We will be canning two times each in the next two months. Here's some info on what we have coming!
Hinterland Hef - D/H with Ella hops and used Galaxy and Loral on hotside.
Brewed on 8/20 - A beer style I've been wanting to brew all summer! Using a fairly popular wheat strain we made a hef style beer. Borrowing yeast options for the strain were from two breweries. One more traditionally German iconic hef and one that makes wheat beer styles really well and varied other German beers. I ended up selecting the german alt strain. The grain bill would normally be malted wheat at about 30% for a hef (or more) I blended two really nice pilsner malts and a flaked wheat from Oregon. I like the softer creamier elements of flaked wheat sometimes. I'd hope we can get that stable hazy hef appearance and mouthfeel. The beer had a small addition of galaxy for subtle complexity and minute bitterness. The whirlpool addition of Loral hops would be on par with our IPA rates almost. The beer fermented as hot as the strain can handle for maximum ester production and gave us a nice clove and banana that fits the style. We will dry hop it today and tomorrow with Ella hops to try to push some strawberry fruitiness. It is so creamy and I can't wait for canning it.
Sadly sort of without a name still - Cool fermented D/H IPA with Galaxy, Loral, Blanc and Mosaic
Brewed on 8/27 - So hoping this works and here's to challenging ourselves and shooting for something great. The mouthfeel of this alt strain should be really cool in a hazy IPA. We don't however want that banana or clove character. So we are going to ferment it a little cooler. I was kind of mind blown by the pale ale called Shamanic Whip by Wayfinder when coming back from a coastal trip. Such a cool beer and you can tell the risk of taming the yeast in a different way of its original intentions has paid off. I know the strain they had used but that wouldn't have worked to make a hef above. So instead of fermenting from 68-74. Going to keep this pitch in the IPA down to 55-60. Should get a more neutral character and will also hopefully help from a bigger pitching rate. The inside scoop is I wanted to do this beer with spelt malt. Of course we plan the beer and the name to go along with the spelt malt vibe and voila. Our supplier didn't have the spelt I wanted in stock. So in it's place we used a couple of bags of flaked oats. The fun hops selection is sort of a celebration of fine tuning our hop contracts to things I'd like to use the next few years. I'm hoping to wiggle around in this beer and find its stride. The absence of spelt could be a happy accident but you never know. Look for a silky smooth hazy beer that's trying to be different.
Remora - Dry Hopped Golden Ale: Collaboration with Airways Brewing
Brewed on 8/21 with Alex. I have been circling Alex at Airways for quite a while. Almost ten years really. We have brewed at least a beer a year for the last ten years. This time we wanted to get together to run a fun anti bittered drinkable beer. Outside the IPA spectrum. In appearance it will be the cliche hazy IPA. It used Blanc and Citra. A really fun combo that will work well in a lower abv beer with restrained bitterness. We used the water and pH tuning to really nerd out. I trust him tremendously and he brought down a strain of iconic NE hoppy selected yeast. We have used it for years while collectively. I sometimes avoid it for that reason. This beer will be fantastic and is a new pursuit of mine for a good brew pub hazy crusher. Look at it as a intro to hazy IPA 101 beer. I will keep moving around in this beer for a while hopefully if we can get some sales traction on it. The fluffy understated beers of Vermont are so damn good and I still years later chase making them. The name is for the shark companion fish the Remora. This is a symbol of Alex and my relationship as well as the beer style that we are making to take claim. It is close to an IPA like a life-long companion to one. Cheers!
Little Juice IPA - Hazy IPA : with Citra, Idaho-7, Comet
Brewing on 8/28 The pressure is on. This smash hit has a definite following. So I've never brewed it here since arriving in December. I definitely know the vibe of the beer. I didn't fuss over the pre-existing recipes. The beer moved around a bit over the years and a lot of the time had different hops. So I am looking at crafting the water, pH, yeast and a bunch of other variables over the next few swings we take at it. Sometimes fine tuning an IPA goes unnoticed and sometimes people can fixate on the changes. I'd like to develop a couple of IPA's that are almost always around. Clear, Hazy and a dbl. This beer will rotate in when you least expect it and hopefully do well and feel inspired. This batch was brewed with yeast from the Remora making it expected of hazy IPA. This was often selected for Little Juice. I'm looking to drift into a different ale strain for this in the future that I think will be very promising. I hope I don't ruin a good thing but slowly try to make it as good as I can. Cheers!
Fresh Hop IPA
As a teaser we will be doing a fresh hop IPA this year. Most likely as a hazy with the new house ale strain. I had used that in Moondance, Nano Juice and even grape decay. I think it will be awesome for a fresh hop. We are using Cashmere again and that's about all I will tell yah!
We have one dark beer coming as well. It has coffee and my lips are sealed on other details!
Following with that will a Golden IPA with Strata and Idaho-7 and a West Coast IPA that will be a tribute beer to Glen Hay Falconer. I have wanted to develop a beer for years using that blend to thank the foundation for giving out brewing scholarships yearly. I was selected in 2016 and have never found the time to tweak a beer in honor of. We got the contracts shuffled around and I'm committed to using the Falconer hop blend.