewing Larry was WILK's radio personalities: Nancy, John, Joe, and Bosco as well as Bill from MyBeerBuzz.  During this really special interview everyone got a taste of the Munich Helles, Auntie M's amber ale, and Rippinator.  John Webster and Bill were big fans of the ales but sadly disappointed that the IPA was still in the fermentation process. No need to be sad John and Bill, that IPA will be ready shortly and I'm pretty sure there will be two bottles with your names on them as soon as the reach bubbly perfection.  Nancy couldn't get enough of the Rippinator and was eager to have more than just a taste of the beer.  All in all I think Purple Healer has a new group of fans and we are more than eager to deliver our beers to the public soon.  In fact if you watch the interview here you will see that the largest amount of excitement was over the question of WHEN will our beers be available for sale?  I wish I had the exact answer to post here but for that question all I can say is that the business ball is rolling and we are going downhill.  When all of our carbonation is set perfectly (like the IPA) we will be sure to share that information with all of you!  Thank you to everyone in the production process of this very special day for our company.

One question we get a lot (including today) involves HOW did we even come up with such a crazy name.  As Larry described in his interview, every beer, story, name, and idea stems from something from our family.  "Ping" our family's newest Australian cattle dog was bred from a Blue Heeler breed and a Red Heeler Breed dog.  Of course when you mix those two colors you get purple so we called her our little Purple Heeler.  We thought the name was so cool that when Larry started brewing our fine beers he was going to call them Purple Healers (changing the spelling because we believe beer is much more "healing" than anything.

And as for "Rippinator...."
It is based off the name of our other cattle dog, Ripley contrary to all other ideas that it involves that funny bodily function or off of "getting ripped" from our beers.  However we like that everyone comes up with some crazy ideas for it and honestly our beers mean something to our families and earned their name but you may call them whatever you like for whatever reason you want as long as you call them tasty (because really they are not that I'm not bias to the beer or anything).

Tomorrow we will be at "Taming of the Brew" at the Caldwell Consistory in Bloomsburg Pa and if you were luck enough to get a ticket to the sold out event we will see you there, if not do not fret, pictures will be exclusively available to our fans right here! 

Introducing the Exclusive Blog for Purple Healer Brewing Co. LLC

Hello fellow beer enthusiasts, and welcome to the official blog of our nano-brewery.

Purple Healer Brewing Co. LLC was established in 2010 and has been steadily growing since.  We are excited to finally have the gift of technological communication to offer to our friends, family, and friends.  Check back here often as this will be the home of exclusive news, pictures, recipes, and MORE.


We are extremely excited in the development of the company as are many of our followers and soon we hope to be able to sell our fine craft brews made from all-natural ingredients to the public.  We are close and the dream is definately going to become a reality but as with all good things...we need time.  Time to make the company as strong as it can be in tough economic times and time to of course get the paperwork in order. 

Purple Healer is offering our Puppy Hops Beer biscuits for sale at several locations including Bloomsburg RV center and Dragonflyte Creations.  You can also email Puppy Hops separately to place an order.

We will be posting some exciting news about events we will be a part of really soon so check back.  And thank you for being a valuable customer of our up and coming nano-brewery in the great land of Northeastern Pennsylvania.