Strong Arm Brewing of Renton, Washington announced today a collaborative partnership with Captive Spirits. Based in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, Captive Spirits describes itself as the city’s only gin company, “Pumpin’ the gin since 2010.” The company’s flagship product is Big Gin.
The collaboration with Strong Arm Brewing will see the brewery use bourbon barrels in which Captive Spirits aged its gin. First up, the brewery will age its Strong Winter Warmer in Captive Barrels. What’s more, Captive Spirits will then use those barrels to age more spirits. That’s an interesting twist. Usually barrels get a one way ticket out of the distiller or winery when shipped off to a brewery.
Here is the press release from Strong Arm Brewing.
Press Release: Strong Arm Brewing and Captive Spirits Distilling form collaborative partnership.
Captive Spirits, (Ballard WA, ) makers of Big Gin and Bourbon Barreled Big Gin will begin supplying Strong Arm Brewing with bourbon barrels that they aged their gin in for six months starting in October.
“We are really excited about this collaboration” says Cincinati Smith of Strong Arm Brewing. “Captive Spirits makes an exceptional, unique and award winning gin and we think it will be something we can get creative with imparting big, bold flavors to some special beers we plan on brewing specifically with these barrels in mind.”
Cincinati goes on to elaborate, “our first brew to go into the barrels will be a Strong Winter Warmer that has spruce tips, juniper and bitter orange peel added. It should work really well with the gin and oak flavors from the barrel. We plan on releasing it in early December and it will be available in bottles at the brewery”.
The partnership does not end there. “We view this as a true collaboration because this partnership goes beyond just getting barrels from a distiller, Captive Spirits intends on taking the barrels back into its production and aging gin in them again, creating an ale aged gin. It is great to work with a local craft distiller who is as passionate about his craft as we are.”
This is just the start for us at Strong Arm and our gin barrel program, we plan to release a gin barrel aged beer about every 3 months moving forward and we have beers planned for the gin barrels well into next year. We cannot wait to see what happens with each creation.