Press Release – The aliens will land — again — at @Marker48Brewing

A special bottle release and tapping of The John Reeves Incident Double IPA commemorates a local legend on Memorial Day Weekend.

John Reeves lived in the Brooksville area of Florida and, like many of us, enjoyed traipsing around in the beautiful woodlands of The Nature Coast. Then one day, in 1961, he came upon a saucer-shaped craft parked in the wilderness, with tall, luminous beings near it.

Those beings, it turns out, arrived from the stars, and over the next few years John Reeves befriended them. In fact, in 1968, his alien friends flew him to their base on the far side of our moon, where he spent hours exploring before returning with a small bottle of gray lunar dust and a softball-sized chunk of rock. In doing so, he became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface — a year before Neil Armstrong did it.

Or so the story goes.

Regardless, during that time many others spied mysterious lights and craft in the skies in the area around where Marker 48 Brewing now stands and the region became known as the “UFO Capital of the World.”

To commemorate the legend of John Reeves, Marker 48 is releasing a special beer on Sunday, May 27, and throwing an out-of-this-world UFO party, the second year in a row for the celebration.

The John Reeves Incident beer this year is a hazy double IPA (9.2% Alcohol By Volume) brewed with Galaxy, Simcoe, and several experimental hops to create a delicious balanced brew with citrus and tropical flavors that might just send your taste buds into outer space.

A limited number of 750 ml bottles of The John Reeves Incident will go on sale for $20 per bottle after the brewery opens at noon, plus there will be kegs of it tapped that day in the tasting room. Both will be available while supplies last.

The UFO party will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the beer garden. Scheduled to perform is brewery favorite Ally Venable Band from Texas. There will be an Alien/UFO Costume Contest at 9 p.m., with prizes awarded for best female, best male and best couple, and there will be a free photo booth set up to snap your own souvenir pics.

Food trucks BarbieCue, Nina’s Wood Fire Pizza and Nina Cucina Cheesesteaks and appetizers will be on site during the event, and T-shirts to commemorate Mr. Reeves and his otherworldly friends will be available for purchase.

But how believable is John Reeves’ story? For that we turned to veteran journalist Billy Cox, the mainstream media’s lonely UFO analyst and the brain behind the De Void blog (devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com)

“Far too much time has elapsed between The John Reeves Incident and its eponymous beer,” he said. “This is like Columbus witnessing the launch of Apollo 11.”

For a detailed re-telling of the John Reeves story, check out this post on thenightsky.org. (thenightsky.org/reeves.html)

Marker 48 Brewing is a 7-barrel craft brewery with a 32-tap tasting room in Weeki Wachee, Florida, founded by Hernando County natives Maurice and Tina Ryman. Regular hours are Monday, 3 to 10 p.m.; Wed-Thurs., noon to 10 p.m.; Fri. and Sat., noon to midnight; and Sun. noon to 8:30 p.m. The address is 12147 Cortez Blvd. (S.R. 50), Weeki Wachee, FL 34613. Phone: (352) 606-2509.

Drink Florida Craft,
Dave
@floridabeerblog
floridabeerblog@gmail.com