Local Beer in Wake Forest, NC

Sometimes in life you just need a cookie. Whether it’s celebrating life’s successes or just reminding the homies that you love them and expressing your words is hard and giving a cookie is easier. This cookie beer is for that exact moment. The base beer is a Northern English Brown Ale with waves of roasty chocolate and toffee. We conditioned this beer on heaps of golden raisins and Vietnamese cinnamon. Reminiscent of Grandma’s warm, fresh baked oatmeal cookies.

Classic Belgian Trappist-style amber ale using yeast and malts from Belgium and follows any of their brewing processes applicable on our system. Light esters blend with bready, biscuity malts for a kind of banana bread aroma with dark fruit and molasses in the finish from the use of extra dark crystal malts and candi syrup. It’s downright pleasant.

Brewed in collaboration with our good friends at Heyday Brewing! Waldo clocks in at a tame 5.8%, this one is super soft with a restrained bitterness. It was bittered and whirlpooled with Citra then aggressively dry-hopped with 100% Motueka. The result is an aroma of vibrant tropical notes of ripe lime zest, light floral-rose, and white nectarine.

More color, malt presence and IBUs than our West Coast IPAs. Overloaded with kettle hops per tradition (70-100 IBUs or something), then dry hopped with a healthy dose of Simcoe, Amarillo, and Azacca hops. Blackbird style, it was decoction mashed to widen the malt complexity and double dry hopped with concentrated lupulin pellets.

Michelle, my bell, these are words that go together well. A tribute to the woman who raised our brewer and has some serious wallpaper and sewing skills featured in our brewery, this light and dry complex ale is for those who prefer to drink beer like it’s wine.

Made to introduce our new tulip glass, we wanted orangey citrus for this big fat hazy DIPA so we used a heavy dose of El Dorado lupulin alongside Citra and just a touch of NZ hops to keep it funky.

Modern West Coast IPAs are one of our favorite styles. No experiments here, we went tried and true with the “holy trinity” hops Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe. Fermented bone dry with balanced bitterness to produce clean, clear hop juice!

Brewed with our friends at Wooden Robot in Charlotte. They drove down with some Epiphany Maple Smoked malt from Durham and we turned it into a dark lager. We did our usual step mash program for Euro styles and included a decoction to show off, but also to add some improved head retention to the beer. Naturally carbonated, expect some smoky and roasty notes married together with a rustic edge from 8 weeks in tanks.

Our first of what will become many attempts at Euro Pils. These are special beers that require extra steps and know-how on the brewhouse and an 8-week minimum maturation in tanks. German malt step mashed with a single decoction, hopped with Hallertau Mittelfruh and Saphir and then naturally carbonated and lagered in horizontal tanks.

So, what are you doing back at Blackbird? Well, I sat back and thought about the things we used to do, the beer I drank with you, the cheers, and many brews. I’m so in love, Girl You Know Wit’s True. We are channeling Milli Vanilli, but this beer is a classic, crushable Belgian Witbier with wheat, coriander, and orange peel. Order a pint and know my love is for you.

Classic German style wheat beer. 50% of this beer is made from wheat grown at Perry Family Farm in Rolesville four miles from the brewery and malted at Epiphany Craft Malt in Durham. Brewed the hard way, this went through five mash steps including two decoctions to get every bit of character these malts have to offer. Naturally carbonated and unfiltered.

If you see your kids congregating at the back fence, they might be throwing rocks and dirt at our neighbors’ trampoline. It’s happening a lot so it must be very tempting for the little ones! Please ask them to back off the fence and give the neighbors some privacy. And let’s cheers to our first Pilsner. After eight weeks of tank time, we decided to throw New Zealand’s Freestyle Farms Nelson and Motueka hops in for some really cool top notes of lime, citrus and NZ terroir.

We have yet to find the pot of gold under the rainbow, but luck did shine upon us with this milk stout. Robust nose with chocolate and coffee notes. On the palate, you will get a touch of sweetness with a nice balance of chocolate and coffee. If you had the first keg, we have since added cocoa nibs and vanilla to the stout for a tad bit of sweetness.

We all live in a yellow submarine cruising through a sea of Hazy IPAs and this is a damn good one. We went all Citra for those looking for juice. Made with our ‘thicc boi’ base of oat malt and British yeast for an opaque and creamy base. We’ll eventually stop making hazies when I’m 64. This beer is also available in cans now!

The classic light and crisp German ale, drinks like a lager but with a unique stone fruit, salt cracker and chalky aromas you only find in Kolsch. Brewed with Barke Pilsner malt, Tettnang hops and one of our favorite yeast strains to brew with (it’s Kolsch yeast). Mashed with four enzymatic temperature rests, we used this clean and simple recipe to test our automated step mashing program on the new brewhouse!