Time to consolidate all of the Struise tidbits of info out there in internet land.  Shortly after I posted the Friday round-up, Struise Head Brewer, Urbain Coutteau, posted the following message on RateBeer:

[Struise Black Albert] came out of the warm room two weeks ago & already in the States by plane & a lot more vibrating transport. For the moment, your beer is more a yeast cocktail than a Struise beer. My advise is that you leave the beer in your cellar for a month for it to rest like it should. Beer should be drunk in the best of conditions.

And from Chris Lively, Owner of Ebenezer’s Pub, on Beer Advocate:

The [Black Albert] Reserva will also be bottled in 2-3 months from what I hear.

He also posted that all of the new batch of Struise Earthmonk went to Japan. [ed: certainly a curious decision to send this to Japan; Denmark and some other countries are known to be into craft beer as much as we are but maybe there are more out there we don’t know about?]  We’ve seen rumors in multiple places that there are still some cases of a batch of Earthmonk sitting at Shelton Brothers.  Those could be completely false or outdated but we are holding out hope, if not optimistic, that some will get released in the U.S.

Even if no Earthmonk gets released in the U.S., New Englanders are in luck.  Lively posted recently that there will be a 30-liter keg of Struise Earthnun at the Belgian Beer Festival in late August.  The beer is a blend of “Earthmonk + Pannepot Reserva + 1968 Thomas Hardys.”  One would expect Struise Black Albert will also be available in some capacity at the event.

And what does the mysterious “Struise Black Albert versus Black Jack” message posted at Lively’s pub site mean?  Might there be a new Struise Black Jack beer that we have not heard about yet? I believe I’ve put two and two together and the Reserva version will be called Black Jack!  Now what do I win?

And then there is Struise Pannepot Grand Reserva.  Shelton Brothers have said in the past that this will get distributed in the States again but nothing new for information has come to light in some time.

Got a Struise-related tip (or any general beer tip for that matter)?  Send an email.

[6/17 Update: If you’re in Europe, your best shot to get this may be the Cracked Kettle in Amsterdam, or BelgianShop.  It appears as though the Belgian Beer Shop has sold out.  Not sure about the other two stores; I’ll look into it.]