diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index e418fc34..64d03ab5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+v0.8.1 - safer timeout handling, more consistent reload behavior
 v0.8.0 - enforce Rack dependency, minor performance improvements and fixes
 v0.7.1 - minor fixes, cleanups and documentation improvements
 v0.7.0 - rack.version is 1.0
diff --git a/lib/unicorn/const.rb b/lib/unicorn/const.rb
index e6e36bd2..250868db 100644
--- a/lib/unicorn/const.rb
+++ b/lib/unicorn/const.rb
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ module Unicorn
   # gave about a 3% to 10% performance improvement over using the strings directly.
   # Symbols did not really improve things much compared to constants.
   module Const
-    UNICORN_VERSION="0.8.0".freeze
+    UNICORN_VERSION="0.8.1".freeze
 
     DEFAULT_HOST = "0.0.0.0".freeze # default TCP listen host address
     DEFAULT_PORT = "8080".freeze    # default TCP listen port