(Ithaca, NY) – Ithaca Beer Co. will release a new spring seasonal next month: Ithaca Ground Break. Here are the details from the brewery’s Jeff O’Neil:

“Ground Break is our new spring seasonal… it’s an Americanized (hoppy) Saison. It’s brewed with generous amounts of Amarillo, Crystal and Glacier hops (none added during the boil by the way- only first wort, whirlpool and dry-hop additions) and flaked rye. It’s fermented with a blend of Dupont and Chico yeasts. Very dry, ample yeast character, and hoppy. We’ve brewed a couple of batches so far, and expect it to start showing up on draft first, then in 6-packs and our variety 12-pack in February. It’ll last until May or so when we start rolling out this year’s version of Partly Sunny, our summer Wit-style beer! This will show up everywhere that our seasonal brews and variety packs are found: NY, PA, CT, MA, RI, NJ and OH.”

As I mentioned on Twitter recently, Ithaca LeBleu is smoking hot in terms of demand right now. There are around 40 LeBleu threads on Beer Advocate from the last week since I posted up that article, most of which are ISO threads. The beer was even finally put up on eBay yesterday. O’Neil says as of 3pm EST on Tuesday that there are less than ten cases left at the brewery store and that they sent out their first cases to wholesalers today. The beer will be available on a limited basis in the brewery’s local market, NYC, Boston and Philly. My guess is that there are 100 cases or less going out to distribution though I don’t have a definitive answer as to how many have been sold out. 150-160 cases were produced.