An artisanal, Small-Batch Brewery
Introducing Crafty Bastard House of Funk
We’re thrilled to officially launch our Sour Program – Crafty Bastard House of Funk! We invite you to enjoy carefully curated selections from our barrel catalog located at 6 Emory Place, blending innovation with tradition to produce genre-bending sour beers. Welcome to the House of Funk.
In this month’s article, Aaron shares the story of where we get our beautiful prickly pears, which we use for a number of our beers and sours. The story starts in 2012 when Aaron knocked on the door of a lovely home in 4th and Gill and asked, “Are you going to use those? And if not, do you mind if I do?” He was greeted by a friendly woman who told him to take as much as he wanted.
After a painful first experience with these spikey fruits, Aaron began using prickly pears for cocktails and later beer. To this date, we have used prickly pears for many different beers, including a white wine barrel-aged sour and a yearly IPA collaboration with Abridged Beer Co.
In this month’s Blank News article, we’re talking about persimmons – the squishy-looking orange fruit you may see on the ground in the Fall. When our founder and head brewmaster, Aaron McClain, first saw a persimmon he became intrigued. After taking a bite, Aaron was transversed into a tasteful illusion of peach, apricot, cinnamon and vanilla, quickly realizing he must use these little pieces of paradise in a beer! The only issue was where would he find enough persimmons to make a beer…
Not long after, Aaron’s good friend Don Kilgore asked at the bar of Crafty Bastards, “Aaron, would you have a use for persimmons?” Quickly perking up, Aaron and Don agreed to a barter and to this date we create a number of beers using Don’s beautiful treasures.
This past summer, we teamed up with Blank Newspaper to begin a year-long series highlighting Crafty Bastard’s contribution to the Knoxville Craft Beer scene and its unique and quirky beers. The articles are written by our founder and head brewmaster, Aaron McClain.
This is the first part of the series, which gives you an introduction to Crafty Bastard, who we are, and the stories behind our delicious, distinctive, and sometimes bizarre beers. To coincide with the article, the article’s featured beer will be on tap for you to enjoy!
