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Early visitors to the Foggy Noggin tasting room remember our black lab Cruz, who would warmly great them every Saturday. He loved the tasting room and would never miss a day to participate in whatever was going on in there. He also loved brew day - he would smell the first batch of the day and know when the spent grains were ready to be put into buckets. These buckets are picked up by a local pig farmer, but Cruz made sure he got his share first. Cruz lived a long and wonderful life in the brewery and reached the age of 14 before his age caught up with him. Arthritis and old age got the better of him and forced us to make the difficult choice to put him down. Labor Day (2010) weekend, we received a wine barrel from Tim Henley (Gordon Brothers Winery). This barrel has been in use for the winery since 2004. We filled it with a special 6-batch brewing of our English Strong Ale. It was on display in our tasting room and planed to release this rare beer (Olde Cruz) late in 2011 in collectable bottles. Old Cruz sat proudly on display in the Foggy Noggin tasting room for one year. Patrons would show their respect to Cruz by rubbing their hands on the wooden barrel. Not sure if this is true, but we heard that you would receive good luck by rubbing the barrel.  The year gave us 4 seasons of cold and warmer temperatures and Olde Cruz was in the middle of everything. September 2011 marked the time to get Olde Cruz out of the barrel and bottled. Label approval from the TTB (federal government) was next. We started this approval process in August and never thought we would have to go through what we did. 4 submissions later, it was approved and ready to bottle. Bottling was now ready after we finally got the label approval. Assembling staff for this event over the Thanksgiving weekend was not difficult. The result was 25 cases of what could be called "The Rarest Beer In The World." With only 25 cases produced this is going to be a beer that everyone will want, and only a few can get. Lots of loving care was put into this beer to get to you, and this is not easy work. Thanks to all who helped us get this one-of-a-kind special beer ready to sell to you.