I’ve had a lot of emails, Tweets and in person questions over the past few months about what’s up with this website? When are you going to update it again? Let me start by saying I appreciate those questions and everyone’s desire for more content! So what is going on with Embrace The Funk? Well a whole heck of a lot that’s for sure.

I think most people know that I am the guy behind the sour/wild program at Yazoo Brewing Company in Nashville, TN and the assumption is that’s what I do. Which is mostly true, it’s not my only gig.
For the past 22 years I have worked in Live Television Production and since 2000 I have been a live newscast director at the #1 rated station in Nashville: WTVF Newschannel5. That is my main 40 hour (many times more) a week job. Since 2012 I have been working with my friend Linus and the awesome crew at Yazoo building the Embrace The Funk line of beers. We have grown the ETF line from literally 1 single barrel in the upstairs corner of the brewery grain storage area to a GABF Award Winning program with it’s own Festival (that sells out each time), a separate building, bottling line and tanks.

With all this fantastic growth comes time out of the day to manage the program while working 40 hours a week elsewhere and still being a dad to 2 awesome kids. I am very proud that it has reached a point where this business I have been a part of building needs full time attention. So by the end of this summer i will dedicating 100% of my work efforts to the Yazoo Embrace The Funk line of beers.

 

 

 

From starting this blog on my couch and brewing in the garage this growth has been nothing short of incredible to me. So thanks to everyone who has supported this thing from those days until now! I’m looking forward to ramping up production and having the time to write informational blog posts for you again.

Also this weekend June 5th and 6th I will be in Washington, DC for the annual SAVOR event. We are bringing Deux Rouges (Our Flanders Red aged in Merlot Barrels) and Yazoo Sue (Cherrywood Smoked Porter) to serve during the event both nights. On Friday night we are debuting our collaboration with our friends at Upland Brewing Company. This will take place in the Salon area at 9:30pm with Caleb Staton and myself. We will talk about barrel blending and sour brewing. A fun side note…I interviewed Caleb for this blog back in 2012! You might be asking what is the collaboration? Here is the cool thing… the collaboration is actually 2 very different beers produced in 2 different states.

• At Upland we made “3 Degrees North”. It is our tropical-ish sour blonde ale blended with their Kiwi and their Cherry ale.
• At Yazoo we made “3 Degrees South”. It is our Sour Brown Ale aged in Red Wine Barrels, Our Sour Brown Aged in Bourbon Barrels, their Dantalion ale and their Cherry ale.

 

Both of these beers will be released in bottles in the near future. Stay tuned for details on the release parties.
If you are going to be in DC for SAVOR let me know, I’d love to meet up with as many people as I can while I’m in town.

Cheers!