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| 2021.05.29 |
Little Cottage Brewery is a nano-brewery in Avondale Estates Georgia - this is a small township that borders the much larger Decatur Georgia, both are considered part of the larger 29 county MSA of Metro-Atlanta.
Little Cottage opened its doors in May 2021 but its history starts in 2012, when the brewer/owner Jon Shari first received a home-brewing kit from his wife for Father's Day, and started experimenting with home brewing.
From Google's AI (2025.11.30):
- Origins: The brewery's name comes from the small cottage where founder Jon Shari began homebrewing over a decade ago. He started brewing after being inspired by a limited-release peach beer and was hooked after his wife bought him a homebrew kit.
- Inspiration: The brewery's unique identity is deeply rooted in heavy metal music, which influences the beer names, designs, and overall atmosphere.
- Growth and opening: After years of homebrewing and developing a following for his barrel-aged beers, Jon Shari and his wife decided to open a commercial brewery. They officially opened Little Cottage Brewery in Avondale Estates in May 2021.
- Key offerings: The brewery is known for its small-batch and barrel-aged beers, which range from dark, complex stouts to lighter lagers.
The takeaway, is that thematically the brewery uses terms frequently borrowed from Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy by the Heavy Metal music genre - thus most of the release have names like "Tales from the Crypt" and "Island of Lost Souls" - also the raspy vocals coming from the brewery sound system can be anything from a heavy metal classic to the latest in Death Metal.
Little Cottage Brewery has its own website where it talks about the origin, types of beer, etc. so why this blog? I've been an avid fan of Jon Shari's work, having sampled some of the beer he shared prior to the brewery's opening. I've been very fortunate to have sampled many of his beers and to own a small collection of his bottle releases. The question always comes up regarding "which came first" with his bottles so I decided to put together a type study of each of his beers and the differences between them as they are released over time.
Jon generally changes the barrel used to age his beers for each release, but other than a change in description the labels are generally reused (the early bottle labels were redrawn in later years so the style distinguishes those from LCB's releases once the brewery opened)
You can tell the release by the bottle wax used - so these type studies describe what's in the release and the bottle's appearance, if available.
In any case, I hope my observations can be useful to determine what you have and the nuances from barrel and occasionally, recipe changes.
-- John
