Fin City has a lot in the works for a summer full of beer “reel-eases” and easy drinking out on the Assawoman Bay (if you’ve never been, they brew up in the rafters of Hooper’s Crab House in West Ocean City). Even so, this year’s Beer of the Summer could actually be determined by you.
Submit your craziest beer idea
Brand new this month on Fin City’s website is the “New Brew Release Request Line” (just scroll down a bit and see the box underneath the “Get Social” feed). That’s where you, the craft beer connoisseur, or at the very least the lover of unique local brews, can submit your own original idea for a craft beer. The best idea will be brewed by Fin City at the end of the summer, and the winner will receive Fin City gear in addition to all the fame and notoriety that comes with having your own beer.
“If there’s some beer that you’ve always wanted to try and have never been able to try, or always thought “this would be a really great beer, how come no one’s ever tried this before?”… We’re going to pick one person’s idea and we’re going to make that idea a reality,” said brewery partner Michael Glavich.
The New Brew Release Request Line plays off another contest of Fin City’s, where their newest brew is democratically elected. Every September at Shore Craft Beer Fest: Brews on the Beach, festival-goers are able to taste beers made by local home brewers and then elect a People’s Choice award winner, whose beer is ultimately brewed by Fin City and served at OCtoberfest.
“We do a very small batch and release it locally, and we’re excited now to try something along the same lines but with an even bigger audience,” Glavich said.
Brewing from the rafters at Fin City
When people told me Fin City was above Hooper’s Crab House, I didn’t take them literally. After all, Hooper’s is just on the Assawoman Bay and it would make sense to have a brewery just above it on the water.
New reel-eases
In addition to the Request Line beer, there will also be new releases all summer long, announced on the 3rd Thursday of every month. Just tune in to 98.1’s morning radio show, where Bulldog and the gang are the first to try each new beer (aside from the brewers themselves) before it’s sent out into the world. There are three places where you can almost find the new release, Glavich said: The Globe in Berlin, the West O Bottle Shop in West Ocean City and Pickles Pub on 8th Street.
The new beers are all kept top-secret until they’re announced on the radio, but it can be known that one upcoming beer falls right in line with what’s currently trending in the craft beer world: the New England IPA.
“It’s a hazier IPA with a really fruity but not overly sweet finish, just a real juicy IPA,” Glavich said. “We just brewed our first one ever, it turned out great and that’ll be out in the next month or two as part of our release program. We’re really excited about that.”
