From neighborhood-focused taprooms to innovative brewing spaces with deep roots in local history, these emerging breweries are redefining what it means to grab a beer in Tampa. As the craft beer landscape evolves, so too do the breweries of Tampa Bay, offering diverse styles, inclusive spaces, and unforgettable experiences for visitors and locals alike.

Common Dialect Beerworks

Common Dialect Beerworks celebrated two years in Tampa’s craft beer community in January 2025. Situated on Florida Avenue—a street that has become a hoppy highway through the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa—Common Dialect is a passion project of husband-and-wife team Mike and Kendra Conze. “The couple have worked to create a colorful and welcoming space, far from the minimalist and industrial-feeling breweries Tampa Bay is familiar with,” according to the brewery’s website. “Our goal is to be the go-to brewery for our community, providing an inclusive space where people can come together, share experiences, and find commonalities with one another.”

Mike asserts that Common Dialect is just that. “We’re a smaller, friendlier neighborhood place but we try to serve the bigger community and have something for everyone.”

Common Dialect’s beers are “more approachable,” Mike says. “We do everything. We’re more of a neighborhood brewery.”

Popular choices include Refractive Error, a hazy IPA; a Kölsch; and a Czech Pilsner. Mike, also the head brewer, says that he is “not as big into imperial stouts, but the brewery will tap a few from time to time,” along with Common Dialect’s award-winning Chiapas Porter, an imperial porter made with coffee, chilies, cacao, cinnamon, and vanilla, and several other dessert-themed beers for visitors with a sweet tooth or an adventurous streak.

Deviant Libation

Brewer Tim Ogden’s name has been synonymous with craft beer in the Tampa Bay for several years. Ogden was initially hired by the Hops chain of brewpubs in the 1990s and has been supporting other Bay Area breweries such as Cigar City Brewing and Tampa Bay Brewing Company with his talents ever since. Deviant Libation, which opened in January 2023, marks Ogden’s first foray into running his own brewery since becoming a brewer over two decades ago.

The goal for Deviant, according to Ogden, is “to open a place a little less typical to house these beverages that are often also a little less typical—something with appeal to more groups than a typical brewery may appeal to.” Ogden refers to it as “a space for the hardcore kids, the punks, the queer community; a space built with women in mind, as well as men and nonbinary folks—where members of the trans community feel safe and welcome just as much as anyone else.” He also described it as “a place that could be an experience.”

Ogden began rifling through his formidable recipe book upon opening Deviant and has wasted no time crafting remarkable beers such as The Crone Red IPA, Kiss of Darkness Porter, and Destruction Ritual Golden Ale.

Deviant Libation has also stepped up and helped the local community, making the small tasting room available for local and touring metal bands after Covid and adversity forced many small venues to close. “This has been a great symbiosis,” according to Ogden. “The bands have a place to play, and we can welcome people who might not have chosen to walk through the door.”

Late Start Brewing Company

Late Start Brewing Company has been planning a brewery in Tampa’s downtown district for years, and the team lived up to its name after repeated delays.

The brewery, which opened in September 2024, is the brainchild of three well-known Tampa brewers: Jordan Copher, Tyler Sankey, and Nick Streeter. It took three years to build the brewery in a former convenience store, and while it is still not a finished product, Late Start has begun making its mark on Tampa Bay as the brewery that is open the earliest (service starts at 8 a.m. with breakfast and coffee) with a menu that speaks to food lovers and beer enthusiasts alike.

The 2,500-square-foot facility on Cass Street in Tampa is home to Late Start’s 5-barrel brewing system, and the team has been thrilling visitors with its dedication to “classic styles and creative stuff,” according to co-founder and co-brewer Copher.

Popular beers include a pair of hazy double IPAs, Flagrant and Reckless. Sunset Junkie is the brewery’s core IPA, and Serious Moonlight, a robust porter, is usually on tap. A Belgian witbier will be in the rotation along with Cass Street Pub Ale, an English pub ale.

“As the market evolves, we have to evolve, too,” said Copher.

Copher says Late Start aims for “just all around quality, not being extreme on any level, and providing the most comfortable space for people to spend their time drinking their beers.”

Outcast Brewing Company

Outcast Brewing Company is the latest craft brewery to join the St. Petersburg brewing community in September 2024 in a space that previously housed two other craft breweries. According to owner Richie Hamm, the team was able to remake Outcast Brewing Company into a venue that speaks to everyone, no matter their preferred beverage. Outcast Brewing has a wine room called The Vintage and a room called The Lounge dedicated to craft cocktails and mocktails.

According to Hamm, Outcast Brewing strives to create a venue where people can get together to share live music, watch sporting events, or create other interactions that bring the community together.

“We want to be a community spot where people from anywhere can be, and that’s why our drinks are so varied, too,” Hamm said. “No matter who you are, what you’re looking for, or what your walk of life is like, there’s a spot you can feel like a part of what’s going on here. We want people to just come and enjoy being in their community, meet new people, and have a good time while drinking some good beer in the process.”

Sky Puppy Brewing

Veteran Tampa Bay brewer Matthew McKinnon had been urged by friends and family for many years to start his own commercial brewery, but he kept saying no, remembers Danielle Vergnaud-McKinnon, Matthew’s partner and co-founder of Sky Puppy Brewing. It took a chance meeting with artist and bronze sculpturist Copper Tritscheller before McKinnon began looking for a place to begin his work.

Initially, Tritscheller—whose sculptures are inspired by bats, also known as sky puppies— offered Matthew and Danielle a space to live in New Smyrna Beach while the couple was looking to build a brewery in the Atlantic coastal town. While they liked the beach and its potential, Vergnaud-McKinnon said they felt a pull from their ties to Ybor City, nearly 100 miles away. The duo evenutally found a space they could not turn down on Ybors City’s 8th Avenue. That space was the second firehouse ever built in the city of Tampa, dating back to 1888.

“One of the brewery’s longest delays,” recalls Danielle, “was getting the steel to reinforce the walls and make the building structurally sound.” After that, the duo continued to add touches to honor their connection with the building and its history, including a former bar and brewery called New World that was a neighbor to the current Sky Puppy space, where Danielle lived through some life-changing moments. “I had first dates [at New World], I went there after my grandmother’s funeral, I had my first legal beer served to me there. When they announced they were closing, Matthew committed to going every day for their last week. Then at the last call on the last night of New World Ybor City, Matthew proposed to me.”

With that many memories, the couple knew that there was only one space that could host Sky Puppy Brewing. “We knew that this piece of land or block in Ybor was just calling us back for a reason, and we wanted to preserve and give the community back something special.”

Then it was time to name the brewery. “To keep with [Copper’s] ethos about bats, Sky Puppy was a name that popped up,” Danielle recalls, “and we thought that those two words individually make you so happy, and together, it’s kind of cute and endearing.”

Ultimately, Sky Puppy Brewing became something more to Danielle and Matthew. “It’s a passion project,” asserts Danielle. “And I think that you can feel that when you enter the space.”

Sky Puppy Brewing opened in September 2024 and has been on a roll ever since. As for the beers, the taplist is a blend of the two owners’ styles, according to Danielle, who calls them “two different roads.”

Offerings include styles ranging from Vienna lager, double IPA, hazy IPA, schwarzbier, Czech Pilsner, helles, German Pilsner, and English porter.

“We get a little funky, too,” said Danielle. “We’re not scared to make styles we have been told don’t resonate, like a saison. Right now, we have a rye saison on tap.”

“Matthew and I both have a love for beer,” Danielle emphasizes, “and we want to inspire our team and our guests to be adventurous and try it.”

Wulfaven Brewing Company

Wulfaven Brewing Company is the first craft brewery in the Carrollwood neighborhood in Tampa. With its grand opening in October 2022, the brewery is a family affair with two generations of the Lazzara family collaborating within its walls.

According to the brewery, the idea for Wulfaven Brewing Co. started in 2017 when Joseph Lazzara and his father, Santo Lazzara, concocted the dream of one day owning their own brewery after being in the industry for a combined 30+ years. Two years later, the location was secured and the family hopped on board. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic would halt progress and cause innumerable delays.

Still, Santo and Joseph kept working behind the scenes. They broke ground on the brewery building in 2021.

The name Wulfaven is a combination of two words: wolf and haven, representing the family’s “pack” including friends, family, and community. Haven refers to the brewery’s safe space created for the community. The brewery aims for “crushable” beers, including Spring Fling, a Florida white ale with orange peel; and Tractor Pull, an American light lager.

Each new Tampa Bay brewery brings its unique vision to the region, blending tradition with innovation and offering something for every beer lover. Together with brewers across the region, the future of craft beer in Tampa Bay has never been brighter, inviting locals and visitors alike to share their enthusiasm for the beer community and the one-of-a-kind beer it continues to create.

The post The Fresh Faces of Tampa Bay’s Craft Beer Scene appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

At the Festival

1. Visit your favorite brewery’s booth and wear their colors to support.

Is your local brewery at the festival? Show them some love by wearing your shirt, pants, work shirt, or hoodie with their name or logo. Sometimes they’ll bring that beer you’ve always wanted to try. Even if they don’t, when far from home it’s nice to see a neighbor and a friendly face at such a busy festival.

2. Try beer from breweries you have only heard of.

Many storied beermakers from around the U.S. descend upon GABF to pour their liquid wares. Breweries like Russian River, Allagash, Maui Brewing, and Sierra Nevada are mainstays at the festival. Check out the official brewery and beer list at GreatAmericanBeerFestival.com.

3. Miss out on a beer? Start at that booth during the next session.

GABF hosts four sessions and the advantage of attending more than one is knowing where to start next. If a beer is so popular that it runs out, then that brewery will usually recharge and bring out a fresh keg for the next GABF session. (Note: this is not guaranteed.) If that beer is high on the priority list, then go directly to that brewery’s booth when the next session opens. At worst, if the beer is no longer available then there are a couple thousand other world-class beers to choose from around the festival hall.

4. Enjoy a chance to talk with the people who make the beer.

Many of the brewers and brewery owners attend the festival to represent their brewery and they love talking to beer enthusiasts about their liquids. The Brewers Association has expanded GABF to incorporate beer education seminars in addition to just drinking around the convention hall. Many well-known and respected brewers will conduct sessions in the Brewers Studio around beers, beer styles, beer cuisine, homebrewing, and other topics for festivalgoers. This is an opportunity to get face time with and ask questions of the beer industry’s most respected brewers.

5. Sample beer styles you’ve wanted to try.

Have a craving for smoked beer but don’t want to commit to a six-pack? Want to try some of the popular hazy IPAs? Who has the best amber ale? Let curiosity run wild at GABF! This is the place to try samples from craft brewers far and wide who have hand-selected their beers for the festival. Everyone is sending the beers they take pride in for the people who will enjoy them the most, so drinkers can’t go wrong.

6. Be the first to sample and enjoy medal-winning beers.

After the GABF medal-winning beers are announced on Saturday, the afternoon festival session is still in progress. When a brewery wins a medal, attendees can usually head right to the brewery’s table and be one of the first to sample the medal-winning beer (if there is any left).

Outside of GABF

7. The whole Denver region is in beer week/open house mode.

There may be beer weeks taking place at different times around the U.S., but Denver during GABF is next level. Every brewery, beer bar, beer-loving restaurant, and beer store rolls out the red carpet to make beer enthusiasts feel welcome. Special release beers are everywhere and tap takeovers and themed nights abound. See what’s happening.

8. Grab beer from other areas of the country to take home.

Breweries and distributors will often sign special agreements for distribution during the week of GABF. Check local beer stores and vendors for limited bottles and cans that have been brought in especially for the week. Sometimes these get announced and sometimes they don’t. GABF is as much about the beer lover as it is the brewers—and distributors and beer stores plan accordingly.

9. Enjoy beer cuisine in the Mile High City.

With so many beer enthusiasts descending on Denver each year for GABF, the city knows to be ready to feed all of those hungry and thirsty patrons. Look for beer dinners, tap takeovers, and culinary events around the city during the festival week. Many brewers maximize their time in the Mile High City by hosting dinners and events, and many restaurants attract travelers with culinary occasions that only happen during GABF week. Look for PAIRED® at GABF, where beer and food are masterfully crafted and paired by chefs far and wide. (Note: PAIRED requires a separate ticket.)

10. Check out the beer scene outside of Denver.

Fort Collins. Boulder. Aurora. Longmont. Colorado Springs. Many of these neighboring areas know that festival attendees tend to wander and need something to do between sessions, so they will host special events, limited releases, timed tappings, and more. The open house and beer week vibes are not contained within the city of Denver but reverberate throughout the region.

With so many experiences for beer lovers, GABF stands in a category all by itself. Each year, the festival expands beyond just sampling the finest craft beers in the country. From the PAIRED beer and food experience to costume contests and an opportunity to hear from and speak to renowned brewers, the list of must-do experiences and surprises grows each year. Keep an eye on GABF’s social media to stay updated on the latest news.

The post 10 Reasons to Attend the Great American Beer Festival appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Here are a few styles to wet the whistle and examples of where to find them from local and regional brewers.

Berliner Weisse: Berliner weisse is the lightest of all wheat beers, originating in Berlin and enjoyed by the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, who called it “The Champagne of the North.” These light and tart beers can be enjoyed fruited or unfruited and can provide relief on even the hottest days since their alcohol content is typically quite low (between 2.8% and 5%).

• For Berliner weisse, try: Creature Comforts Brewing Company’s Athena Berliner Weisse (unfruited) or Swamp Head Brewery’s Lemon Days (fruited).

Italian-Style Pilsner: One of the newest styles that American craft brewers have embraced, Italian Pilsner has become a favorite beer style for many. An Italian Pilsner is typically aggressively hopped with noble varieties but is a very dry lager otherwise. This fan-favorite and brewer-beloved beer style can walk drinkers through even the summer swelter with a low alcohol content and maximum lager goodness.

• For Italian-Style Pilsner, try: Firestone Walker Brewing Company’s Pivo Pils or Fort Point Beer Company’s Sfizio Italian-Style Pilsner.

Kolsch: This dry, crisp beer is a well-kept secret within the beer community. Originating from Cologne, Germany, this light-bodied beer has been a favorite of American brewers and beer lovers for many years. Whether chosen for poolside enjoyment or tapped for food-pairing potential, Kolsch is a versatile beer for all seasons—summer and beyond.

• For Kolsch, try: Mother Earth Brewing Company’s Endless River Kolsch-Style Ale or VonTrapp Brewing’s Kolsch Style.

Belgian-Style Witbier: While this style of beer is usually cloudy, it maintains a light body and a bright citrus character that can refresh on even the hottest of days. With an alcohol presence of less than 6%, the Belgian-style witbier fits any occasion from boats to beaches to backyards and beyond.

• For Belgian-style witbier, try: Celis Brewing Company’s Celis White or Allagash Brewing Company’s White

Mexican-Style Lager: An outgrowth of classic German lager styles, Mexican-style Lager was born from German brewers who emigrated to Mexico and longed to produce the lagers of the Old World. With a slight fruit character and low alcohol content, there is almost no bitterness to speak of in these clear lagers, only waves of refreshment radiating like the sun against the shore.

• For Mexican-style lager, try: 21st Amendment Brewing’s El Sully Mexican-Style Lager or Sun King Brewing Company’s Pachanga Mexican-Style Lager.

Session IPA: Designed especially for hop lovers who want to enjoy all of the flavor without the big body of an IPA or double IPA, the session IPA is a summertime favorite. This style oftentimes uses dry hopping to pour on the hop aroma but has a light enough body to be thirst-quenching. The malt backbone is flexible enough to allow the hops to shine, with the style maintaining an ABV in a wide range of 0.5% -5.0%.

• For Session IPA, try: Odell Brewing Company’s Good Behavior Crushable IPA or Hop River Brewing Company’s You Only Hop Twice Session Hazy IPA.

Hefeweizen: Another fine example of wheat beers meeting the needs of summertime, the hefeweizen style is a mainstay of the cooler in many parts of the country. Cloudy, carbonated, and packing flavors of banana, clove, nutmeg, and vanilla, hefeweizen should be on the list of tag-team partners for any summertime drinking.

• For Hefeweizen, try: Live Oak Brewing Company’s Hefeweizen or Bagby Beer Company’s wEYEssbier.

The post Beer Styles for Summer Sipping appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Fast forward to 2023, and with most of the country reopened, the public able to resume tasting room visits, and brewers getting used to their new normal, a few breweries have managed to make a name for themselves, garnering attention and accolades despite only being open for less than three years.

Here are five small breweries that have opened since 2020. If you haven’t heard about them yet, it’s likely you will soon.

Magnanimous in the Southeast

In the Southeastern United States, Magnanimous Brewing has been making waves throughout the beer community in Tampa Bay and beyond, and they haven’t even marked three years in business yet. Magnanimous was founded by Charlie Meers and Mike Lukacina. Meers has worked at Athens, Ga.’s Five Points Bottle Shop as well as stints running Cigar City Brewing’s Tasting Room and Cycle Brewing. Lukacina has brewed for Tampa’s 7venth Sun Brewery, Cigar City Brewing, and Coppertail Brewing.

Magnanimous opened in October 2020 with only four core beers and several rotationals. Fast forward to 2023, and Magnanimous has dropped two to three new releases each week since opening their doors. They’ve won over their neighbors in record time, too. Neighboring beer guy and Cigar City Brewing founder Joey Redner says that the most impressive thing about Magnanimous Brewing is their well-made hazy IPAs. Redner has said that he “hates hazies,” but he’s a fan of Magnanimous’s Juice Lord.” Coppertail Brewing owner Kent Bailey testifies that “Magnanimous hazies and lagers are so on point! With industry vets like Charlie Meers and Mike Lukacina behind the scenes, no wonder it’s so good.”

SoCal Brewery Rebirth

In southern California, one of the newest breweries on the block is carrying on a family tradition. McIlhenney Brewing Company was founded in 2021 by Shawn, Jamie, Pat, and Val McIlhenney, former owners and brewers of Alpine Brewing Company in Alpine, Calif. The brewery rightfully bears the family name after it brought beer fame to the city of Alpine with its intensely hoppy IPAs. McIlhenney Brewing was founded in the same spot where Alpine Brewing got its start in 2002, with award-winning brewer Shawn McIlhenney helming the brewhouse.

While the name and beers of Alpine Brewing Company were sold off previously and changed hands, the McIlhenney family “wanted to create an atmosphere here where locals and visitors alike can come to relax with a pint and feel like family,” explains Jamie. Adds Shawn, “It’s a place where people are greeted by name at the door, not judged by the beer they order and can just feel really comfortable spending time here.”

Experimenting in Arizona

Owner and brewer Tyler Smith founded Kitsune Brewing in October 2022 after previously contract brewing his beer. Smith began brewing with Simple Machine Brewing in Phoenix as a collaboration to make a Black is Beautiful beer, joining the campaign to raise awareness for diversity and inclusion in the beer industry.

“We’ve been doing a lot of crazy stuff with our sours,” Smith said on a recent episode of the PHOENIX Magazine podcast. “We did a beer that was gray, and we called it Dirty Snowflake. It was coconut and vanilla. Our hazies, too—we just try all of these different hop combinations. What’s great is that everyone in Arizona, when you start looking at those types of styles, is doing some amazing stuff. Right now, we’re just a footnote, but hopefully we can be known as some of those cats out there that are doing great things with these styles that people know and are bringing them to the next level.”

Committing to Local in New Hampshire

In northern New Hampshire, Devin Bush and his wife, Beth Ibitz, opened Wildbloom Beer in Littleton, focusing on saisons, Belgians, and lagers. Bush has previously brewed at other breweries, but when he decided to open his own, he knew what he wanted to brew and serve in his own place. When the New Hampshire Brewers Guild created an award for Brewer of the Year in 2020, Bush was the first brewer awarded the title. 

“I’ve now been in the professional brewing world for 16ish years,” Bush said on a recent episode of Drink Beer, Think Beer with John Holl. “If I was going to own my own brewery, I wanted to do beers in the way I want to do them and see if people respond.”

The beers he wanted to brew were offerings like Bear Camp Smoked Grodziskie, Forage Fresh Hop Saison, Pinecone Cozy Pale Ale, and Settle Down Easy Czech-Style Dark Lager.

“Wildbloom is about 99 percent sourced ingredients from New England, and that is one of the things that solidified. We really wanted to drive home those points of who we’re working with, getting local ingredients and that whole thing. We are sourced from New England and we know the people who grow every one of our products. They’re all friends of mine.”

Human and Robot in Philadelphia

When Human Robot opened in 2020, Philadelphia Magazine reported that the brewery would have two styles: Human and Robot. “Human refers to the classic, European-style beers,” explains Jake Atkinson, co-owner of Human Robot, “while the Robot side is a reference to more modern, out-there techniques that yield hazy IPAs and ‘crazy huge stouts.”

Human Robot Brewing owners Atkinson, Chris Roller, and Rachael Morris opened the original operation in the Kensington area of Philadelphia in 2020 with a second location in Jenkintown, Pa. opening in 2022. In both operations, Human Robot has joined forces with a food purveyor—Poe’s Sandwich Joint in their original Kensington location and Herman’s at the Haus in their Jenkintown location.

It was their twin focus on both classic and contemporary styles that has turned heads toward Human Robot. In March 2023, Human Robot’s tap list was comprised of equal parts ale and lager with offerings like Single Axis: Citra and Dreams of Orgonon Hazy IPA alongside a Franconian zwickelbier, Czech-style pale lager, German Pils, and more.

Who’s Next? There are many young and talented craft brewers making great beer right now. What new brewer or brewery has turned your head in 2023? Who should be added to this list? It’s likely you’ll find a young beermaker in your area who will intrigue and inspire you.

The post Five Young Breweries You’ll Be Hearing About Soon appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

As the dominant beer style, IPA continues to monopolize draught boards and beer coolers alike, while spawning new substyles. Meanwhile, lager styles find their way into the hearts and minds of the faithful one sip at a time through their diversity, drinkability, and adaptability.

“Lager” refers to any beer fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast, whereas IPA has a more stringent set of identifying characteristics. And while IPA shows no signs of slowing, in select spots around the U.S, a small patch of breweries has decided to place less emphasis on IPAs and their top-fermented brethren in favor of preaching the gospel of lager.

Lagering on the West Coast

Heater Allen Brewing Company was started by Rick Allen in McMinnville, Ore. in 2007 with the idea of brewing only lagers. According to his daughter Lisa Allen, who joined the brewery in 2009 as head brewer, Allen’s initial focus came about because “he wanted to see if there was actually a market for it.” Once he discovered thirsty beer drinkers eager to try his creations, he expanded from a 6-barrel brewing system to a 15-barrel system on the growth spurred by his flagship Bohemian-style Pilsner.

Heater Allen’s core beer is that same Pilsner, called Pils, that Allen initially brewed in 2007, with a few additions. “We still do our Bohemian Pilsner but for the most part our other beers are German-style lagers,” says Lisa Allen. “We have a core Munich dunkel and a schwarzbier, which is a cross between a German- and a Czech-style.” Heater Allen also has a seasonal program that follows the type of beer releases typical for Germany. “We recently released Bobtoberfest, which is our traditional Märzen-style Oktoberfest beer. We also brew a Baltic porter, a smoked bock, and a helles lager.”

One of the greatest challenges in staying lager-focused, says Lisa Allen, is keeping a tight brew schedule—and that means sometimes having to say no. “Our beer takes eight weeks from the day we brew it to the day we release it,” she said. “That’s our biggest challenge, especially during high times. I don’t have an assistant brewer right now, so it’s me doing most of the work.” Because of the nature of lagers and their commitment to giving their beer the time it needs to condition, Allen says that sometimes means not getting the beer to everyone who wants it. “I just haven’t been able to brew quite as fast as I would otherwise. You don’t want to say no to people, but one of those things with the business is that sometimes you have to say no as a smaller brewery.”

Along those same lines, staying lager-focused means making sure every beer is of the highest quality. Allen recounts, “I’ve had people complain on review sites that we only have six beers on tap [in the brewery taproom], and I’m just like ‘We’re a small brewery, sorry.’ I think most people who understand what we do and understand that stuff takes time don’t mind it. I feel like what we do, we do really well. It’s one of those things where I’m not going to half-ass anything, so I may only have six lagers on tap, but they’re all going to be high quality beers.”

An Abby Dedicated to Lager

For the Massachusetts-based Jack’s Abby Brewing Company, the focus on lagers came from founding brewer Jack Hendler’s passion. According to CEO Sam Hendler, the brewery’s lager focus started overseas. “My brother Jack had been to brewing school in Chicago and then in Munich, and he really fell in love with lager production. He had done some extensive travel to the breweries in Europe and felt that lager was underdeveloped and underexplored in the craft brewing space.”

When the brewery opened in 2011, the Hendlers were cautiously optimistic. “Looking back to 2011 when we opened, the feeling was that there were way too many breweries for us to possibly survive, which is obviously pretty comical now,” said Hendler. “The feeling was that we needed something bold to differentiate ourselves.”

Back in 2011, there was also a bit of stigma about lager in the craft beer space, recalls Hendler. “I think a lot of brewers wanted to drink lager; you just weren’t allowed to say it. And you certainly weren’t allowed to let your customers know that you wanted to drink lager because most craft brewers couldn’t make lager and wouldn’t make lager and it wouldn’t make financial sense for them to make lager.”

Lager was still considered “fizzy yellow beer” by many craft brewers and flavorful craft lagers were explored by few, similar to how canned beer was considered something only for large brewers.

“I think from a brand point of view, a lot of brewers tried to make it a story of ‘us versus them’ and ‘big versus small’—Big Beer makes lager and small craft brewers make ale,” muses Hendler. “They tried to make things super simple and easy to communicate to customer between craft and macro beer, and lager kind of got thrown into the gutter from a marketing perspective because of that.”

But the thought of lagers being relegated only to Big Beer is not accurate, Hendler said. “I can tell you our brewers always drank lager and the deep, dark secret of a lot of brewers is that there’s a lot of love for bright, golden lagers.”

That doesn’t always make for an easy sale, though. Hendler says that one of Jack’s Abby’s biggest challenges centers around the consumer’s love for IPA. “Consumer trends like the concentration of craft beer on IPA as a style is really challenging to cut through,” he laments. “If a bar puts our House Lager on tap, it’s probably not going to pull as fast as the IPA they put on next to it.”

But he also believes that the drinker benefits from diversified tap lists. “I think it’s a bad thing for craft beer if the draught lines of that bar end up with seven IPAs and a macro lager, so I think it’s really important for the industry that we do carve out more space for lager and get on board with it.”

Despite the challenges with India pale ale’s hold on the craft beer segment, the IPA drinker is still one of Jack’s Abby’s best customers.

“We see a lot of the craft beer consumer who buys a new IPA every week, but they also grab a 15-pack of House Lager once a month,” said Hendler. “That’s the fridge beer that they crush with barbecue or whatever. Those are our people.”

The Haus That Lager Built by the Bay

While brewing lager is personal for every brewery that undertakes the style, for Tampa’s BarrieHaus Beer Co., the style is in head brewer Jim Barrie’s blood. Barrie’s great-great-great grandfather, Phillip Kling, came to the United States from Germany in the 19th century and started the Ph. Kling Brewing Company in Michigan.

Kling’s daughter carried on the brewing tradition. She married Louis Schimmel, and  the couple founded a brewery in Detroit, Mich. called Tivoli Brewing. The brewery’s Altes Lager became one of the most popular beers in the state. Tivoli survived Prohibition by making near-beer, allegedly running beer to speakeasies, and shipping to Canada.

Barrie and his wife, Brittney, drew on this family history when they established BarrieHaus Brewing with the tagline “Established in 1863, reinvented in 2019.”

The duo decided to follow in the family’s footsteps and establish a brewery in Tampa— the beating heart of craft beer in the Sunshine State. While there were well over 90 breweries in the counties that call Tampa Bay home, Jim and Brittney saw plenty of opportunity for the kind of lagers they wanted to make.

Tampa Bay may be saturated in terms of breweries, but “not for someone who’s making 99 percent lagers,” believes Jim Barrie. “I feel like it’s not even close to what it will be in five years. If you look at Denver, there are three lager breweries in the city among 300 breweries.”

When BarrieHaus opened in 2019, it was Jim and Brittney’s love of lagers that was displayed on the draught board, inspired not only by Jim’s family, but the couple’s  own experience of lager culture.

“We had a really transformative trip when we went to Germany on our honeymoon,” recalls Jim Barrie. “To drink fresh German lager was a game-changer for both of us. When we came back, [lager is] all I’m doing pretty much.”

Brittney Barrie says the camaraderie among all the brewers making world-class beer helped them through their first two years in business.

“Those relationships have meant the world to us; it allows us to be who we are in the heart of Tampa,” she said. “It really has been an incredible beer community in Tampa and in St. Pete as well. Seven breweries within a mile radius. They’re all right here and they’re all making really good beer. They all have their thing and they’re all happy that our thing is lagers.”

Innovation in Lager Styles

It can be hard to convince craft beer drinkers—who are used to seeking out the newest innovations from craft brewers—to try lagers, since many of the styles are brewed with traditional methods and ingredients.

But Lisa Allen says that innovation can be found in switching up beer ingredients and challenging mindsets instead of looking for adjuncts to add.

“A lot of [innovation] has been on the hop side, using hops that are not traditional for lagers and different hopping techniques, like dry-hopping,” she said. “We did an Italian Pilsner that we actually dip-hopped—you put the hops in the fermenter and you essentially knock out into the fermenter on the hops. It was a collab with Wayfinder and Modern Times and one of them suggested it.”

While dip-hopping proved an interesting experiment, Allen says that lager, as a style, can do much more than it gets credit for. “Lager yeast is very versatile, and you can make pretty much any style with it. With lagers, it’s like thinking within the box, rather than thinking outside the box. What can I do within this realm of malt, hops, yeast, methods, and process?”

At BarrieHaus, innovation comes to the taps with twists on the lager tradition. Beers like Endless Zest—brewed with local Florida oranges—shows off some of the innovation in the lager space, using complementary ingredients in the beer. “I personally prefer the little twists, like the citrus zest in our lager,” says Brittney Barrie. “There’s fresh orange zest but it still tastes like an American lager.”

For a traditional lager brewery, BarrieHaus has shown it is open to experimentation within the lager space when it comes to adjuncts—usually, Brittney Barrie says, while working with other breweries. “We’ve done collabs before where their thing is pastry or lactose. We’re not afraid to do some fun stuff like that at their location.” For example, the brewery has collaborated with Georgia’s Pontoon Brewing. “They’re making beer that tastes like margaritas, and creamsicles, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” she said.

For Jack’s Abby, innovation comes in many forms. “We’ve played with lager in a ton of different ways,” said Hendler. “We’ve done hazy hoppy lager and we will continue to do so. We love kellerbier and something that’s a lot of fun for us is experimenting with extremely traditional techniques that aren’t commonly used in the U.S.”

Sometimes, too, innovation in the lager space comes from learning more about the brewing origins and traditions of lager.

“Jack is going to Germany every year to source ingredients,” said Hendler. “It’s not just about the next new thing and innovation. When we build a House Lager consumer, that is a more loyal consumer than the brewery who got someone to buy one four-pack of a new IPA.”

The post Spreading the Gospel of Lager appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

10. Topcutter IPA, Bale Breaker Brewing (Yakima, Wash.)

Washington is the top hop-producing state in the U.S. and no time of year quite matches the excitement and anticipation of the fall hop harvest. For IPA lovers, fresh-hop and wet-hop versions are some of the most intense in the beer world. Short of drinking straight from the fermenter, there is no way to get a fresher hop experience than sipping the award-winning Topcutter IPA in the heart of hop country.

9. Allagash White, Allagash Brewing Company (Portland, Maine)

The beer that helped establish the Belgian white ale style in the United States comes from one of the many fine breweries in the Pine Tree State, but whether it’s the nostalgia (it was the only style the brewery made for years after its founding, was recently awarded a GABF silver medal, and pairs wonderfully with any kind of weather) or the tranquil photos of Maine that Allagash shared with followers during the stress of the pandemic, White seems to taste even better off the taps at its birthplace.

8. Kellerweis, Sierra Nevada (Mills River, N.C)

While Sierra Nevada’s calling card is undoubtedly its Pale Ale, the brewery’s open-fermented Kellerweis wheat beer stands as a testament to traditional brewing methods. The brewery has showcased the mammoth head the beer develops during fermentation and the spectacle was even part of the advertising campaign when Kellerweis made its debut. While the beer is no longer part of Sierra Nevada’s year-round lineup, savvy enthusiasts can enjoy it in the brewery’s Mills River restaurant overlooking the French Broad River at the facility many fittingly refer to as Malt Disney World.

7. Noble King, Jester King Brewery (Austin, Texas)

Jester King is nestled in the Hill Country outside of Austin, and during COVID, this 165-acre brewery, farm, and event hall opened up walking trails on its property that were previously inaccessible. Strolling the trails or simply enjoying the quietude of this part of the Lone Star State with a spontaneously fermented beer in hand is an experience not to be missed. To enjoy this rustic saison in the heart of Texas Hill Country is to understand the spirit that helped craft it.

6. Stone Enjoy By IPA, Stone Brewing (Escondido, Calif.)

While many brewers set up their tasting rooms in industrial plazas and off-the-beaten-path warehouses out of necessity, Stone Brewing went the extra mile to establish an upscale brewery-restaurant in a tranquil, aesthetically pleasing setting. To drink the groundbreaking Enjoy By IPA at the place where it was brewed is to experience the passion and ambition that led Stone to challenge its distributors and retailers to get the beer into consumers’ hands as quickly as possible. It doesn’t get much fresher than this.

5. Smoked Porter, Alaskan Brewing Co. (Juneau, Alaska)

The Last Frontier’s first brewery has soldiered on and flourished with its signature smoked porter long after many brewers had abandoned the style. This world-class version of a German rauchbier is made with local alder wood that is smoked under carefully controlled conditions at the brewery, then released in limited amounts on November 1 each year. To enjoy this beer at the source is to appreciate the devotion and appeal of warming up with a pleasantly smoky beer on a cold Alaska evening.

4. Brewer’s Reserve Bourbon Barrel Barleywine, Central Waters Brewing (Amherst, Wis.)

Central Waters Brewing Company is one of the best kept secrets in Wisconsin (and maybe the entire U.S.) thanks in part to its coveted Brewer’s Reserve Series. While the series has innovated over the years, the over-the-top caramel, vanilla, and bourbon notes permeate this wintertime sipper that beer lovers keep coming back to. Drinking the beer at the source means enjoying a unique version of BBBW when it is fresh, somewhat boozy, and full of vibrant flavor that will mellow out over time in the bottle.

3. Slow Pour Pils, Bierstadt Lagerhaus (Denver, Colo.)

For those who seek a great beer with no “added things,” Bierstadt Lagerhaus in downtown Denver is a destination. Chosen by their peers as Denver Metro Brewery of the Year in 2021, and sought out by many of the brewers who come for the Great American Beer Festival and other beer-centric events, Bierstadt’s beautiful, copper-clad Old World-inspired brewery shines through in every pint. Drinking Slow Pour Pils in the Bierhalle provides a pleasing glimpse into Pilsner history as a social beverage and one that will reveal its flavorful secrets if a drinker has the time and patience.

2. DFPF, J. Wakefield Brewing Company (Miami, Fla.)

A Miami original founded by homebrewer Johnathan Wakefield in the Wynwood Arts District, this brewery is on the must-stop list, and if visitors arrive on a fortuitous release day, J. Wakefield’s Dragonfruit Passionfruit Florida Weisse might just be the prize. DFPF’s deep pink color and massive fruit addition highlight one of the beers that earned J. Wakefield its stellar reputation. And if this beer’s not on the menu, drinkers can be consoled by 16 other offerings on tap served in the Star Wars-muraled tasting room, an area as unique as Miami itself.

1. Pliny the Younger, Russian River Brewing (Windsor and Santa Rosa, Calif.).

A pilgrimage to Sonoma County is one of the only ways to sample this mammoth triple IPA. Pliny the Younger is released from Russian River’s facilities in very limited amounts each year and the lion’s share is consumed onsite once the beer is tapped (March 25–April 7 in 2022). Once you get a taste of flagship Pliny the Elder’s alter ego, you’ll quickly understand why it’s one of the most anticipated and highly regarded beers in the world, and why it’s on almost every beer lover’s bucket list.

Whatever 2022 holds, hopefully this year is remembered as one when life returned to some semblance of normalcy and when sharing beers in person became possible again.

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Pliny the Younger Release, March 25–April 7 (Santa Rosa & Windsor, Calif.)

Beer enthusiasts have made a tradition of descending on Russian River Brewing Company each year for the release of Pliny the Younger ever since head brewer and co-owner Vinnie Cilurzo first tapped it. The beer, a triple IPA weighing in at 10.25% ABV, is celebrated throughout the beer world for its huge malt and hop presence. Tasting is believing when it comes to Pliny the Younger, and many repeat the pilgrimage to Sonoma County year after year.

SAVOR, June 24 (Washington, D.C.)

The Brewers Association’s upscale event features a wide assortment of craft beers paired with small plates to dazzle the palate. SAVOR showcases 100 craft breweries from around the United States, with Brewers Association Chef Adam Dulye assembling a culinary team to mastermind pairings for enthusiasts to muse over for the evening. Unlike festivals where the star of the show is beer, SAVOR showcases the magic and versatility of beer when thoughtfully paired with food.

Barrel & Flow Festival, August 13 (Pittsburgh, Pa.)

The Barrel & Flow Festival bills itself as “Black Arts on Tap” and aims to “continue to utilize the brewing industry to connect opportunity, accessibility, and artistry in ways that empower the Black community.” Barrel & Flow started off as a festival celebrating Black-owned breweries and has morphed into an event that melds music, visual art, and culinary arts. The result is a festival that is a “story of celebration, collaboration, and community.”

Great Taste of the Midwest, August 13 (Madison, Wis.)

Organized by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild, Great Taste of the Midwest assembles some of the best breweries in the American Midwest to pour their beer in one spot. 2020’s event saw 190 breweries and brewpubs pour more than 1,400 beers for attendees. Vintage beers, special releases, and stalwart core lineups will be on tap from 2nd Shift Brewing to Working Draft Brewing and 188 breweries in between.

Great American Beer Festival, October 6–8 (Denver, Colo.)

2022 marks the 40th anniversary of this landmark beer festival, so it’s a great opportunity to attend for the first (or next) time! With brewers flying in from around the country to share their latest creations with eager beer enthusiasts, the entire city of Denver and surrounding areas join in the fun to entertain guests attending the granddaddy of American craft beer festivals. Beer events, tappings, meet the brewer appearances, tap spotlights, bottle drops, and surprise events all take place during a few bustling days when the festival is in town.

Jester King’s SPON Day, TBA (Austin, Texas)

SPON Day is when Austin’s Jester King Brewery releases its three-year blend of spontaneously fermented beer and celebrates other favorite spontaneously fermented beers and wines. SPON Day 2021 featured a Barrel Room tour, special events with featured spontaneous beers, and panel talks about these uncommon styles of beer all set against the backdrop of Jester King’s Texas Hill Country brewery. SPON Day is accessible for enthusiasts who want to grab bottles to go as well as those who want to stay a while and hear talks, have a meal, or simply enjoy SPON in its natural setting.

Yazoo Brewing’s Funk Fest, TBA (Nashville, Tenn.)

Funk Fest founder Brandon Jones prides himself on an unconventional and all-inclusive beer festival, and Funk Fest is one of a kind. After attending many “lemonade-stand”-type festivals, Jones wanted to create an event that utilizes an entire festival ground and does not have a set schedule and pouring list. What this leads to is an intimate event with food and beer pairings, inspired brewers of sour, wild, and spontaneously fermented beers, and lots of surprises for attendees. Imagine Jones sitting on the back of a truck pouring beer from Brasserie Cantillon, Jester King founder Jeffrey Stuffings sharing a sought-after sour beer in Yazoo’s warehouse, or Side Project unveiling its limited sour beers when the spirit moves. Jones feels that this format rewards curiosity and doesn’t limit festivalgoers to doing laps or standing in long lines to find one particular beer.

Dark Lord Day, TBA (Munster, Ind.)

One of the first limited-release beer festivals in the United States, Dark Lord Day celebrates Three Floyds Brewing’s massive imperial stout that previously was only available one day each year. In order to try it, beer enthusiasts had to go to the event or know someone who went. As the event grew, so too did the beers and expectations. Three Floyds began releasing barrel-aged variants of Dark Lord and then versions of the beer with adjuncts like vanilla beans, cinnamon, espresso, and cacao nibs. While COVID forced Dark Lord Day into an online ordering and curbside pickup format, beer enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the return of the festive event, or at least picking up an allotment of the coveted Dark Lord.

Festival of Wood- & Barrel-aged Beer, TBA (Chicago, Ill.)

Hosted by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, FOBAB is the festival for lovers of spirit barrel-aged beers. FOBAB’s beer list combines strong ales aged in spirit barrels with wild beers, Brettanomyces beers, and wild/mixed fermentation beers. Set against the backdrop of the Windy City in November, FOBAB sees some of the country’s most avant-garde brewers tapping some of their most experimental beers. Since 2003, FOBAB has delighted beer lovers with an evening of all wood- and barrel-aged offerings, growing in 2021 when more than 160 breweries from across the United States poured their liquid art for attendees.

Brasserie Cantillon’s Zwanze Day, TBA (locations throughout the U.S.)

One of Belgium’s finest producers of fruit lambic, Brasserie Cantillon used to release bottles of a limited beer called Zwanze each year on a specific day. When Cantillon owner Jean Van Roy discovered bottles of Zwanze being sold for outlandish prices on the secondary market, he transitioned Zwanze Day to a worldwide event and limited the beer to kegs tapped on one day around the world. Since lambic is a coveted style of sour beer, most host breweries and beer bars take this day as one to celebrate all manner of sours. The list of host breweries changes each year, so every Zwanze Day is unique.

Beer Weeks (around the U.S.)

There are so many beer weeks taking place across the country it would be impossible to name them all, but these events are the best way to get to know local and regional breweries and sample the best of their beers. From larger events like Philly Beer Week, San Francisco Beer Week, and Tampa Bay Beer Week, beer weeks have popped up all over the country with one aim: to promote the local beer community. Check to see if your local brewery is promoting American Craft Beer Week (May 16–22), an annual springtime salute to local beer and breweries.

The post Traveling the Beer World in 2022 appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Fast forward to today. Craft brewers are increasingly using their platforms—including beer labels, draught chalkboards, or stories told by staff—to remind their customers of beer’s ties to the past. Many modern craft brewers have chosen to restore and preserve the stories—and beers—of the brewers who have come before them.

Finding a Beer to Celebrate Indiana

For Upland Brewing, the brewery’s 15th anniversary was a reason to delve into Indiana’s brewing history. Upland Brewing director Patrick Lynch says that the brewery wanted to do something special for its home state, and their research pointed them toward a historical beer called Champagne Velvet from the former Terre Haute Brewing Company (THBC).

“Even if you don’t know anything about the Champagne Velvet story, when you see the name, it still catches your eye, catches your ear.” Lynch and the team at Upland thought reviving Champagne Velvet for their anniversary would celebrate their state and bring the community together.

In researching Champagne Velvet—a pre-Prohibition Pilsner whose tagline was “the beer with the million dollar flavor”—Lynch discovered that the beer was “the most successful brand to come out of Indiana.” It turns out that Terre Haute Brewing had a storied history in the Hoosier State, and there was already a movement to bring the beer back to life.

Champagne Velvet in Its Prime

Lynch and the Upland team investigated Champagne Velvet’s past and discovered that the beer had enjoyed two heydays in Indiana and beyond. The story of Champagne Velvet is tied to the Terre Haute Brewing Company, originally founded in 1837. By 1880, Terre Haute Brewing was brewing 30,000 barrels of beer—double what the team is producing today at Upland.

By 1902, when the brewery released Champagne Velvet for the first time, THBC was producing more than 100,000 barrels, making it one of the leading U.S. breweries before Prohibition. Following Prohibition, the brewery reopened with new owners, this time in the boom days of World War II. THBC saw a revival after Prohibition and quickly grew to more than 500,000 barrels per year. In 1943, THBC was the 25th largest brewery in the U.S. Champagne Velvet had quite a following, it seems.

As Lynch and the team at Upland explored how to revive the brand, they discovered that someone already owned the rights to Champagne Velvet. Terre Haute historian and beer enthusiast Mike Rowe wanted to open a bar that paid homage to the THBC brewing history. Rowe had purchased the rights from Pabst Brewing, which had owned THBC beers previously. However, Upland and Rowe were able to come to an agreement. “[Rowe] wanted a caretaker for Champagne Velvet who would have the passion to continue the legacy and stay true,” said Lynch. “He was looking for someone to take Champagne Velvet to the next level. We were able to form a nice partnership with him: we’re able to brew the beer, and he’s happy to see the beer still being brewed.”

Bringing Champagne Velvet Alive for Modern Drinkers

With Rowe’s help, Lynch was also able to obtain the vintage recipe to brew Champagne Velvet. “[Rowe] was flipping through a textbook that Terre Haute brewer Walter Braun owned in the 1900s, and a little slip of paper fell out with handwritten notes for what was clearly a beer recipe,” Lynch recounted. “That’s what we have turned into the Champagne Velvet recipe as best we can.” The note mentioned “the water-to-grist ratio and the corn-to-barley ratio, the starting gravity, and some information about what this beer would be. It didn’t mention hops or yeast, so that’s where the combination of staying true to that handwritten note and historical research played into each other.” With the recipe as a guide, Lynch and the Upland team brewed the Pilsner and released it for their anniversary, adding pre-Prohibition malt from a local malthouse north of Indianapolis

Although Upland is based out of Bloomington—about 60 miles from Terre Haute—Lynch said the local community has embraced the beer, and Champagne Velvet has gone on to limited national distribution.

“Champagne Velvet is what national markets are clamoring for,” said Lynch. “It’s our number two brand right now, behind our Dragonfly IPA. It’s great seeing the response from our customers—the name grabs your attention, the story grabs your attention, and then the beer holds your attention once you try it.”

Florida’s Coppertail Brewing Turns a Midnight Purchase into a Florida Special

Coppertail Brewing owner Kent Bailey has a soft spot in his heart for Florida’s historical breweries, often scouring the internet to learn more about his state’s brewing past.

As his Tampa-based brewery was seeking to develop a new brand of light lager perfect for enjoying the Florida lifestyle—whether at the state’s beaches, rivers, the Daytona Speedway, or at Raymond James Stadium—branding from a beer that had come and gone decades prior resonated with Bailey. That’s what led him to purchase the rights to Florida Special, a brand from the former Southern Brewing Company. The historical brewery was born in Tampa after Prohibition and operated until the industrial beer consolidation of the 1960s.

Acquiring the brand rights to Florida Special was the beginning of a project, according to Coppertail’s chief operating officer, Ken Foutch. Bailey ended up purchasing the rights to Florida Special, including the entire branding from post-Prohibition start to 1960s finish.

The team combed through the different logos from Southern Brewing Company, deciding on which iteration of Florida Special to choose from, said Foutch. Southern Brewing had been “in business for 50 years and it’s fun to look at their brand specifically in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s—you can see how it evolved,” said Foutch. “At one point, it kind of had a World War II vibe from that era. At another point, the brand looked like Lone Star looks today, so we took some pieces from their world and then looked at nostalgic brands, some that hardly exist anymore.”

Since the purchase of Florida Special’s rights did not include a recipe, Foutch and his team got to work on shaping their Florida lager. Foutch remembers, “The beer [that would become Florida Special] started out as a beer called Dock Beer—brewed just for employees and when they’re getting off work.” Coppertail’s team loves its IPAs and their special American Trippel, but the appeal of Dock Beer was universal. “We all love crispy, light lagers for having one or two after work.”

With the rights to Florida Special and the recipe for Dock Beer, Coppertail would craft a brand of light lager that would anchor the brewery’s core beers.

“It all evolved from Dock Beer,” says Foutch. “And even since the inception of Florida Special, it’s still changing. We’re still seeking the perfect recipe for this beer.”

The brewing team recently changed the yeast strain to reduce sulfur, and as a result, “It’s a little crisper and cleaner. We’re sticking with noble hops and still trying to stay traditional.” Florida special checks in at 3.8 percent alcohol by volume.

“It’s one of those crispy boys, a beer-flavored beer—that’s my favorite way to put it,” said Foutch. “It’s great to drink whether you’re finishing cutting the grass, out on the golf course, or anywhere in the Sunshine State.”

Gerst Amber Brings Back Memories of Tennessee’s Largest Brewery

For Yazoo Brewing, restoring a piece of Tennessee’s past is a source of pride for owner Linus Hall: the production of storied brand Gerst Amber has returned to Nashville.

The Gerst Brewery was one of the largest in the South at the beginning of the 1900s. “It’s hard to find actual production volumes, but I believe at its heyday, it was producing around 250,000 barrels a year,” said Hall. “The brewery in Nashville occupied four city blocks.”

Ultimately, the Gerst Brewery closed in 1954, and the Gerst family turned to running a restaurant to continue sharing its German heritage with Nashville. When they closed the Gerst Haus in the 1980s, the family sold the rights to local restaurateurs Jim and Jerry Chandler. The Chandlers contracted with brewers in Pennsylvania and Indiana to make Gersts’ beer, but one brewery closed and the other was inconsistent with the beer.

Hall remembers that time. “We were moving Yazoo’s brewery from our original location at Marathon Motorworks to a much bigger building in the Gulch area of Nashville,” he recalls. “With more space and a new, bigger brewing system, I approached them with the idea of bringing Gerst beer back to Nashville.”

Once he worked out an arrangement with the Chandlers, Hall and the Yazoo team began bringing the Gerst recipe into the 21st century. Hall recalls, “We did not have any recipes, and in any case, modern malts and hops are much different than what brewers back then were using. Even if we had an original recipe, I am not sure we would have produced the same beer.”

Modernizing  the recipe took “many 10-gallon test batches on my old homebrew system,” and attention to detail in each one. After producing each batch, the team tasted, critiqued, and adjusted.

“In the end, we made a light-bodied amber ale, with German Munich malts and a touch of flaked corn, as many U.S. brewers were using at the turn of the century.” All of this was accomplished with no written recipe—just recollections of how the beer looked and tasted.

Gerst Amber Springs to Life Again

In the end, when Hall and the Yazoo team had nailed down the final recipe, Gerst Amber returned to the Gerst Haus with fanfare and celebration. “‘I’m very proud of bringing it back to being brewed in Nashville again,” Hall said. “When we tapped the first ceremonial keg, we invited the mayor and all the local media. I had a German beer stein with Mayor Karl Dean’s name engraved on it, and when I offered the first beer to him, he made a short speech to commemorate the occasion, making reference to tying the future of Nashville brewing to its famous past.”

That final recipe is available year-round through Yazoo. “Nashville beer drinkers have really taken to Gerst Amber,” Hall said. “It’s now one of our consistent bestsellers.”

Brewing Team Brings Happy Hops and Velvet Glow Back to Russian River

When a young Vinnie Cilurzo moved to Santa Rosa, Calif. in the 1990s, he heard stories about an area beermaker called Grace Brothers Brewery. At one point, the brewery had a presence in both southern and northern California, brewing in Los Angeles as well as Santa Rosa, Cilurzo recalls.

Cilurzo had begun working for Russian River Brewing until the brewery’s owner, Korbel, decided to exit the beer business. Vinnie and his wife, Natalie, formed a team that purchased the rights to Russian River Brewing, opening a small brewpub in Santa Rosa.

Even when he had the new brewery up and running, “Grace Brothers Brewery kind of hung there in the back of my mind,” said Cilurzo.

He researched more about the brewery and discovered a brand called Happy Hops. “It has that great artwork—that’s one of the coolest things about these retro brands.” After additional research into Sonoma County’s past—the area used to be one of the hop-growing capitals of America before the Pacific Northwest emerged as the epicenter—and coming across the rosy-cheeked hop adorning the Happy Hops label, Cilurzo knew he wanted to incorporate that beer into the Russian River family.

As with many other historical brands, Happy Hops (and eventually Velvet Glow Pilsner, another Grace Brothers brand) had no official recipes that came with the branding. This was no surprise to Cilurzo.

“You have to think back to that era which is both pre- and post-Prohibition,” said Cilurzo. “These beers were around post-Prohibition, but there wasn’t anything else but industrial lager.”

He looked further into the brewery’s history and found that, “Grace Brothers had 50 or 60 labels, but there wasn’t much to really build with recipes.” Cilurzo knew the brand would tell a story, but the liquid had to speak for itself.

Bringing Happy Hops Back to Life

Cilurzo and his team rolled up their sleeves and got to work. “We brewed a beer called Happy Hops, probably in 2009 or 2010, with 100 percent experimental hop HBC 369, which eventually became Mosaic. Happy Hops was an all-Mosaic pale ale to start.”

After trademarking the assets and artwork from the historical beer, Cilurzo and the Russian River team eventually decided to make changes from that first batch in 2009. Around 2015, Happy Hops morphed from a pale ale to an IPA. After all, Cilurzo says, “a beer with a name like Happy Hops should have an even more expressive hop note to it. So I started bringing in other hops into the mix. Instead of being just Mosaic, it’s got Strata, which at the time was an experimental, some Simcoe, Centennial, Brewer’s Gold, Amarillo, and a handful of others. That’s where it is and now Happy Hops is a year-round beer.”

Reminding the Next Generation of Beer Drinkers

Happy Hops IPA and Velvet Glow Pilsner both have a solid place in the Russian River Brewing lineup. Cilurzo said he loves “the history and referencing an old brand and keeping a bit of Sonoma County’s history alive. We have two brewpubs and two gift shops and it’s a nice way to tell some cool historical stories. I feel like it’s our duty as brewers to keep the history going—to remind the next generation of the beer drinkers and brewers who came before us.”

The post Telling Today’s Craft Beer Drinkers the Story of Yesterday’s Breweries appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Beyond Liquid Sunshine – Maui Brewing Company & Origin Coffee Co.

The magic between Maui Brewing Company and Origin Coffee Company began in 2012 with a post Craft Brewers Conference meeting between Maui Brewing founder Garrett Marrero and roastmaster Heather Brisson-Lutz. Heather invited Garrett to visit her roastery to “experience specialty coffee on a more raw level.” After Garrett left, the two remained friends and returned to California and Hawaii and continued to talk about coffee.

“I’ve always loved good coffee,” says Garrett. “I had never looked at coffee in quite that detail. I didn’t have the knowledge of coffee that I have now. I love good beer, I love good whiskey, I love good coffee, I just didn’t know that much about coffee.” Something about the way the cupping elevated the taste of the coffee remained with Garrett. “That cupping blew my mind to how much coffee could change based on the process, something like the temperature that you bloom the coffee could have such an effect. Then knowing there wasn’t a good cold brew in Hawaii that was made at any scale, we saw that as an opportunity to create Origin for distribution throughout Hawaii.”

Fast forward to 2016 when Garrett offered Heather’s wife Kim a job as head brewer at Maui Brewing. Garrett and Heather then began to talk about the leaps and bounds that canned cold brew coffee had made in the coffee market and took this opportunity to create a business that realized the canned cold brew Heather and Garrett had talked about.

(Related: The Mad Scientist Behind Dozens of Medal-Winning Coffee Beers)

From there Heather remembers, “Origin Coffee Roasters opened up later in 2018… and found a home inside the new expansion of Maui Brew co. We set up our roasting facility and purchased a 25bbl cold brew brewhouse.” Origin Coffee Roasters then pushed forward and through partnership with Maui Brewing began canning Origin cold brew coffee.

“When you look at all of the things we do together and Maui Brewing is essentially a contract packager for Origin where we are canning the cold brew coffee on our filling line in order to supply that product to Origin,” says Garrett.

Origin coffee’s blend became Liquid Sunshine a mix of coffees designed to get the best flavor into the cold brew, and the coffee is more than just beans to Origin. “Heather has some great connections to many of these farms in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and places that are growing amazing coffee all over the world,” says Garrett. “Getting quality coffee direct from the grower, then we have that relationship that helps to develop. Then we can talk about a farm as opposed to a broker.”

Maui and Origin’s collaboration on beer dates back four or five years. In that time, the meeting of the minds between Heather, Kim, and Garrett has produced such beers as Grandma’s Coffee Cake Imperial Porter and Flat White Imperial Coconut Porter. “We were lucky having Kim as a resource to commission our brewhouse,” says Heather. “She still assists on our brew to this day.”

Beyond coffee collaboration, Heather is also starting to work with Maui Brewing’s distilling company, Kupu Sprits, to develop coffee liqueurs and different types of distilled beverages that utilize coffee, “potentially even a coffee cocktail in a can.”

As the word spreads about Origin, distribution of the beverage has grown from one island to many.  Origin’s distribution started out on Maui only, and now stretches throughout Oahu and neighboring islands.

One thing I often forget outside of Maui Brewing is that everything made in this building is produced with solar energy. Obviously the roaster uses propane, but any electrical use in the roastery is the same electricity the brewery uses and we are one of the most sustainable buildings because we have a 1.2 megawatts of solar and batteries and biodiesel generators. Being made here at Maui Brewing allows that coffee to be made with sustainable energy.

It Started with Stout – Modern Times Coffee

For San Diego’s Modern Times Beer Company, roasting coffee dates back almost to the birth of the brewery, says Coffee Program Manager Tessie Warnecke. “Jacob McKean (our CEO/Founder) decided that one of our initial core offerings would be a coffee oatmeal stout,” remembers Tessie. “This would become Black House Coffee Stout, and the coffee used in the recipe was (and is) all roasted in-house, giving us a lot more control over the profile & consistency of the coffee used in the beer.” The brewery’s growth foreshadowed and echoed the growth of the coffee business – “Modern Times Coffee as a standalone division was not in the original business plan; it grew organically.”

Modern Times Coffee has been led by Tessie Warnecke since September of 2020.  Prior to that, she “has been the Green Coffee Buyer and focused my attention on development of new products, as well as coffee education for staff and customers.”  Tessie has seen Modern Times Coffee grow from humble roots, sourcing the coffee to be roasted 2 lbs at a time in one beer of Modern Times’s core lineup to its current state. Tessie recalls, “We didn’t sell an actual bag of the coffee itself until the year after the official opening of MT—all coffee that was roasted up until that point was for beer or cold brew on draft.”  Modern Times’s current equipment investment in coffee “allowed us to really focus on the business of coffee, including launching our cold brew in cans. 7 years later, we’re roasting over 100,000 lbs of coffee a year (which is a lot for a small operation like us!).”

One of the offspring of Modern Times Coffee’s curiosity has been the proliferation of different blends of spirit barrel-aged coffee, that is coffee beans that have been rested inside spirits barrels to pick up the flavor and aroma of spirits like bourbon and brandy, for starters. But Tessie has discovered that while barrel-aged coffee is popular, one of the biggest challenges is a lack of reference materials. “There are no articles, references, or masters in this realm, which has made it one of the most exciting, educational, experimental, and all around beastly of product lines.” Tessie says that the way forward lies in experimentation and fascination with the potential new flavors that the team can discover. “We do quite a bit of sensory and quality tests, and we are always trying new processes to see how we can get the best results from the barrel aging process. Constantly asking questions on the amount of time in barrels, the type of barrels, how the moisture content and density is affected, what that means to roast profiles, which coffees work the best in which barrels, how temperature impacts the results.”

While both the brewery and the roastery release their own products, so many positives come from the collaboration between Modern Times Coffee and Modern Times Beer. Tessie describes the interplay between the two operations as “wonderful to see professionals from two very different industries able to talk shop and discuss flavors—even though the products are very different. If you “taste” for a living, you have the ability to calibrate your palettes much easier than the average person. This is a tremendous advantage that allows the collaboration process to work, not seamlessly, but with enthusiasm and passion from everyone involved.”

Double Shot Leads to a More Fulfilling Cup – Tree House Brewing and Coffee

At their core, all coffee programs evolved from a shared love of coffee and beer, but at Massachusetts’s Tree House Brewing Company, the thought of adding a coffee roaster was the result of the brewery’s desire to make their coffee beer the best it could be.

Tree House Co-Founder and Head Brewer Nathan Lanier says that roasting coffee was “something I wanted to do since we began our coffee beer program in 2014, but the program took flight when the brewery worked on their “Shot Series” of beers. Each beer is named for a coffee order (Single Shot, Double Shot, Triple Shot, etc.), and Nathan says that his love of Double Shot Coffee Stout and his desire “to have the ultimate control [of the beer] through roasting was something we just needed to do. Internally, we try to outsource as little as possible because we think it contributes to a better end product.”

As Tree House Coffee evolved, so too did the Shot Series and Tree House Brewery’s use of coffee.  Nathan says that Tree House’s “beers have benefitted from the addition of coffee, and we literally have dozens at this point, but our “Shot” series all use custom roasted blends to best meld with the base beer.”

Nathan also says that the synergy between Tree House Coffee and Tree House Brewery goes beyond collaboration at this point. Nathan and Coffee Program Manager Adam Bonaccorsi have wholly integrated the programs at Tree House. “The production staff on the beer side work directly with Adam and his team every day. There is a very tangible desire to relentlessly improve our offerings, and with the capability to sample roast, roast, and dissect our beans in house, this happens constantly,” Nathan stresses.

Ultimately, for Nathan and the staff of Tree House Brewing and Tree House Coffee, the energy that pushes both operations forward comes from the drive toward sustainability and the people involved.

“The leaders in the industry are doing tremendous things working directly with farmers to ensure they can comfortably subsist within an ecosystem that conspires to drive prices down. Coffee folks are amazingly passionate about what they do, why they do it, and what results from their work. It’s infectious and exciting to be a part of.

One of our biggest accomplishments this year was our first Direct Trade relationship. To meet the farmers who grow the beans we roast, and to develop a relationship with them, makes the cup more fulfilling in the end.”

The post The More Fulfilling Cup: Craft Brewers and Craft Roasters Find Common Threads Together appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

COVID-19 Affects Beer Events

In Florida, COVID-19 precautions became necessary during Tampa Bay Beer Week. Cigar City Brewing’s Hunahpu’s Day and Green Bench Brewing’s Foeder For Thought – two events that have grown to attract crowds of hundreds of people from all over the globe – have both been canceled in collaboration with the guidance of local authorities. “We have decided this is the most responsible action to take for our loyal customers, our employees, the craft community and the city of Tampa,” Cigar City Brewing posted when canceling the event.

Green Bench Brewing’s closing statement echoed that of their cross-county brewing brethren. “While we have to cancel for now, we hope to be able to take this time to create something even bigger for the following year. This feels a bit surreal to write, and we’re just so sorry we have to make this call.”

(Related: Brewery Business Coronavirus Resource Center)

Reassuring The Public

Brewers are acting to reassure their communities that they will remain open and are operating to the highest standards of cleanliness. Brewers are, by practice and necessity, people who clean regularly to exacting standards. Austin, Texas brewer Jester King also reassured their community and closed with a note about the mission of craft breweries. “We hope to withstand any decline in business this may bring by conscientiously following these measures and keeping the spirit of Jester King alive in these challenging times… We want Jester King to continue being a place to get away from the stresses we endure each week to gather over world-class food and beer with friends and family.”

Adjusting Services

KettleHouse Brewing in Missoula, Montana hosted their FishOn! Catch and Release Party, but to adjust for folks who were taking precautions against COVID-19, the brewery offered a pre-order and pickup service. The brewery allowed patrons to pre-order their beer, and “A KettleHouse manager will deliver the beer right to your car upon arrival with a valid 21+ ID.”

KettleHouse has since announced the close their taproom until further notice.

Cincinnati, Ohio’s Fibonacci Brewing is offering patrons drive-through and delivery service. The brewery said in a press release, “When Fibonacci opened in 2015, there was already an existing drive-thru from the previous floral shop. With the impending outcomes of coronavirus, they have decided to officially open the drive-thru window for pick-up.”

(More: Beer Styles Built for Surefire Cellaring)

According to Fibonacci co-owner and President Betty Bollas, “We understand the severity of the issue and that not everyone can be in a public setting right now due to age or medical condition. Some of our favorite customers fall into this category and we want to offer another way to serve them and include them. We have been using specific precautions in our taproom and this is just another way for us to serve our customers.”

Chicago’s Hopewell Brewing listed on their website that they will operate “to-go sales only until at least March 30th” in adherence to an order given by Illinois’ governor on Sunday, March 15 aimed at limiting the spread of the disease.

Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery announced their Beer Hall, Restaurant, Tours and special events will cease operations until further notice. “It’s crucial that our city gets out in front of this health crisis,’ said Lakefront Brewery President and Founder, Russ Klisch. “We only have one chance to end the transmission of this virus.’” Lakefront, who distributes beer in 30 states and six countries, assured the public that operations will continue and “there will not be a shortage of beer to buy wherever Lakefront is available.”

Doing Right by Employees

Meanwhile, Massachusetts-based breweries Trillium Brewing and Tree House Brewing have both posted that they have asked workers who can stay home to do so, but they will be paying their workers while operations are limited. “We know many people are reading this and facing the same tough decision – one we never expected to face – and our hearts are with you,” Tree House co-founder and head brewer Nathan Lanier wrote on Twitter. “We find solace in knowing wholeheartedly that we are doing the right thing and at the right moment.”

Supporting The Beer Community During COVID-19

As breweries and many other small businesses are facing difficult times, the action of supporting your local brewery may change, but the spirit remains the same.

(Community: The Coming Economic Challenges Facing Craft Brewers)

Most importantly, if you’re sick, stay home. This cannot be understated. Follow the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities by washing hands, not touching faces, and sneezing into a tissue or elbow.

Buy Beer

It seems like a simple gesture, but that is how breweries make money. If possible, buy beer for a friend or family member, too. No one is sure how COVID-19 is going to play out, but supporting a brewery goes further than simply drinking from their taps. Many breweries already sell beer to go, where possible. If you can buy that beer at a fine beer store or bar/restaurant that serves growlers then that supports two businesses. These retailers are banking on enthusiasts’ demand for fine beers and they could be hurting during these times as well.

Buy Gift Cards

This is like investing in a good time with friends and family in the future while helping your favorite beer purveyor in the present.

Buy Brewery Gear

Many breweries have been affected by COVID-19 precautions and more people staying home. Supporting a brewery like this reminds the community about them and helps remind the community about the brewery and their place in the community.

Beyond buying beer, as Jester King alluded to, it is about keeping the spirit alive during this time of heightened awareness. Whether you do this at home or in a brewery is up to you.

Everyone is navigating uncharted waters right now in reacting to COVID-19. Craft brewers are doing their best to reassure their community, and the community can reassure their craft brewers that we will support each other during COVID-19 just like always.

The post Helping Our Craft Brewing Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

As everyone in the brewery laughs and jokes and goes about their work, the average beer lover sits back and sips, and asks, “No. Seriously. What does everyone back there do?”

Many folks enjoy beer, but do not realize just how many people it takes to get a batch of beer out the door. One batch of beer will be handled by many people – from the person who receives the shipment of raw materials to the person who finally packages the finished beer and loads it up to be shipped, it takes a village to get beer to the masses.

(MORE: Form & Function: Brewery Visits with an Architect)

Who are the Brewery Workers Behind the Glass Wall?

At Minnesota’s Surly Brewing, head brewer Ben Smith has two brewing operations running – a small 30-barrel brewhouse and a larger 100-barrel brewhouse. Brewing operations are running 24 hours a day, five days a week with short weekend shifts to check fermentation and a Sunday centrifuge run to separate out all the solid ingredients and prepare for Monday packaging. With all these wheels in motion, the brewery is on track to produce about 95,000 barrels of beer in 2019.

In order to make that amount of beer a reality, Ben maintains two brewing teams: “At our smaller brewery, there are seven people on the brewing team; at the larger brewery there are six.”

Brewing Jobs Defined

The head brewer (in Surly’s case, Ben) oversees brewing at each brewery. “During any given shift, I help troubleshoot, train, oversee quality and brew as needed.”

Surly Brewing also maintains lead brewers. These men and women “manage day-to-day production, scheduling, raw ingredient inventory and troubleshoot any issues when and if they arise,” Ben explains.

Next, Surly has three senior brewers. “They still perform the duties of shift brewers but have greater responsibility with respect to training, quality assurance, standard maintenance, barrel work and general support for myself and the lead brewers,” Ben says.

Finally, Surly’s brewhouse has shift brewers. “Shift brewers rotate through the general production shifts from cellar work, quality assurance and wort production.”

Everyone on the team at Surly has a hand in the beer-making process. Ben says his brewing team “rotates through all functions of brewing from raw ingredient handling through centrifugation, after which the packaging team takes over.” The batches of beer are always in motion and the tasks of the brewery require attention.

“Generally, we have three to four people [working] at a time during the day managing wort production as well as cellar work such as dry-hopping, yeast harvesting, quality assurance and centrifuge operation,” Ben explains. “In the evening, we normally just have one brewer on staff overnight managing the wort production schedule.”

Ben also mentioned that Surly does not have a dedicated cellar person – a brewery employee who is tasked with dry-hopping, yeast wrangling, working with quality assurance, operating the centrifuge, preparing beers for treatments, among other tasks. It is common for many breweries to have people whose sole job is to perform these specialized tasks in the brewhouse.

Sometimes the size of the brewery dictates the size of the village needed to move batches of beer through the brewery. At Surly, that village has surely done its part.

(MORE: Maui Brewing Goes Off-the-Grid)

Great People are a Common Theme in Craft Beer

For a brewery the size of Tampa Bay Brewing Company – the brewery will produce about 19,000 barrels of beer in 2019 – the number of people per shift goes to seven operational staff with a manager and a logistical support person.

“On a shift, we’ll have a lead brewer, a brewer, a cellar/lab person, a packaging lead, and a packaging staff member,” says head brewer Dave Doble. He says at least seven people would directly handle each batch of beer.

The biggest challenge, even with an outstanding staff, is “rolling with the punches,” Dave says. “Even the best laid out plan is only valid for 12 hours.” With hurdles like equipment failure, supply chain hiccups, and evolving distributor needs, Dave says it is increasingly important to have the most dependable staff working in the brewery to keep production moving. He wants employees who maintain positive attitudes despite challenges.

All that hard work and positivity has paid off. Tampa Bay Brewing Company’s team was awarded their second silver medal in the American-style Fruit Beer category at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival Competition for its beer “Quat,” which is made with Florida kumquats.

Dan Carey is the brewmaster and co-owner at Wisconsin’s long-time New Glarus Brewing Company. New Glarus Brewing is on track to produce 245,000 barrels of beer in 2019, and the brewhouse is humming around the clock five days a week.

“If everyone called out sick, how many people would it take to get beer out the door?” Dan says, thinking out loud when I ask him how many people, bare minimum, it takes to keep the New Glarus brewhouse running smoothly.

Dan pauses and tallies all of the hands that receive raw ingredients, perform quality control lab tests, make wort, manage the cellar, package beer… “In my case that answer would be 11 people.”

Dan agrees with Dave from Tampa Bay Brewing: good employees are the key to making good beer.

“People make beer — not machinery. That’s a hard thing to internalize,” Dan says. “We like to [think] that sexy machinery makes great beer, but with subpar machinery and people who are very passionate about their work, you can still make outstanding beer. Attentive and hardworking people make the difference.”

Every brewery has a proverbial village of people that help get every batch of beer out the door. The number of people and their job descriptions may differ slightly from brewery to brewery, but each brewery counts on and is made better by each member of the brewhouse staff, each providing their own brand of heroism every time duty calls.

The post Heroes of the Brewhouse: Here’s What Brewery Workers Actually Do appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Once reserved for the state’s famous oranges, Florida craft breweries are now successfully applying for and using the Fresh From Florida seal if a specific beer promotes produce or products grown within the borders of the Sunshine State.

For the Love of Florida-grown Strawberries

Clearwater’s Pair O’ Dice Brewing was founded by husband-and-wife partners Ken and Julia Rosenthal after moving from Austin, Texas, to the Tampa Bay area, where Julia had grown up.

The Rosenthals were inspired by their time living in Austin to look for local ingredients to help tell the story of their beers.

“We loved their ‘Keep Austin Weird,’ support-your-local-business culture,” Julia recalls. “We wanted to bring as much of that with us back to Tampa Bay, and that is what inspired us to look into Florida ingredients.”

She had fond memories of the annual Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City. Lucky Lucy is the beer Pair O’ Dice brewed that ultimately brought those memories to life. The strawberry blonde ale earned a bronze medal at the Best Florida Beer competition in 2014.

“Those memories of the [Florida] Strawberry Festival inspired us to design a beer to highlight Florida strawberries,” she says.

With Lucky Lucy, Pair O’ Dice became the first craft brewery to get approval to use the Fresh From Florida seal on their beer. The Department of Agriculture made a special site visit to ensure brewery staff was using actual Florida ingredients to brew the beer.

Pair O’ Dice Brewing’s Clearwater Honey Cream Ale is also labeled Fresh From Florida; it’s made with honey from Haines City.

Julia says that the experience of working with local ingredients has inspired Pair O’ Dice Brewing to always look to ingredients designated Fresh From Florida when searching for new beer flavors.

“The first place we look for new ingredients is Florida,” she says. “Locally grown ingredients are the freshest ingredients you can get, and you know exactly where they came from. Supporting local business is also very important to us so it’s a win-win.”

(Related: There’s No Taste Like Home: Booming Beer Agriculture Supports Local Brewers)

Fresh From Florida Satsuma Oranges are the Answer for Lake Tribe Brewing

Head Brewer Jesse Ross of Tallahassee’s Lake Tribe Brewing Company was not originally going to put oranges in his wheat beer. Lake Tribe beer was only available on draft and in the brewery’s tasting room, and Beckster’s Wheat Ale was selling well. All of that changed when Kim Jones with Florida Georgia Citrus, a family-owned farming business, stopped by the brewery to talk about Satsuma oranges.

“He told us about their increasing popularity and what made them ideal for growing in northern Florida,” Jesse recalls. “After he dropped off some juice for me to work with, I knew I needed to make a beer to highlight the bright and awesome flavors.”

Jesse knew that Beckster’s Wheat Ale would help highlight the bright, sweet and tart flavors of these unique oranges (similar to Mandarin oranges and related to tangerines). Jesse set out to craft Lake Tribe’s version of an orange wheat ale.

Once the beer was complete, Jesse took Kim Jones’ recommendation and applied to use the Fresh From Florida® seal for the beer. The Florida Department of Agriculture granted the request.

Jesse says that for Lake Tribe Brewing, using local ingredients to produce local craft beer is a perfect fit and a win-win.

“Getting local oranges fit perfectly with our whole idea of starting the brewery in the first place–keeping things fresh and local,” Jesse says. “We want our beer to be as fresh as possible, which means we will only ever want to serve it in our surrounding region. Getting local ingredients works in that same way.”

Using Satsuma oranges has gone so well, that Jesse says that Lake Tribe is seeking out other Florida-produced ingredients to use in their beer, like Florida honey.

(More: AirbnBeers: Breweries with Hotels, Inns, Camping and More)

Beer with Florida Tangerines, Cucumbers, and Oysters

Brew Bus Brewing and Florida Avenue Ales are two brewing companies that share a brewery in Tampa’s Seminole Heights. The brewery is striving to make a name for itself with its statewide collaborations, including a beer made for Tallahassee’s FSU Fans, dubbed War Daddy Light Lager.

In sourcing fruit for their Berliner Weisse beers (also dubbed “Florida Weisse”), Brew Bus owner Anthony Derby discovered fresh Florida cucumbers to use in the brewery’s Cucumber Berliner Weisse, and they have never looked back.

“Cucumbers are not the first ingredient people think of to use in beer. It’s an unusual combination for sure,” says Anthony. “But the finished beer ends up so refreshing that we found our customers really enjoyed it in the dead of summer. Most other cucumber beers use an extract, but we feel using fresh cucumbers really make the beer shine.”

Brew Bus Brewing is also using Fresh From Florida tangerine zest in their Tangerine Splash Belgian-style Witbier. But tangerines are not the most unusual ingredient the brewery uses in its beer – that award goes to the oysters in Boat Beer Sea Session Ale. While tangerines gave Brew Bus Brewing’s citrusy witbier a bit of Florida’s groves, Anthony took a similar approach to put Florida’s aquaculture into a beer for the waters.

Boat Beer Sea Session Ale is a beer brewed in collaboration with Boat Run Oyster Company out of Tampa. This light and citrusy session ale is brewed with lime zest and a full bushel of Florida-raised Boat Run oysters in each batch. This special beer is available through Brew Bus Brewing and their distribution, but also available with fresh oysters from Boat Run’s oyster stand.

(Related: Southwest Florida’s Beer Scene is as Sunny as its Forecast)

Plenty More Fresh From Florida Beers

Brew Bus Brewing/Florida Avenue Brewing, Pair O’ Dice Brewing, and Lake Tribe Brewing Company are not the only breweries that are currently using Florida-sourced produce in their beers – they are the ones who are working with the growers and using the Fresh From Florida seal to help tell the story of their beer and meld it with the story of local growers.

(Find A Brewery Near You)

Julia from Pair O’ Dice stresses the importance of local businesses helping local businesses.  In a state that can have 15 to 20 items in-season at any time of year, the more Florida breweries grow to adopt the Fresh From Florida seal, the more unique tastes of Florida will be available for beer drinkers.

The post Florida Breweries Utilize ‘Fresh From Florida’ Label Once Reserved for Oranges appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Each year when hurricane season begins on June 1, most Floridians meet the opening of this potentially dangerous time with disinterest and apathy until a named storm is a few days away; I’m a Floridian myself and I witness it every year. Once the storm has the Sunshine State in its crosshairs, Floridians start the Black Friday-esque rush of last-minute preparations.

As members of their respective communities, Florida’s craft brewers are doing their part ahead of Hurricane Dorian. Many, like Tampa Bay Brewing Co., are using their social media channels as a platform to urge their communities to prepare now.

“Don’t panic, don’t hoard, take a deep breath and use time wisely,” the brewery advises on Facebook, reminding people to prep first aid kids and flashlights now, and offering other tips in case people lose power for days after Dorian.

(READ: New List Ranks 10 Best Cities for Beer Lovers)

Some Florida breweries are offering to fill citizens’ water containers from their brewing equipment for free both before and after the storm. Considering grocery stores and gas stations shelves are running out of bottled water, it’s a generous contribution.

“We are first and foremost a community-centric brewery,” Grove Roots Brewing owner Joe Dunham says in an interview with CNN. His Winter Haven brewery is among those helping. “We believe in our small town and will do all we can to help people. If the need arises, we will have plenty of water to share. It’s the least we can do for the community we love.”

Filling water containers is both practical and helpful for many craft brewers. When a hurricane approaches with the potential loss of power, brewers would rather play it safe than sorry. If a brewery were to lose power without a backup generator, then the beer in the tanks would not ferment at optimum temperature resulting in potential off-flavors or spoiled beer. In order to avert this problem, brewers often forgo brewing a batch of beer until after a storm.

Open time in the brewing schedule can leave water in the brewing tanks or the brewer can simply be proactive and fill their tanks ahead of the storm anticipating a need for clean water–after all, a brewery’s tanks hold hundreds or thousands of gallons of water.

(VISIT: Epic Craft Beer Road Trip: Breweries Along the Great River Road)

Some breweries are already announcing that, if conditions are safe enough, they plan to swiftly open after the hurricane passes to offer people cool, dry places to escape while charging phones and tablets.

Breweries often have backup generators or are in industrial areas that may be restored first. Often, breweries who don’t have severe damage will then open their doors to offer folks cooped up in their homes a respite, or even serve as donation centers like we witnessed when Houston breweries came together after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

If you live in the path of the hurricane, or you have a loved one who does, keep a close eye on your local breweries over social media. It’s the fastest way they’ll alert you about water availability before the storm, and any plans they have for reopening after. I’m also monitoring and will update on floridabeernews.com.

Stay safe, fellow Floridians.

The post Florida Breweries Help Communities Prepare for Hurricane Dorian appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

An event of this magnitude attracts so many wonderful and whimsical American craft brewers, so sometimes, the biggest challenge for you is where to begin. We have a few suggestions in the form of a Bingo card. Trekking to the back of the hall to find the American Cheese Society always yields a treat or two, and it’s always exciting to try medal-winning beers that had previously eluded your tasting glass.

(READ: Is it Your First GABF? Here are the Do’s and Don’ts)

Everyone who traverses the festival floor seeks treasure of some sort: check the rush when the doors open to see whose beers are the latest palate tantalizers, then check the table next to that line and see what amazing beer that brewery is pouring.

There are no awards for a brewery that runs out of beer first, and it is a great time to savor the flavor of so many unique beers concentrated in one spot. Here are a few places to look for that next beer that will send you to your hoppy place.

Some of the squares are self-explanatory, but in case you need a little help, check out our key below the graphic.

Download GABF Bingo Card

Great American Beer Fest Bingo Key

• Home Base – Visit the brewery closest to where you live
• Pubbin’ Out – Try a beer from a brewpub
• Heavy Metal – Try a beer that has previously (or currently) won a GABF gold, silver or bronze at the “Heavy Medal” booth
• Go Pro-Am – Go to the Pro-Am booth and try a beer from members of the American Homebrewers Association
• Belgo-in’ Crazy – Try a Belgian-inspired beer
• Adjunct Professor – Try a beer made with ingredients other than barley
• With the Grain – Try a beer that has been aged in barrels or aged with wood
• Get Salty – Try a gose
• Say Cheese – Try cheese from the American Cheese Society
• I am Fruit! – Try a beer with fruit

The post Great American Beer Festival Bingo Card appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The new space is a brewery first and foremost, but it also has an eye for celebrating the building’s history. With a nod to that legacy, the tasting room has orange and red racing stripes along the corner of the wall behind the bar, as well as a planned display with roller skates in the tasting room. While it has had other additions, the new facility will give 7venth Sun Brewery 18,000 square feet for brewing space, a tasting room, barrel storage, offices and operations.

After years of making beer around tight corners, the brewery will use most of the square footage for brewing operations. In fact, the Dunedin space would fit inside the tasting room of 7venth Sun Tampa.

Even with all that square footage, 7venth Sun is combining spaces in their Tampa home: because the barrel cellar has to be climate controlled and air conditioned, they added to the other space they knew needed to be climate controlled: the tasting room.

(READ: Fall, a Nostalgic Season for Beer)

“It’s got a unique look to it, I don’t know of anywhere in Florida that is set up like that,” Stange says. “At least not right now anyway. We feel like that will give the tasting room a unique feel.”

The new tasting room area is about 3,000 square feet, and the barrels and foeders take up about a third of that space.

In addition to the new digs, 7venth Sun is launching a new foeder project in collaboration with neighboring brewery Cigar City Brewing.

“It’s something that we’ve never heard of anyone doing before, and we’re excited to be able to team with Cigar City Brewing to do it,” Kreps says.

Cigar City bought some foeders — large wooden barrels used in the fermentation process — and weren’t going to be able to use them but still wanted to work collaboratively with someone in the area and put them in a place where they would be put to good use.

“It’s going to be a collaborative thing. Their brewers are going to come over and work with us and we’re going to come up with process together and fill the foeders and we hope to both be able to sell packaged product out of 7venth Sun and Cigar City,” Kreps says. “We really want the process to be a thing we do together with them. In a way, it’s like contract barreling.”

(VISIT: Find a Florida Brewery)

Stange and Kreps said that Eric Salazar, the wood-aged beer specialist and brewer from New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, came down and commissioned the foeders and showed them how to do repairs.

As they are, the foeders add a warm and earthy touch to the tasting room.

“The foeders are beautiful and it was great to have the educational process with Eric coming down to rehab all of them and teach us a lot.” Kreps says.

The new brewery space also gives 7venth Sun Brewery more sophisticated tools and the ability to explore and go beyond the process at the old brewery, Stange says.

“Nothing has changed about our philosophy when it comes to beer,” he says. “We still like to have fun, we still take old styles and farmhouse styles very seriously, we’re just able to get more into them giving the room we have in the new building.”

For instance, the space allows 7venth Sun to do more barrel-aged beers.

“We will be able to have a forklift in the new brewery. Previously, every 7venth Sun barrel-aged beer was from a single barrel. That was a challenge when brewing because we were at the liberty of that one barrel, whereas now we can do more blending – that’s a real big advantage” Stange says.

(LEARN: CraftBeer.com’s Beer 101 Course)

Beyond the barrels, the space gives the brewery the room to do larger events and allows more room for distribution.

“In the previous brewery, the tasting room took the majority of production and then what was left was sent to distribution. Here, we’ll be able to get our beer out into the market. People have been asking for beer on tap for a long time,” Stange says.

Now, 7venth Sun Brewery can increase capacity fourfold – the new system has a capacity up to 15,000 barrels a year once the system is brewing at its apex.

“Hopefully the beer is going to be even better. That has always been the end goal – better beer.”

The post Florida Brewery Builds New Space in Old Roller Skating Rink appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

While relatively small – brewing batches on a three-barrel brewing system and fermenting in double batched six-barrel fermenters – RedFrog’s beer is enough to whet the appetites of thirsty vacationers and send them home with a few growlers.

Help Wanted: Cruise Ship Head Brewer

At the helm of RedFrog Brewery is head brewer Colin Presby. Colin has roots in Pennsylvania. His brewing resume includes stints at Weyerbacher Brewing and Stoudts Brewing.

How did a Pennsylvania brewer get the gig on a ship based in the Port of Miami and registered in Panama? He saw an ad online, and he took the plunge and applied. The competition was tough.

(MORE: What is a Craft Brewery?)

“This job was the most viewed on the site because it’s a great gig,” Colin recalls. After shipping a resume, Colin did a few rounds of interviews, and he got the job.

Colin lives on the ship 10 months out of the year – making sure the ship is afloat with beer at all times. As the program develops, he says that may change, but right now he and his assistant brewer represent the entire Carnival Cruise Lines beer-making staff.

How Do You Brew Beer with Ocean Water?

Colin’s challenge is to keep the taps flowing, even while at sea. That is not a small task, but the shipboard water system makes it easier. Pulling water from the ocean, Carnival’s Vista has its own desalinization and reverse osmosis water system.

“We’re able to make and keep up with demand for all the shipboard potable water,” Colin says. “On older ships, they bunker – fill up a tank from a hose while in port. That leads to less consistent water, different water in every port. You end up using more chlorine to make sure it’s safe.”

Always with an eye on the beer, Colin lauds the Vista’s water system. He takes comfort in the knowledge that his zymurgical imagination will never be stifled by lack of optimal water.

“Since we’re making our own water, we can pull out or put back what [water chemicals] we need. I’m adding more and changing the mineral profile for my water. I can’t tell the engineers what to do with the ship [and water], but I can adjust the water and make it what I need it to be,” he explains.

(READ: My Lucky Break: How I Got a Job in Craft Beer)

Colin gets excited about the system because while he is responsible for supplying the consistent RedFrog beers, he also gets to play on the system as well.

“My boss was very supportive of me experimenting in the brewhouse,” Colin asserts. “I report to the Vice President of Beverages shoreside, and he has been very supportive since the beginning of doing seasonals and doing experimental stuff. He’s a beer guy and he wants to try new beers as well.”

Beer Styles on Board

While new beers are on Colin’s mind, so is keeping a fresh stock of the beers to anchor RedFrog’s lineup.

“The Port Hoppin’ IPA, the Caribbean Wheat, and the Java Stout we keep on consistently. I have room for a fourth or maybe a fifth depending on how I work my tap space, but I can do some seasonals,” he says. “We have an American Pale Ale that’s my regular/ irregular beer. We have it probably 60 percent of the time. Then we’ll rotate in a fun beer, like the Miami Guava Wheat.”

Colin says that he has yet to make a gose from seawater, but he is open to the possibility.

Carnival Plans to Add More Cruise Ship Breweries

Carnival was excited to open an independent craft brewery on the ship.

“The debut of the RedFrog Pub on Carnival Magic in 2011 proved to be very successful. We looked at ways to take guests’ experience to the next level,” says Carnival Public Relations Officer Joyce Oliva.

“Adding a brewery was such a no-brainer.” Joyce Oliva, Carnival Cruise Lines

Oliva also cites another aspect of the craft beer boom that led Carnival to build a brewery on board: no one else has tried it.

(LEARN: Beer 101 Online Course)

“With the growing interest in craft beers and microbreweries, adding a brewery was such a no-brainer – it was the only way to go. The shipboard brewery concept had not been added to any other U.S. based cruise ship before and the RedFrog Pub & Brewery has been such a success for us that we plan on continuing to add breweries to future ships.”

While the success of RedFrog Pub & Brewery builds, Colin is happy to keep the ship supplied in beer. After all, he says, if you’re on a ship and the beer is brewed within walking distance, that counts as a local beer. “If you’re on board for a cruise, it’s as local as it gets.”

As the beer’s popularity continues to grow, Carnival plans to build breweries on new ships. Colin is already brewing test batches for future ships, and he’s eager to be part of what’s on the horizon.

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The post A Look Inside RedFrog, the First On-Board Cruise Ship Brewery appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The brewery originally opened in 2011. After growing their draft offerings, around 2015, Fat Bottom wanted to expand their packaged beer lineup. And that’s when the long uphill battle started.

(VISIT: Find a U.S. Craft Brewery)

“I Couldn’t Sleep at Night”

Owner Ben Bredesen and his crew didn’t have expertise in canning, but figured they could learn on the fly. Bredesen made the decision to invest in a line. He figured the essential tools would be included.

When the packaging line arrived, Ben and his team began to use the tiny space in their 1500-square-foot facility. But they noticed the micrometer –a device used to measure seam thickness — was what Ben calls a “variation on an absolute.” And that’s not good. Beer would leave the brewery and then emails would come in: a low fill here; an empty can there.

Ben found that he was doing cleanup after the beer had gone into the market and it was costing the brewery more than just money. It became clear they could work at the top of their game brewing, but if packaging was not done right, it could ruin the customer’s experience.

(READ: What is the Independent Craft Brewer Seal?)

“I couldn’t sleep at night,” Ben says. “Beer would leave the brewery and I would wonder what I would hear about it. We would do spot checks on the cans, but a seam issue can take 48 hours to show itself — and by then the beer has left the brewery.”

What made Ben increasingly uneasy was the thought of the times he didn’t hear about wrongly-packaged beers on the market. The thought of customers simply writing them off really bothered him.

Help Wanted

Ben decided he wanted to hire a brewer to take over operations. He knew that candidate had to have the experience to run an operation, but also be able to look at the brewery at a micro level. He wanted a person who could examine minute details and help the brewery excel — even where they thought they were already doing an awesome job.

The wording in Ben’s classified ad speaks volumes to what Fat Bottom Brewing would need:

“Do you love the magic of beer and do understand what is going on under the hood? Can you work independently and do you ask why we do things a certain way, not just how? Do you have a passion for quality and consistency in your beer and do you believe that we can make every beer a little better the next time?”

Drew Yeager, a master brewer who studied at UC Davis and who had previously worked at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, had those qualifications.

(TRAVEL: 7 Breweries Worth a Detour)

When Drew arrived, he rolled up his sleeves to get up close and personal with his new job. He had ideas for recipe development and expanding markets, but he knew he would have to focus on quality first.

“Before [changes were made], we were losing a lot of cans,” Drew recalls about his early days. “We would count about three trash cans full of cans — about 10 percent of the run.”

If packaged beer was having issues in Tennessee, then expanding distribution would have to wait. He came up with a strategy to resolve the issues.

A Paradigm Shift Based on Quality

Drew and Ben knew that in order to turn around the quality of packaged beer, they had to change the way they looked at quality; quality beer had to be the only thing that left the brewery. Quality beer had to be a state of mind, a mission statement. And that is exactly what Ben, Drew and the team at Fat Bottom Brewing knew they had to do: change the culture and the mission of the brewery to reflect an emphasis on quality.

That led to the first step to righting their canned beers. Drew and Ben went to the distributor and inspected every single can, one at a time. It took hours upon hours, but it showed Fat Bottom’s distributors, staff and retail partners that they were serious about beer quality.

The next step was hiring a full-time quality assurance lab manager to literally put Fat Bottom’s beers under a microscope. Alex Barr was a natural fit. Alex, who was already working at the brewery, holds a degree in microbiology from Middle Tennessee State University and welcomed the chance to move into the nascent Quality Assurance (QA) lab. First, Alex had to establish a baseline for Fat Bottom Brewing beers – what did the beers look like when made exactly to specifications?

(LEARN: Beer 101 Online Course)

This paradigm shift led Fat Bottom to start planning their new brewing facility around the canning line with the addition of a walled-off facility for sour and barrel-aged beers.

“You’ll hear stories of brewers who have never had a problem with cross contamination,” says Drew. But Fat Bottom decided not to tempt fate. The new sour brewing area has negative pressure in the room and all of its own equipment.

“Clean beer is clean,” asserts Drew. “We’re not going down the all sour road, plus cross contamination violates our quality objectives.”

As the brewery works, so too does its lab. The lab looks at every beer with scientific scrutiny, which means Ben’s insomnia has subsided.

But even a lab is not without its panic moments. In the early days, Alex’s lab got an alert while analyzing a beer in the tanks.

“This beer had four different colonies growing on it, but we did not panic and we did not dump the beer,” Alex says.

Instead, the lab took the time to do a proper scientific analysis and see if the beer that was truly infected.

Alex uncovered the real culprit: “After searching the tank, it turned out to be a dirty zwickel [valve]. We reswabbed the tank and it came out negative.”

It became a teachable moment and another opportunity to reassert Fat Bottom’s emphasis on quality.

Helping Neighboring Breweries with Quality Questions

With changes in place and new brewer at the helm, Fat Bottom Brewing began to see a happier and brighter future take hold. As customers bought more and more beer through the tasting room and out in the market, the emails about problematic cans slowed down. The beer was making the splash that Ben and Drew intended.

“I’d like to think that this is a strength of ours now. And I sleep a lot better,” Ben says. “I have nothing but confidence in Drew, our team, and the beer leaving the doors.”

Fat Bottom’s mission does not stop at their own brewery, though. The team knows beer quality is important, so they have extended an invitation to other nearby brewers. Any area brewery that would like to have its beer plated and analyzed can contact Fat Bottom’s QA lab and inquire about testing. As of summer 2017, three other Nashville craft brewers have taken Fat Bottom up on their offer.

“If we can save one other brewer from the headaches that we had, then we win. We’re all in this together,” says Ben.

Drew echoes his sentiment, “If Tennessee beer gets better, then we all win.”

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The post How Fat Bottom Brewing Tackled Quality Problems Head On appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Whether dessert beer or desert island beer, the only limit to coconut is the brewer’s imagination and the amount of coconut available. A brewer can maneuver coconut in many ways to explore various flavor profiles for his or her beer. While some use coconut to complement the dark flavors in a roasty and chocolatey porter or stout, other brewers and mazers are setting out to use coconut to illustrate the versatility in some of their recipes.

(MORE: 2017’s Great American Beer Bars)

If Gilligan was a brewer, then he would make more than a coconut phone when stranded on that island. The crew of the island would be tempted to cobble together some brewing equipment and a few carboys and make some coconut beer fermented with wild yeast. It could happen.

Here are a few coconut beers to consider after a three-hour tour, whether shipwrecked on an island or simply enjoying the sunset.

Perrin Brewing | No Rules Vietnamese Imperial Porter

This behemoth of a beer clocks in at a staggering 15% ABV, and offers an intensely coconutty experience for those souls brave enough to traverse its dark depths. The beer itself was born from an insult a customer threw at the staff and it morphed into something greater from there. Perrin’s Director of Brewing Operations, John Stewart, remembers when the idea for the beer was born. “One of the crazy days at the brewery someone shouted ‘There are No Rules Here!’ and we decided to make an Imperial Vietnamese Porter called No Rules.” Making lemonade from lemons, Stewart and company “sat around and dreamed up what a Vietnamese Imperial porter would taste like and came up with the beer specs and worked our way backwards to build the recipe to create the beer we dreamed up.” After experimentation, the team decided on coconut for its “creaminess in creating a full mouthfeel,” and balance in handling a 15% ABV beer.

Angry Chair Brewing | German Chocolate Cupcake Stout

Tampa’s Angry Chair Brewing Company has made their name by releasing immensely flavorful dessert beers. The brewery sells shirts that lists their most popular dessert beers on the front with one word on the back: “Diabeetus.” While diabetes is no laughing matter, neither are Angry Chair’s dessert stouts, anchored by German Chocolate Cupcake Stout, which was a recipe brewer Ben Romano perfected in his homebrewing days. With such a chocolate-forward stout, Romano says that he thought the cupcake would be a perfect topping, but raw coconut would not be enough. “We have tried a blend of toasted and untoasted coconut,” Romano admits, “but have ended up using just toasted because we get a lot more flavor and aroma out of it.”

Maui Brewing | Coconut Hiwa Porter

Drawing from its tropical roots on the islands of Hawaii, Maui Brewing Company has built a great deal of its reputation with its Coconut Hiwa Porter. The beer features hand-toasted coconut and is made 100 percent in the Aloha State. Proud to be made 100 percent in the westernmost state in the United States, the porter’s big brother, Imperial Coconut Porter, won a gold medal at the 2016 Great American Beer Festival in the Field Beer Category.

(MORE: Who Owns Maui Brewing? Media Misprint Concerns Owner Garrett Marrero)

VisionQuest | Coconut IPA

For those who believe that coconut is only compatible with the roasted, chocolate flavors of stouts and porters, we encourage you to go on a vision quest. Or, in the case of this Coconut IPA, just visit VisionQuest, a small brewery addition to Boulder Fermentation Supply. There, owner Adam Kandle will serve you a unique beer experience that blends rich coconut with an absurd amount of hops. The current version claims lots of citra; other hops include galaxy, cascade, sorachi ace, mosaic. Kandle says they change the hops from batch to batch to keep it interesting (as if this beer wasn’t already). If you’re looking for something different or you’re on a quest to open your eye to what an IPA can be, head to VisionQuest for this IPA at 5.3% ABV.

Big Top Brewing Company | Hawaiian Lion Coconut Porter

When Big Top Brewing’s team joined forces with the Flying Pig Tap House in Saint Petersburg, Florida, the meeting of the minds spawned a beer that would join the goodness of Hawaiian coffee with coconut. Add to that Big Top’s love of Sarasota, Florida’s history with the culture of circuses, and “the lion was a natural fit,” says Big Top Brewing CEO Mike Bishaha. “The coffee and the coconut allow for a more balanced beer,” Bishaha says. “The first pilot runs were heavy on the coffee and light on the coconut and we felt the coconut sweetened the beer and added more complexity.” The end result is a beer that balances the roastiness of a porter with its natural coffee notes and adds another layer to the parfait with coconut while not thinning out the body.

(MORE: 9 Breweries You’ll Want to Follow on Instagram)

Bottle Logic | Stronger Than Fiction

When Anaheim, California’s Bottle Logic Brewing wanted to explore barrel aging with a beer that was not a stout, they decided on a strong ale base but the decision to add coconut did not come until later. Bottle Logic Founder and Brand Manager Brandon Buckner remembers that, “Our goal with this beer since it was a new prospect was to let the time in the barrel speak for itself. Once we started doing tasting trials, we picked up a lot of coconut notes from its time in the wood, so we thought it would be nice to enhance that.” The group decided that since the beer ended up with chocolate and vanilla tones, that coconut would be an obvious choice to compliment those flavors.

The Bruery | Mash and Coconut

While many coconut offerings are of the stout and porter variety, Placentia, California’s The Bruery went a different direction with coconut going into their Mash barrel-aged barleywine. Mash and Coconut “ratchets up the complex coconut character and complements the oaky and vanilla notes that are imparted to the beer as part of its extensive maturation in bourbon barrels.” In order to achieve this massive amount of coconut not to go quietly into the darkness of a barleywine with bourbon character, the Bruery had to invest in a massive amount of coconut – nearly a pound of coconut for every gallon of finished beer. That works out to each bottle containing about one-third of a coconut worth of ingredients!

Lickinghole Creek | Coconut Quad

Lickinghole Creek Craft Brewery,“Virginia’s farm brewery,” takes coconut to another level by making this tropical ingredient the star of its quadruple. This quad, made with a Belgian candi sugar that has both beet sugar and date sugar at its heart, uses coconut as a complimentary flavor to the dark complexity, malty goodness, and esters present in the quad. This beer is the younger sibling to Coconut Delight, the winner of a silver medal in Field Beer category at the 2016 World Beer Cup, which is Coconut Quad aged in rum barrels.

The post 8 Coconut Beers You’ll Crave Right Now appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

While indulging and exploring in the world of coffee, many brewers have incorporated coffee into the experience of their beers. Coffee stouts and porters are a popular expression, but so, too, exists coffee IPA, coffee Berliner weisse and coffee saison.

Going deeper down the rabbit hole of coffees commercially available in the United States, a few brewers have discovered that taking beans from a single origin makes for a different coffee flavor than the traditional blend. Much like single-malt-and-single-hop beers (SMaSH) or barrel-aged stouts from different spirit barrels, through single origin coffee stouts, brewers are bringing a more nuanced flavor profile and highlighting a new side to this classic stout ingredient.

(MORE: How to Order a Craft Beer)

Dabbling in Single Origin Coffee Stouts

For Modern Times Beer, the idea of promoting single origin coffee goes back to the roots of why they make beer.

“We’ve been a brewery and coffee roaster from day one,” affirms Modern Times Founder and CEO Jacob McKean. “The idea to make beers with single origin coffee was just a natural extension of that.”

Modern Times’s Sleepless City Coffee Brown Ale is made with single-origin Kenya Nyeri Othaya Peaberry coffee and the brewery “aimed for a harmonious union of these two complex flavors — rather than a sledgehammer of just one flavor — and we feel we like we achieved it. The beer and coffee go marvelously together and are definitely greater than the sum of their parts.”

(TRAVEL: Breweries Worth a Detour)

One of the challenges of the project, McKean says, is getting the best beans for the job. To “[s]ource truly excellent single origin coffee takes a lot of work and skill and time.”

Not just any bean will do for Modern Times staff, as they have a coffee roaster and love the drink.

“Not all coffee tastes good in beer and single origins often have certain aspects of their profile cranked up to 11. So it takes a lot of work between our coffee people and our beer people to find a single origin that hits all the right notes for a given beer.”

As people who love both drinks, McKean says that any bean that makes it into the brew is truly exceptional.

“Every single origin that we bring into our roasting operation is essentially the winner of a never-ending contest. We test and reject lots of coffee, something like 98 percent of the coffees we try, so the ones we make our very distinguished and carefully vetted.”

For Modern Times, choosing the unique bean aids in sharpening the beer to give every flavor in the beer a place to shine.

One Single Origin Stout for Each Day of the Week

On the other side of the U.S., Florida’s Cycle Brewing has released five different barrel-aged single origin coffee stout variants. Doug Dozark, Cycle’s owner, gives credit to the brewery’s sales manager, Charlie Meers, for the idea. The idea went through an evolution, but built on a principal that Cycle had used before, Dozark says.

“Originally we started with wanting to do five coffees from five continents but that proved to be harder than we thought. We had previously released single distillery barrel aged versions of the beers that showcased the different qualities you can get from different bourbons and for this we wanted something similar.” Like barrels of bourbon or single hop varietals, Cycle wanted to give each of the several coffees their chance to shine. Cycle Brewing has built a reputation on its barrel-aged stouts, and these beers would fit right in with the program.

(LEARN: 75+ Beer Styles)

“Our imperial stouts are designed for barrel aging and it is incomplete beer without the barrels,” says Dozark. “It wasn’t that we felt barrel aging the beers would add or subtract from the coffee — it’s simply what our imperial stout really is. Instead of two weeks in the fermenter and then packaging, it takes months in a barrel before the beer is complete and ready for release, or coffee, or anything else.”

When they were ready for release, Cycle released one variant of the beer each day. Cycle chose to brew their imperial stout with Brazilian Oberon coffee, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee, Indonesian Sumatra coffee, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and Vietnamese coffee.

While the locals enjoyed the beer, using single origin coffee had an unexpected effect, one that would affect future releases.

“We really liked tasting the differences from the coffees. This also gave us some good feedback and insight into what type of coffee we want to use in the future, some were more successful than others and while differences are largely subjective, we saw some consistent trends that lined up with our feelings about the beers as well.”

(COOK WITH BEER: Hundreds of Recipes)

Dozark likens these trends to similar aspects of other beers Cycle makes. “Just as different barrels can give different characteristics, some coffee might work better combined with, say, chili peppers or cinnamon than some of the others.” Dozark says that the experience was largely positive and he imagines that these are not the last single origin coffee beers that Cycle will make, although he was not ready to say this would be an annual occurrence.

A Series Based on Coffee

Moving from Florida’s sunny shores to the slopes of the Beehive State, Utah’s Epic Brewery has built an entire line of beers from its popular Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout. These beers, dubbed “Son of a Baptist,” are all brewed using the same base stout recipe aged with coffee from different roasters in different parts of the U.S. with many of these coffees from single origins.

In using coffee from all different sources, including blends, Epic Brewing is able to highlight different kinds of coffee that would not “make sense in Big Bad Baptist,” according to Matthew Allred, Epic Brewery’s communications director. The coffees chosen are put into the series and then released for the public to try. Different nuances of coffee and beer show through in each different stout.

(READ: What is the Independent Craft Brewer Seal?)

Son of a Baptist has grown beyond the reality of a single beer into a series of beers. “We regularly feature different coffee roasters during the season but because of how robust the beer is, we are also limited to the type of coffee and roast profile we can use,” says Allred. How many different roasters and coffees? “Earlier this year (2016), we produced 14 different releases with 14 different roasters across the US and all of those releases went back to the markets the coffee originated in. In most instances, there was a chance to taste the coffee and the beer side by side.” 

In 2016, Epic Brewing worked with coffees like Buremera coffee from Rwanda and Moka Harrar and Yirgacheffe coffee from Ethiopia.

“We are gearing up this January to do the same thing with a whole new set of roasters. The best news is this January we will be releasing the beer in 12 oz. cans with the roaster stamped on the bottom of each can and on the six-pack topper.”

The 2017 releases will see Epic Brewing working with Finca Cual Bicicleta coffee from Honduras, La Colina and Huehuetenango coffees from Guatemala, Yirgacheffe coffee from Ethiopia, and Finca Malarca Red Bourbon and Loma La Gloria coffees from El Salvador. Building the beer goes back to the bean, and Allred says this is something Epic talks to each roaster about.

“The roasters we’ve worked with … we tell them about the project and then ask what beans they’re passionate about. The beautiful part about building a beer around coffee is that we aren’t pigeonholed to a particular roast or style.”

Making the beer this way pays great dividends, according to Allred.

“This means that each release is different from the last but it also reveals the shared passion of the roaster and the coffee growers,” and combine that with the brewers’ passions to make something the percolates art beyond the snifter.

The post Awaken Your Senses with Single Origin Coffee Stouts appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

How can you avoid missing out on some of the most awesome beers at the festival? First, take a deep breath and realize that this is one of the most highly regarded festivals in the world. Each beer was sent to the festival with a mission and most of the time with the beer drinker in mind.

Setting a strategy before you walk in the door can help take off the pressure. We came up with nine creatively-themed tracks — think of them as missions or quests or even scavenger hunts — to add an element of mystery to your GABF experience. Most of all take it slow, drink plenty of water and remember that the festival is about the enjoyment of beer overall. As Andy Sparhawk recently reminded us: beer is supposed to be fun.

1: The Social Butterfly

Are you a people person? Do you like to let fate be your guide? Then try being a Social Butterfly. This is where you ask a friend or the person pouring beer at a table which brewery you should try next. This is a great way to find out some other people’s favorite beers and break some ice.

2: The Gandalf

Wander around and try one or two beers from each of the regions in the festival hall, or one beer from each of the 50 states. Have you ever tried a beer from North Dakota? Fargo Brewing will represent the Peace Garden State. What about Alaska? Alaskan Brewing will be in attendance for the 49th State. Allagash Brewing will be the sole Maine brewery. Wander around and see what new beers you can find. After all, not all who wander are lost.

3: The Collector

Taneleer Tivan collects rare and wonderful objects from around the galaxy in the Marvel Comics Universe. What strange and wonderful beer ingredients can you find this year? See how many new ingredients you can try in your beers. Did Wynkoop Brewing bring their Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout? Did Firestone Walker or Adroit Theory happen to bring any beers aged in mezcal barrels? See how far you can step out of your comfort zone.

(MORE: 10 Off-Kilter IPA Ingredients)

4: The Fonz

Arthur Fonzarelli  knew lots of people and everyone felt like they knew him on the 1970’s sitcom Happy Days. Say “heyyy” to the CraftBeer.com interactive Beer Style guide and see if you can sample beers from categories you’ve never tried before.

5: The Indiana Jones

“Archeology is the search for fact, not truth,” Indiana Jones told his students. Just as Indy went in search of historical artifacts, brewers at GABF have produced beers fitting historical styles. Try to drink one of each of these historical beer styles: grodziskie, Lichtenhainer, gose, Berliner weiss, zwickelbier, adambier and rauchbier.

6: The Muscles from Brussels

Just like Jean-Claude Van Damme took America by storm, now GABF brews up a storm of Belgian-style beers, all of them worth a try. In this track, sample beers with Belgian influence: golden ale, Belgian IPA, Belgian wit, sours and lambics. If in doubt, see if the beer’s name has the word “Belgian” in it.

7: The Luke Skywalker

A Jedi can appreciate this search for the light side of malt. Just as Luke trained with Yoda on Degobah and learned the ways of the force, this search looks for lighter-colored beers. These beers aren’t necessarily “light beers;” instead, they’re mainly beers brewed with lighter colored malts including the cream ale, kolsch, pale lager, pale ale, IPA, goses and pilsners.

8: The Darth Vader

Just as Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker, “You don’t know the power of the Dark Side,” GABF can be your ticket to exploring beers made with dark malt in some way. Hopheads in particular can stretch outside their comfort zone to find beers with dark and roasted malts including stout, porter, black IPA, milk stouts, imperial stouts and schwarzbiers.

9: The Technicolor

This is a horse of a different color. On this track, enjoy beers made with fruits, roots, woods, and barrels, or even beers of a different color like Irish reds, etc. The deeper the color the more unique the beer. How many beers are made with passion fruit? Dragon fruit? Lychee? Lingonberries? See how many strange fruits you can pick off this beer list.

(MORE: A Fascination with Foraged Beer)

No matter how you choose to enjoy the Great American Beer Festival, make it memorable by enjoying in moderation, drinking plenty of water and being patient with fellow festivalgoers and staff. Remember that this event celebrates the community of beer, and we are enjoying this together. Cheers!

The post 9 Plans for Conquering the Great American Beer Festival appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

A cornerstone of small and independent brewing is experimentation, and that’s exactly what brewers are doing with IPAs right now. From tropical to sour to spicy, here are 10 ways craft brewers are putting a spin in their IPAs.

(MORE: Why Are IPAs Still So Popular?)

10. Agave

This cactus-like plant is native to Mexico and the southern United States and is the prime ingredient in tequila. It contributes a sweet and syrupy nectar and can enhance the natural malt sweetness in an IPA or double IPA. While balanced, it can lend just a little sweetness or accent to a citrusy IPA. To see the liquid product of this union, pour some O’Connor Brewing’s El Guapo IPA or Victory Brewing’s Agave IPA.

9. Lychee

Some flavors just don’t seem like they belong in beer, but somehow through art and experimentation, the brewer can exercise his or her art and make them blossom. Such is the case when a brewer adds lychee, small fruits the size of a large berry that taste similar to strawberries. When the bitterness of an IPA meets the sweetness of this fruit, the two have a symbiotic relationship with the sweetness making the bitterness behave and the bitterness encouraging the sweetness to let loose. To try this combination in a glass, pour some JDub’s Brewing’s Lychee IPA.

8. Buddha’s Hand

Known for its sweet zest, Buddha’s Hand looks like a human hand, and sections of its bulb are called “fingers.” It can be a challenge for brewers to get enough to come up with an entire commercial batch, but this one has potential when pairing a citrusy IPA or enhancing the already sweet malt backbone. To try this enlightening citrus, pour some Berryessa Brewing’s Buddha’s Hand IPA.

7. Brettanomyces

Always at home in a wild ale and a usual guest in some spontaneously fermented beers, Brettanomyces are a type of wild yeast that are not too common in IPAs — yet. While some brewers fear letting Brettanomyces into their facility, some have begun letting these yeasts make themselves at home in an IPA. Depending on the particular strain of Brettanomyces being used, any number of flavors can be contributed to the beer from barnyard to pineapple and beyond. The best way to sample the brewers brewtiful vision is to pour a sample of Stone Brewing’s Enjoy After IPA.

(MORE: Here is a List of the Top 50 U.S. Craft Breweries)

6. Jalapeño

IPAs are well suited to add depth to a spicy meal, but what happens when the IPA itself carries some Scoville units? This type of IPA can carry an extra layer of spice to an enchilada, and make a mean fondue or soup base, or just a suitable summer sipper. In a world where brewers are experimenting to find more pepper, the jalapeño has become a welcome addition into the world of IPA, providing a polite partner for those looking to combine hot and hoppy. For a spicy IPA, pour an Alaskan Pilot Series: Jalapeño Imperial IPA.

5. White Oak

In a world where every brewery seems to age beer in barrels, some beer drinkers are hasty to cast aside wood-aged beers that weren’t aged in barrel with a spirit like rum or bourbon. Craft breweries sometimes age beer on wood spirals, which contribute an immense amount of flavor and take less time to finish than a barrel-aged beer. White oak specifically infuses woody flavors like vanilla and coconut into a citrusy IPA and can lend notes of creamsicle and dessert. To try an IPA of this persuasion, pour a Cigar City White Oak IPA.

4. Gin Barrel

Another seemingly unusual combination of flavor matches a gin barrel with an IPA. What pours forth from this wooden vessel is an IPA that combines notes of oak, pepper, spice and vanilla with a citrusy and fruity beer. While bourbon, rum and whiskey have become mainstream, gin is out there asking to be experimented with. To taste test this, pour some of Gigantic Brewing’s Gin Barrel Aged Pipe Wrench IPA.

3. Wine Must

Born from mixing beer and wine together in a glass, this particular style hybridizes beer and wine, putting fermenting beer together with wine must, so they can begin their zymurgic journey at the same time. Pouring an intoxicating red color, this particular beer benefits from the marriage of Syrah grape must and a hoppy IPA. Since these mature together, the result is a unique vinous drink that can only be described by pouring a Dogfish Head Brewery Sixty-One.

(MORE: Alibi Ale Works’ Kevin Drake on Building a Brewery Without an IPA)

2. Mezcal Barrel

Mezcal is similar to tequila; it is simply the distillation of different types of agave (tequila is limited to blue agave) and made in different regions in Mexico. All tequilas are mezcals, but not all mezcals are tequila. As brewers look beyond traditional borders to find new nuanced vessels for their beers, mezcal offers a different path from traditional tequila. To try this spirited IPA, track down and pour some Mezcal Barrel Angel’s Trumpet from Adroit Theory Brewing.

1. Squid Ink

Capping off the list is the strangest IPA ingredient: squid ink. Wisconsin’s 3 Sheeps Brewing has a line of small batch beers where they look for unique ingredients and brewing challenges. They found both in this ingredient. The bottle says that the brewery wanted to brew something that had never been tried before.

“Squid ink, we found, darkens the beer and actually enhances the hop profile, along with contributing a slight briny character,” the brewery explains. Naturally, they brewed an earthy IPA to pair with this unusual ingredient. To dive into the briny deep of this beer, pour some 3 Sheeps Nimble Lips IPA with Squid Ink.

The spirit of IPA Day is going beyond the known into the unknown. Here is your chance to try that beer that you have always wanted to, but didn’t think you’d like. Just remember: beer is art and a brewer is a painter with a barley canvas. Without patrons, there is no art.

The post Challenge Your Palate with 10 Off-Kilter IPA Ingredients appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

First, it is the only brewery in the country that draws water from the same source where mermaids live (sort of). Weeki Wachee Springs State Park has been home to a live mermaid show for decades, and a holiday at the springs is mere miles from the brewery. In the small, mostly rural cities of Brooksville and Weeki Wachee, the springs, and the mermaids, are a landmark full of crystal clear waters that have brought tourists and popular attention to Hernando County.

Second, when the brewery opened in October 2015, it was the only operating brewery in Hernando County. That count is now up to two.

Marker 48 also put a twist on its crowdfunding campaign. The brewery didn’t ask for money, but for sweat equity in building this dream.

In all of these, the brewery and its staff have made an indelible mark on the community that they serve.

Marker 48’s Origins

Marker 48 Brewing was founded by Maurice and Tina Ryman, Hernando County natives and high school sweethearts who grew up in the same area as the brewery they now own together. The couple has two children and day jobs where they run a technology company that they also co-founded. Every summer they would travel with their two children in an RV around the country. As they visited more and more craft breweries, they would take note of ideas that they felt would work well in a brewery, if they ever were to open one.

On the way to opening a brewery, Maurice began to homebrew with the help of the man who would eventually become Marker 48’s head brewer, his brother-in- law John Myers. As Maurice, Tina and John grew their passion for craft beer, they began discussing the possibility of putting all the ideas they had seen in other craft breweries into a brewery of their own, and what it would take to realize that dream.

What they found next was a former mechanic shop with a great deal of potential for housing their dreams and a seven-barrel brewing system.

Crowdfunding with Beer

Transforming the rented mechanic shop into a brewery and beer garden was no small task. While other breweries were funding their own expansions, buildings and systems with crowdfunding, Maurice and Tina decided what they really needed most was help with labor. They offered their online supporters and Facebook friends a way that they could help the fledgling brewery and get rewarded: they could join the Founding 48 Club. This club would guarantee the member one beer each day for life in exchange for 40 hours of hard labor; members could also make a pledge that involved a combination of fewer hours of work as well as a financial donation. The members could pick which they would like to give and the members could choose from a series of days they would like to work. After signups, dropouts and additions, the club would end up with 72 members.

After volunteer signups were over, Maurice and Tina began transforming their space into a functional brewery. Maurice remembers showing up on the first Saturday the club was around: “I bought paint and four rollers, thinking a few folks would show up to help me. When I pulled up to the brewery there were 40 people waiting for me, looking to work.” He promptly texted his wife and asked her to pick up more supplies.

These were the days before the brewery had their brewer’s permit, and before the air conditioning was up and running. Maurice estimates that one Saturday of working with the Founding 48 would equal somewhere around a month’s worth of labor. And from that day forward, Marker 48 had 72 advocates around the area telling the people about their facility and their beer.

Maurice and Tina knew that they wanted to work on the “wow factor” of their space, so they made sure the beer garden was family- and dog-friendly and included extras inside and outside for patrons. Outside would include an overhead shade, cornhole and a walk-up bar made from an Airstream-style trailer. Inside would include a copper strip on a table that would prevent a patron’s beer from getting cold on that spot.

Opening day came on October 21, 2015, after months of labor from the Founding 48 helped make it happen. The first beer tapped was an homage to the community: Mermaid’s Milk Stout.

Bottle Release with a Twist

Six months after opening and pouring beer on draft, the Rymans decided that they wanted to do something unusual for their first bottle release. Since Weeki Wachee is known for its namesake springs, and the beer was being barrel aged, Maurice and Tina decided that they wanted to sink the barrel into the springs and age the beer in the barrel, but underwater. After brewing a double IPA to go in the barrels, they contacted a friend who owned property on the springs, and after some talk, the friend agreed. The beer itself was aged 48 feet underwater, in the springs, for four weeks. The beer was called “Spring Release” because it was literally released from Weeki Wachee Springs.

Maurice and a small staff hand-bottled the beer in 750mL bottles from the barrel. There were less than 450 bottles, and they sold out in less than a week.

Beer as a Force for Good

The Rymans also feel very strongly about using the brewery as a force for good in the community. Tina has developed Tap for a Cause, a program at Marker 48 that chooses a 503c nonprofit that fits charity criteria. The brewery then brews a beer for them on the pilot system and once that beer is tapped, all proceeds go to that organization. Past recipients have been People Helping People, the United Way of Hernando and the National Alliance on Mental Illness – Hernando. The brewery allows these groups to fundraise during the month to increase awareness and raise funds to help the needy in the community.

Where Else will the Beer Spring Up?

Feedback from the local community has been largely positive, and Marker 48 has plans to expand. While they have no plans to take over the world, the Rymans do plan to bring their beer to local bars and restaurants soon. During summer of 2016, the brewery has plans to add a 30-barrel fermenter and begin distributing their beer locally.

The post Florida’s Marker 48 Brewing: Craft Beer in the Land of Mermaids appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Curiosity, challenge-seeking, and a love of spirits has driven brewers to seek out the new flavors of tequila barrels so they can ply their trade. Each brewer is looking for something different, and to seek a tequila barrel is to accept the challenges that come with aging beer in one.

Barrel of Monks Brewing

In Boca Raton, Florida, brewer Kevin Abbott of Barrel of Monks Brewing has been working with tequila barrels to age his Belgian Tripel, dubbed “Owen.” Kevin’s goal, as with most brewers’ barrel projects, was to add complexity and create new flavors and aromas so that the combination of barrel and beer is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Kevin says he sought “the peppery spice that many tequilas offer to complement the phenolic characteristics of the yeast strain in that particular beer. Other notes of caramel and vanilla are also present in the finished beer that does very well with that particular style.”

One beer with tequila was not enough so after producing a limited run of Owen, Barrel of Monks Brewing took another shot at tequila and is now ready to bottle a tequila barrel-aged saison. In his second excursion, Kevin says he finds the “tequila flavor is much more restrained, but it did pick up some nice Brett character from the barrel.”

Wicked Weed Brewing Co.

North of the Sunshine State, Asheville, North Carolina’s Wicked Weed Brewing began working with tequila barrels primarily on their Dark Arts Tequila Barrel Aged Wild Imperial Stout and the Oaxacan, a barrel-aged smoked sour ale.

For Sour Production Manager Richard Kilcullen, the use of a tequila barrel has to mesh with “concept of the recipe. With spirit barrels, we start with a cocktail idea, deconstruct them and work backward from there.”

When Wicked Weed wanted to make a take on a “Last of the Oaxacan”cocktail, Kilcullen said the concept beer began its life as an amber sour, “brewed with smoked malts. It’s then laid to rest in Organic Blue Agave Tequila Barrels. The result is a nice blend of citrus acidity, smoke character, and slightly spicy finish. It’s as close as a beer can come to a cocktail experience.”

For Wicked Weed, the tequila barrel is a means to a flavorful end that matches a culinary purpose.

Avery Brewing Co.

In the Rocky Mountains, Avery Brewing Co. has also been working with tequila barrels in both sour and non-sour beers. Barrel Herder Andy Parker had a curiosity which turned into much more once he got ahold of a tequila barrel for aging.

Parker wanted to experiment with tequila barrels, so he says he and his staff “acquired our first four tequila barrels, we put a different beer in each one to see what would happen. Three of the beers worked. One was terrible. But in all four cases we picked up some radically different flavors than [when using] Bourbon barrels.” Avery’s barrel program has released four tequila barrel-aged beers in bottles to date.

AleSmith Brewing Co.

On San Diego’s sunny shores, craft beer veterans AleSmith Brewing Co. are preparing to release their first tequila barrel-aged beer during the first week of May 2016. Director of Brewery Operations Ryan Crisp says that he sought out tequila for Alesmith’s barrel projects because of the oak, vanilla and peppery notes combined with peppery, spicy and fruity notes. His biggest challenge is creating a unique blend of flavors between barrel and beer.

For his maiden tequila voyage, the brewing staff sought culinary inspiration from Mexican hot chocolate. The first beer from tequila barrels is a variant of their lauded Speedway Stout, dubbed Mexican Speedway Stout. The brewery says the beer is “aged in tequila barrels then blended with fresh Speedway infused with a special blend of Mexican coffee beans and fine Mexican chocolate balanced by warming earthy cinnamon.”

The Challenges of Working with Tequila Barrels

Tequila barrels are not without their challenges, and slightly different than the challenges presented by other barrels. Sometimes, problems can lie within the barrels.

Tequila Varieties

Kevin Abbott points to tequila varieties as potential roadblocks to the process. He is not always sure if he’s going to get Anejo or Reposado tequila, each of which has a very different flavor profile which can hinder consistency.

Limited Barrel Stock

Andy Parker mentions the challenge of acquiring a tequila barrel from limited stock, made more difficult by the practice distillers have of reusing their barrels.

Barrel Maintenance

Wicked Weed’s Kilcullen reflects on the maintenance required for tequila barrels. “Tequila barrels are older; maintenance can be more intensive in terms of repairing leaks, fixing hoops, etc.”

Finding the Right Beer

Andy Parker says that he might have an issue “making the right beer for the barrels. The flavors you get from tequila barrels can be a little polarizing. Tequila essence can come off as anything from lavender to pickles depending on the person’s palate.”

To age a beer in a tequila barrel, like any spirit barrel, is to accept the individual challenges that come with it.

While hurdles arise in barrel aging, the rewards are also flavorful. Thankfully, small and independent brewers are not deterred and continue to see opportunity instead of roadblocks.

As Alesmith’s Crisp said, which can be true of the entire practice of tequila aging, “We’re still exploring the possibilities, but I think there is a lot of potential.”

The post Spirit Quest: Aging Beer in Tequila Barrels appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The most difficult task for brewers looking to recreate such strong and nostalgic flavors like peanut butter is balance. How do you create the flavor and still ensure drinkability?

Here are just a few examples of brewers who accepted the challenge and created some amazing peanut butter inspired beers.

Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter | Willoughby Brewing Co.

When Willoughby Brewing Co.’s Brewmaster Rick Seibt took over brewing duties about five years ago, he wanted to make a beer that caught the attention of the Cleveland community. After doing market research on his own, he settled on a peanut butter beer but quickly realized that peanut butter could not be the only flavor in a beer.

“This is not a peanut butter beer,” is the first thing Rick says in his interview. “People tend to stop at the first part of the name. It is Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter. The beer is a balance between the flavors of peanut butter and fresh roasted coffee.”

Rick is passionate about making sure that each flavor has a part of the symphony but does not steal the show. The beer’s success has led him to explore an imperial version of PBCCP.

“The peanut butter is strong, but the porter has to support these flavors,” said Seibt. The finished product is about five percent alcohol and was so popular that they began making Nut Smasher, an imperial 11 percent alcohol version of PBCCP. “We can’t keep that one in stock. It has a different grain bill, but the same treatment we use for PBCCP.”

The peanut butter is strong, but the porter has to support these flavors.

PBCCP is the brewpub’s most-crowlered beer, and Nut Smasher goes into bottles, but sells out quickly—recently 900 bottles sold out in about two hours.

Rick’s recipe to spread the peanut butter flavor into this beer has won the brewery acclaim, but like a magician, he does not reveal his tricks. However, he does give two clues: First: “If you have a nut allergy, you should not drink this beer,” he says. Second: “Peanuts are very oily. Everything we do is in secondary fermentation.”

No matter how Rick gets the flavor to come through, he has won the support of the Cleveland beer community. So much support, Rick says, that he has a regular customer who will text him every time she tries the beer on tap and compare it to previous versions with feedback on the current batch.

Peanut Butter Stout | Rapp Brewing Co.

In Seminole, Florida, Rapp Brewing Co.’s Greg Rapp collaborated with local homebrewer Mike Gyarmathy to develop a peanut butter beer and decided to approach the project with a foreign export stout as a base.

To get the peanut butter flavor into the beer, Rapp uses dried peanut butter and cocoa powder. “We have recently adjusted the recipe to include only extracts and to tone down the Stout characteristics—less roasty/astringent, less bitterness; ingredients to accentuate the chocolate and peanut butter flavors,” Rapp says.

Rapp enjoys working with this beer but cannot seem to make enough, as he tries to make enough for taproom consumption as well as growler fills. “The only issue we have with the beer is that it takes over three weeks to complete fermentation,” Rapp says.

The beer is well received by the Tampa Bay beer community, Rapp says, especially after tweaking the ingredients. The beer is a mainstay of the small brewery’s taproom, and he brews frequent batches so that patrons can get growler fills. The beer has become so popular that Rapp has submitted to the Tax & Trade Bureau for formula approval so that the beer can begin distribution.

Sweet Baby Jesus! | DuClaw Brewing Co.

For DuClaw Brewing Co., the peanut butter beer that would eventually become a key member of their core lineup came as the winning entry in their H.E.R.O. Homebrew Competition by homebrewers Tony Huckestein and Doug Deleo.

“As promised in the competition rules, we brewed the beer [at DuClaw], and all sales (not just profits) went to charity. The beer sold so well we eventually brought it on as a mainstay,” remembers DuClaw Brewmaster Jim Wagner.

After selling through the first batch, Wagner decided to bring the beer on full time—with one tweak. “The initial homebrew utilized a powdered peanut butter which was later changed to a proprietary, all natural peanut butter extract.”

Once the beer was released and then re-brewed, it was an instant success. “We feel that was due to…the quality of the beer (which won us a 2014 Great American Beer Festival medal in the Chocolate Beer category), the uniqueness of the product when it came out for the first time, and, of course, the name,” said Wagner.

Another beer with a robust porter standing behind the peanut butter base, Sweet Baby Jesus! (what drinkers exclaim after the first sip) is now available anytime in DuClaw’s ten-state distribution area. Wagner says that the beer has grown to become a bestseller for the brewery.

Uber Goober | Short’s Brewing Co.

In Michigan’s northern frontiers, Shorts Brewing Co. created a peanut butter beer from an oatmeal stout. From humble beginnings in the Short’s Brewing Pub, Uber Goober gets an addition of real peanuts along the way. The label boasts “roughly a handful of peanuts in every glass” and, according to Short’s Brewing’s Beer Liberator Jon Wojtowicz, this was the first concept beer he pitched to the brewery.

“This idea came about while talking to Brad Kik during one of my pub shifts back in 2007,” said Wojtowicz. “I loved oatmeal stouts and noticed we didn’t do a ton of different stouts yet. Plus, I was pretty much living off of PB&J sandwiches at the time and thought that peanuts in a stout would be a killer beer.”

Joe Short created the recipe, and Wojtowicz recalls that making it was a bit of an adventure: “We did lose count of the malt bags and ended up adding a few hundred pounds more base malt than intended. We didn’t use enough rice hulls either when adding the oatmeal and the entire mash totally got stuck, which resulted in a 14-hour brew day.”

Despite its first misstep, Uber Goober was loved by the public, and, with the exception of a few bottling runs, the beer is now offered on draft only, and Jon says it sells out more quickly each year.

The peanut flavor in this one comes from the addition of dry-roasted, unsalted peanuts. These ingredients make the beer smell fantastic during brewing, but all of the fatty acids make the beer “a pretty unstable product.” This fact caused Short’s more headache than the brewing issue on the first batch. “This was one of the few bottle beers that we ever had to recall, back in 2009 or 2010—very tragic. Never bottled it after that. Stuck mash on the inaugural batch was likely a bad omen…”

True to the original peanut butter and jelly vision that Wojtowicz once had, Short’s also offers Uber Goober blended with Soft Parade any time the two are tapped together, pouring peanut butter and jelly flavors into one glass, with all of the nostalgia of childhood in its fermented glory.

Other Peanut Butter Beers

As is often the case with rarer beer styles, the majority of these peanut butter beers are only found at the brewery and not brewed year-round. Check in with your local brewery and see if they have plans for a peanut butter beer!

• Peanut Butter Vietnamese Speedway Stout | AleSmith Brewing Co. | San Diego, CA*
• Candy Bar Milk Stout | McFate Brewing Co. | Scottsdale, AZ
• Fat Alberta Imperial Stout | Throwback Brewery | North Hampton, NH

*Huge thank you to AleSmith for the amazing photography accompanying this post!

The post Peanut Butter Beer: Nostalgia in a Glass appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

But of course, we’re here to talk about hazelnuts in relation to craft beer. The popularity of Nutella has put a spotlight on the hazelnut and craft brewers are taking advantage of the ingredient’s popularity.

Here are a few beers out there for the Nutella lover in all of us:

Hazelnut Spread Porter | Brew Bus Brewing | Tampa, FL

Brew Bus Brewing’s porter combines the sweetness of hazelnuts with the roasty and malty goodness typical of the style. This beer was first poured at Hunahpu Day 2015, and met with such acclaim that Brew Bus decided to make sure fans got more. It’s the first Brew Bus beer to see large-format bottles and will continue to pour every year around World Nutella Day (February 5).

While this won’t coat a slice of bread as well as the hazelnut spread it’s modeled after, it would be an excellent addition to any cocoa-flavored dessert, like chocolate mousse.

Sardo Numspa | Cigar City Brewing Co. | Tampa, FL

When Cigar City Brewing wanted to develop a beer that mimicked the taste of devil’s food cake, they used hazelnuts to sweeten it to the desired level of chocolatey goodness. The beer uses an imperial stout base to lay down a sweet and roasty foundation, while hazelnuts help the chocolate-frosting character emerge.

Sardo Numspa is named as a reference to the villain in Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child. This sweet beast clocks in at 11.5 percent ABV, making it the perfect sipper in colder weather.

Hazelnut Nectar | Rogue Ales | Newport, OR

By adding hazelnuts, Rogue Ales has created a unique take on the brown ale. Based on a recipe created by a homebrewer friend of Rogue’s brewmaster John Maier, this roasty beer has a sweet and chocolatey taste that lasts into the finish. Rogue’s “tree to table” motto is especially poignant here, as Oregon is the center of hazelnut production in the U.S.

Birra Etrusca Bronze | Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales | Milton, DE

While the other beers on this list allow hazelnuts to shine as the star of the show, Dogfish Head’s Birra Etrusca Bronze proves hazelnuts aren’t divas — they also do well as a part of the flavorful orchestra.

Part of the brewery’s Ancient Ales series, Birra Etrusca Bronze is modeled after the blends and mixed-source beers once made by the Etruscan people of north and northwest Italy. It gets some of its fermentable materials through an addition of hazelnut flour, plus a blend of pomegranates, myrrh resin, three types of honey (wildflower, chestnut and clover) and some whole-leaf hops.

Why “bronze”? This beer was aged in bronze vessels to approximate what it may have tasted like to its original consumers some 2,800 years ago.

Grey Monday | The Bruery | Orange County, CA

The Bruery merges an enormous amount of hazelnuts with its immense Black Tuesday Imperial Stout to create Grey Monday. For added intensity, the whole creation gets a boost of flavor and alcohol as it ages in bourbon barrels.

The result is much more than a pun on Black Tuesday’s name. Hazelnuts add an extra dimension of chocolate, which makes Grey Monday perfectly pairable with desserts or strong dishes (The Bruery suggests hazelnut biscotti or a strawberry torte).

The Bruery likes to say that the original Black Tuesday pairs well with the end of the world. If that is the case, then Grey Monday would be best served with a supernova — the alcohol alone (18.5 percent ABV) is enough to top off any evening with just a few sips.

Other Breweries Working with Hazelnuts:

• Chocolate Hazelnut Porter | Heretic Brewing Co. | Fairfield, CA
• Hazardous Hazelnut Porter | Rip Current Brewing | San Marcos & San Diego, CA
• Hazel Brown | Sam Adams | Boston, MA
• Hazelnut Porter | Dangerous Man Brewing Co. | Minneapolis, MN
• I’ll Have What She’s Having Chocolate Hazelnut Imperial Stout | Evil Genius Beer Co. | PA
• River Driver Hazelnut Porter | Sea Dog Brewing Co. | ME, FL, NH

The post Craft Brewers Embracing the Nutella Craze appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Recently, many craft brewers have been inspired to combine the flavors of chili peppers and chocolate beer, and people are taking notice. Several of these beers have achieved cult status.

The combination of chocolate and chili peppers evokes a taste of history dating back to the origin of chocolate in the Americas, before European contact. The Aztec and Mayan people were known for making a liquid chocolate mixture from cacao beans that included other ingredients, like corn and local chilies, to curb the bitter taste of the beans. When this local drink was offered to Spanish explorers, they took it back to Europe with the addition of sugar—and the world’s chocolate obsession began.

Here’s a look at a few of the chili and chocolate beers being made by America’s small and independent craft brewers:

Theobroma | Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales | Milton, DE

This beer has become a staple of Dogfish Head’s Ancient Ales series. Based on analysis of pottery shards in Honduras, this beer recreates the recipe for the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink, dating back to 1200 B.C.

The beer gets its name from the scientific name for chocolate, Theobroma cacao, which translates to “food of the gods” in Greek. The combination of chocolate and chili peppers is usually seen in a stout, but the Dogfish interpretation is a light-colored ale that uses Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs. The addition of chilies marries the sweetness with a somewhat spicy and earthy tone.

Chocolate Oak-Aged Yeti | Great Divide Brewing Co. | Denver, CO

Chocolate Yeti began, as many great beers do, with an experiment. The Great Divide Brewing Co. brewing team wanted to add chocolate to its Yeti Imperial Stout. Coincidentally, one of the brewers brought in a Mexican-style chocolate bar that had “a healthy dose of spice,” according to brewery director Ryan Fox. The inspiration from the chocolate led the brewers to incorporate cayenne into their beer to showcase what spice and chocolate can do together.

“We chose cayenne pepper mostly because we felt it was good for heat without imparting too much pepper flavor,” says Fox. “We can purchase several different heat ranges that really helped in getting the balance correct.”

Great Divide recommends pairing this beer with raw oysters, grilled New York strip, chicken mole, blue cheese, crème bruleé or chocolate raspberry mousse cake.

Jackie O’s Oro Negro | Jackie O’s Pub and Brewery | Athens, OH

Jackie O’s brewer Brad Clark took inspiration from beers like Cigar City’s Hunahpu, Westbrook’s Mexican Cake, and Perennial’s Abraxas to create a new twist on his Oil of Aphrodite Imperial Walnut Sout.

Clark had previously made a stout using Eastern spices, and he could not resist the temptation to make a chocolate-and-chili-pepper version he dubbed Oro Negro. Jackie O’s regulars were thrilled with the idea, and it became very popular on draft and during bottle releases.

The recipe has seen further development as Clark has played with the amount of heat in the beer. Testing both habanero peppers and ghost peppers showed mixed results. Ultimately, brewery staff felt that increased heat did distract from the overall balance, flavor and experience of the beer.

To balance the flavor, Clark uses organic toasted cacao nibs. “If you let the beer warm a bit, the pepper starts to emerge,” he says. “There is a slow building heat in the back of the throat that begins to emerge about half-way through the glass.”

What’s next for this flavor combination? Clark has a bourbon barrel-aged batch in the works for 2016.

Mexican Cake | Westbrook Brewing | Mount Pleasant, SC

Westbrook Brewing’s Mexican Cake was created in honor of the brewery’s first anniversary in January 2012. It was so popular that it now makes an annual appearance, including several barrel-aged variations, that sells out faster than a Black Friday doorbuster.

All of this came from a very personal place for marketing director Morgan Westbrook and her husband.

“Mexican Cake started as a beer that Edward and I brewed as a party favor for our wedding,” Westbrook says. “We were inspired by picking a destination for our honeymoon. At the time, we thought Mexico because it would be a quick flight. Mexico has spicy food—like the peppers we cook a lot with—so we decided that would be a great add-in.”

For good measure, the Westbrooks added habanero peppers to the mix of vanilla, cinnamon and cocoa nibs to plumb the spicy depths of this stout.

Cigar City Brewing | Hunahpu | Tampa, FL

Cigar City Brewing has helped to put the city of Tampa on the national and international map with the release of Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, a beer that sprang from the mind of CCB head brewer Wayne Wambles.

According to Wambles, the inspiration for Hunahpu came from an unexpected source: an ice cream that combined mole ripple with cayenne-dusted pecans.

“I had never experienced a cold dessert that was also spicy at the same time,” Wambles recalls. “I began to wonder about the origins of chocolate consumption and how it might have been originally implemented as a food source. That is when I came across a reference to Mayan usage of chocolate, which also included chiles and other spices.”

Wamble’s research eventually led to a recipe that combined the spicy power of guajillo, ancho and papilla chilies—which he calls “the holy chili trinity of mole”—with cacao nibs, vanilla and cinnamon in a roasty, viscous imperial stout.

The release of Hunahpu has now become a one-day celebration of craft beer for the Tampa Bay area, and the culmination of Tampa Bay Beer Week.

These are just a few examples of how American craft brewers are putting unique new spins on this historical recipe. As brewers continue to explore the intricate blend of sweet and spicy, beer lovers will have even more chances to try beers with the classic combination of chili and chocolate.

The post Chili and Chocolate Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

#IPAday offers beer drinkers the chance to get out of their standard rut and try a new beer. Breweries around the U.S. and the globe are choosing to showcase new and different angles on the classic IPA style. Is there that tap handle that has always caused curiosity, but the beer has never wound up in your glass? Today is that day!

In the spirit of #IPAday, here are 10 variations of the style to pour in your trusty IPA glass today (and every day):

American East Coast-Style IPA

These IPAs showcase the citrus and pine flavors that America has grown to love—the flavors that have consistently made IPA the most entered category at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. Like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or The Princess Bride, these are the go-to classics that yield new twists every time they’re enjoyed.

East Coast-Style IPA Examples

• Bell’s Two Hearted Ale | Bell’s Brewery Inc. | Kalamazoo, MI
• Tropicalia IPA | Creature Comforts Brewing Co. | Athens, GA
• Head Hunter IPA | Fat Head’s Brewery & Saloon | North Olmsted, OH
• Elevated IPA | La Cumbre Brewing Co. | Albuquerque, NM

West Coast-Syle IPA

This is the style traditionally suited to California and the West Coast that eschew the traditions of IPAs. Brewers of these hop bombs back down on the malt and go full throttle on the hop flavor. These IPAs are the seductive and outgoing sisters of the traditional IPA.

West Coast-Style IPA Examples

• IPA | AleSmith Brewing Co. | San Diego, CA
• Wanderlust IPA | Breakside Brewery | Portland, OR
• West Coast IPA | Green Flash Brewing Co. | San Diego, CA
• Blind Pig IPA | Russian River Brewing Co. | Santa Rosa, CA

Session IPA

Session IPAs are the current craze–mixing the high-octane flavors of an IPA with the low gravity of a session beer. Imagine a Toyota Camry that blasts off like a full-throttle Ferrari. These IPAs have massive flavor but the alcohol content that allows a drinker to enjoy several and not feel the adverse effects. Sometimes these blur the line between pale ale and IPA, but the style is taking hold and looking for new faithful followers.

Session IPA Examples

• Time Bomb Session IPA | 7venth Sun Brewery | Dunedin, FL
• Easy Jack | Firestone Walker Brewing Co. | Paso Robles, CA
• DayTime | Lagunitas Brewing Co. | Petaluma, CA
• Pinner Throwback IPA | Oskar Blues Brewery | Longmont, CO

Fruit IPA

These IPAs bring together what on the surface may seem like an unlikely combination: fruit and IPA. Depending on the fruit, sometimes the combination can seem natural, like grapefruit and IPA, and other times it can appear forced like strawberry jalapeño. Occasionally these are not every drinker’s favorite, but sometimes the combination ends up being a cult hit. It could be the beer version of Rocky Horror Picture Show or Rocky 5, but no one knows until it winds up in an IPA glass.

Fruit IPA Examples

• Pink-I (raspberry IPA) | Bonfire Brewing | Eagle, CO
• Aprihop | Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales | Milton, DE
• Tree Shaker Peach IPA | Odell Brewing | Fort Collins, CO

Imperial or Double IPA

The big brother of all the previous styles that has been around the block. These brash and braggadocious IPAs have no problem expressing machisimo in the form of lupulin. A double IPA is an IPA that has read the warning signs and has decided to run with scissors, climb to the top rung or pull the tag off the mattress while still in the store.  These beers have and ABV from seven percent and up and probably a few tattoos as well.

Imperial  IPA Examples

• Pliny the Elder | Russian River Brewing Co. | Santa Rosa, CA
• Resin | Sixpoint Brewery | Brooklyn, NY
• Enjoy By IPA | Stone Brewing Co. | Escondido, CA
• Dreadnaught Imperial IPA | 3 Floyds Brewing Co. | Munster, IN

Wet Hop IPA

For someone who enjoys IPAs, forget Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year is wet hop beer season. Since hops are usually pelletized, a purist would argue that something is lost when hops go from flowers to pellets. Well, purists have been answered: hops are trucked or overnighted from field to brewery and a narrow window of hours exists to get the hops into the beer-making process.

Wet Hopped IPA Examples

• Fresh IPA | Fort George Brewery | Astoria, OR
• So Fresh & So Green, Green | Terrapin Beer Co. | Athens, GA
• Hop Harvest Series | Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. | Chico, CA
• Hop Trip IPA | Deschutes Brewery | Bend, OR

Wood-Aged IPA

In the brewer’s hands, this style can be a marriage made in Valhalla. Like barbecue or chainsaw whittling, different woods can change the finished product in flavor and appearance. Many brewers have tried their hands with an IPA and an unlikely wood and come out with a new favorite beer to show for it.

Wood-Aged IPA Examples

• Barrel Aged IPA | Blacktooth Brewing Co. | Sheridan, WY
• White Oak Blueberry IPA | Cigar City Brewing | Tampa, FL
• Rumble (French and American Oak) | Great Divide Brewing Co. | Denver, CO
• Oak Aged Unearthly IPA | Southern Tier Brewing Co. | Lakewood, NY

Black IPA

Why should IPAs be limited to those showcasing colors in the lower SRM scale?  For several years now, the Great American Beer Festival has judged black IPAs, those hoppy dark beers that join stout roastiness with IPA hoppiness like a hero who is both tender and steel-hearted. The spirit of #IPAday is going beyond the comfort zone, trying something new—why not expand horizons with this style-bending Pacific Northwest favorite?

Black IPA Examples

• Back In Black | 21st Amendment Brewery | San Francisco, CA
• Dubhe Imperial Black IPA | Uinta Brewing Co. | Salt Lake City, UT
• Black IPA | Alaskan Brewing Co. | Juneau, AK
• Weez | Maine Beer Co. | Freeport, ME

Coffee IPA

This one sounds like it would be a barista’s nightmare, but lovers of this style swear that opposites attract. The smelting of coffee and hops is one invention that may seem unusual, but the style is growing in popularity. Many brewers have even teamed up with local artisan coffee roasters to ensure that the coffee chosen is perfect for the brew.

Coffee IPA Examples

• Coffee IPA | Fate Brewing Co. | Boulder, CO
• Hoppucino | Coppertail Brewing Co. | Tampa, FL
• Stone DayMan Coffee IPA | Stone Brewing Co. | Escondido, CA

Eclectic IPA

These are the IPAs that don’t really fit into a specific subcategory categories. These beers showcase ingredients of many and varied origins, and embody the spirit of experimentation that so many craft brewers embrace. Get out there and try something new, especially on #IPA

Eclectic IPA Examples

• Galaxy White IPA | Anchorage Brewing Co. | Anchorage, AK
• Hopped Up Goose Juice Rye IPA | Hoppin’ Frog Brewery | Akron, OH
• El Guapo Agave IPA | O’Connor Brewing Co. | Norfolk, VA
• Tongue Ninja Sour Double IPA | South Street Brewery | Charlottesville, VA

Like the many faces of the beer, the spirit of #IPAday is one with infinite possibilities. At best, it is a day when old friends and new beers meet and memories are made, at worst, well, a beer or two can be crossed off of the “I wonder what that tastes like” list.

With craft brewers all over the world going all out to give patrons a new IPA to test drive, it seems like a good day to get over bitterness and pour something hoppy.

The post 10 Sub-Styles of IPA You Can’t Miss appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

A New Idea is Seamed

OB was one of the first craft brewery to experiment with 12-ounce aluminum cans, so it seems fitting that the Longmont, Colo., brewery is where the story of the 32-ounce crowler begins.

After working with their partners at the Ball Technology and Innovation Center, OB began tooling around with canning devices and devices for home canning. After a few tweaks, the team came up with a prototype of an on-demand seaming machine to can one beer at a time as needed. This machine, called a crowler—a combination of cans and growlers—would have a distinctly different future from its all-glass brethren.

According to Crowler CANministrator Jeremy Rudolph from OB, “We were working on Chub Nitro can filling and performance trials when I was introduced to a few old tabletop, household machines that you see folks use for putting tomatoes, etc. into steel cans. Roy and Ed from Ball were seeing if they could use it for aluminum beverage cans. We started modifying parts and over time found a setup that worked perfectly with Ball’s 32-ounce cans. We saw a great opportunity to engage folks over the benefits of cans, as well as to possibly discontinue glass growlers ourselves, so little over a year ago we put the machine in our Longmont tasting room and tested it out full time. It was an immediate hit.”

The container itself, the 32-ounce crowler, is trademark property of Ball Corporation, while the machine is made through the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry. OB has exclusivity and sells the machine through the brewery. OB also helps get the machine to the masses by ordering crowlers from Ball—a minimum order is 60,000 cans—and splitting them into smaller batches before reselling them to crowlering partners.

From the premier of crowlers about two years ago, the idea picked up steam from Longmont out to the wider world. The specifications of the machine were changed to make it more affordable for breweries trying to sell beer to go, and what came out was a relatively cost-effective machine for breweries of all sizes.

How Does a Crowler Compare?

A crowler starts its life as an open can—one without a lid. It is then hand-labeled and the beer name is written on the label. In order to fill it, a tube is placed from the beer faucet to the bottom and the vessel is filled with CO2. After purging, the empty crowler is then filled with beer and quickly seamed. The end product is a 32-ounce can of beer.

As far as the consumer is concerned, the upside of a crowler over a glass growler is one of cost, portability and cleanliness. Crowlers can go on beaches and bike trails where glass is prohibited. As an added plus, since material costs are considerably lower, most breweries offer crowlers for $1 over the cost of a fill. Cycle Brewing of Saint Petersburg, Fl., offers $6 crowlers of almost any beer in their repertoire on Mondays.

A crowler will last as long as a growler under the same conditions. The reusability of a glass growler can also work against it: folks who do not take their growlers in to be cleaned often enough risk a residue or funk forming in that growler, contributing undesirable flavors to the beer. A one-use crowler is cleaned and sanitized each time, allowing for every beer it contains to shine.

The downside is the one-and-done nature of a crowler—the aluminum containers lack the reuse features present in a glass growler. (Note: while the crowler is a one-use container, it is recyclable and made from 68% recycled content, according to OB.) Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to choose between the crowler and its glass siblings.

New Horizons for Cans

As more breweries embrace the crowler, the cans continue to take beer-to-go to more places. OB has sold roughly 100 crowler machines in the U.S., five in Australia, and one in the United Kingdom.

Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing doubled down on crowlers by being the first brewery to screen-print their own crowlers to reduce the amount of time employees spend hand-labeling each blank can. Now the brewery places their own order for pallets of 60,000 crowlers in a batch, attesting to the way the crowler has taken off in Florida. In the Sunshine State alone, craft breweries from Tallahassee to the east coast, Tampa to Boynton Beach have enlisted in the crowler revolution.

Outside of the Southernmost State, crowlers reach from sea to shining sea as breweries from Chicago to California, Arizona to Ohio have added the machines to their lineup with popularity growing daily. The crowler even has its own Facebook page (maintained by OB), with added information growing every few days as new breweries or even coffee roasters join the crowler-canning revolution.

Popping Open the Future

While OB has the information and the drive to help others bring cans to the masses, his schedule continues to fill up as the popularity of the crowler grows. The goal is to continue to bring cans into the lives of those interested and to support them with the canning knowledge. Jeremy has had to add a team to respond to all of the inquiries. He warns any breweries who plan on seeking out a crowler machine: his voice mail box is often full from the response to this project. Still, the mission lives on—Jeremy is working to ensure that all who seek out the crowler can get brewery-fresh beer to the masses.

The post Crowlers Are a Kick in the Glass appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The wheat beers brewed around Berlin have been appreciated as far back as Napoleon’s time, his troops dubbing them “the champagne of the North.” Jackson remarked that when he asked to sample the beer in its unsweetened form, “I have sometimes been viewed as a madman. The syrups are considered necessary to moderate the intensity of the acid, although it has its own charm….”

Whether in historic Germany or contemporary American renditions, this style of beer, dubbed Berliner weisse, is beloved by fans and shunned by detractors even today.

Jackson went a step further and predicted the perfect pairing of Berliner weisses with the Sunshine State. In his beer guide, he posited a match made in heaven: “Berliner weisse beers are exceptionally thirst quenching, in much the same way as…lime juice in Florida.”

Jackson’s comment now seems prophetic. Though this style originated across an ocean, it has indeed made its way to the southernmost (and hottest) state in the U.S.

While Berliner weisses are perfect hot-weather beers, brewers in Florida have taken the concept of using sweet syrups and flavors to a new level. Southern brewers now incorporate those flavors into the beer prior to fermentation. This practice results in an uber-tart, low-pH wheat beer with striking color and large body, while maintaining the low alcohol presence of a Berliner weisse. These beers may be born of Berlin, but they are quite different from their old-country parent versions.

Berliner Weisse Before Florida

While Florida brewers took the idea of a deeply-fruited Berliner weisse and ran with it, there is little credence to the argument that the idea originated in Florida. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery (Milton, Del.) bears the honor and distinction of being the first American brewery to add a hefty dose of fruit to the style in their Festina Peche Berliner Weisse.

Festina Peche debuted in 2007, in the heat of the Delaware summer, before any of Florida’s current Berliner brewers opened their doors. While Festina Peche is arguably not as aggressive as Florida’s style of Berliner, Dogfish founder Sam Calagione could not have known his new approach to an old style would spread through an entire state, let alone a state hundreds of miles away from Delaware.

The Notion Spreads

In tracking the history of the nascent Floridian style of Berliner weisse, finding the very first iteration of the style is a herculean task. One of the first Florida beers to showcase the fruit-forward, tart wheat style was Peg’s Cantina Rainbow Jelly Donut (RJD) Berliner Weisse around mid-2009. Once RJD went on tap, word of the style spread through online forums like Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate as the beer developed a buzz from fans and detractors alike.

Miami then-homebrewer and recent brewery owner Johnathan Wakefield was quoted in a Tampa Bay Times article about RJD, saying:

“It was a big curve ball thrown at beer drinkers. Drinkers were used to drinking huge beers, barrel-aged this and barrel-aged that. It took off because it was something completely different. It definitely struck a chord, and it’s growing. There’s not a lot of stuff out there that you can drink at four and a half percent alcohol that is refreshing and complex.”

RJD’s cult following and experimental nature prompted other Sunshine State brewers to taste the style and to try the idea. Berliner weisse spread around the state like a tropical-fruited storm.

Florida’s craft brewers may not have come up with the idea of a Berliner weisse, but they quickly took the style in new directions of color, flavor and acidity. Each brewery has a different vision for the style and its key aspects.

Doug Dozark of Cycle Brewing, which spun off from Peg’s Cantina, says it’s the combination of high fruit content and bright acidity that make this style so unique.

“The most important aspect is probably the fruit character, that’s what set this style apart and got people excited,” says Dozark. “Florida has a climate that allows us to grow myriad tropical fruits and have access to fresh fruit almost all year, and I think gives us a great opportunity to experiment along those lines. Without the bright acidity, the fruit would come across flat, so while bright acidity is found in lots of beers and is not unique to this style, it is the engine that drives the train.”

On the other hand, 7venth Sun Brewery’s head brewer Justin Stange takes a more nuanced approach to Florida Berliner weisse. To Stange, the most important aspect is balance.

“As much as I appreciate the wild, intense fruited and sour versions I have tried across the state, I prefer a Berliner that I can drink more than one glass of per sitting,” Stange says. “I’ve recently started referring to the sour styles produced at 7venth Sun as ‘session sour’ in flavor. By that I mean they are middle-of-the-road tart and refreshing, not overbearing. I look at it like hot sauce, which I am a huge fan and collector of: I find myself favoring the ones in the middle heat range more than the hottest ones in my collection.”

A Drinkable Style, A Contentious Name

While all who drink the beer seem to enjoy it, the name of the style has been under debate since a change was first proposed. The question of whether to call the beer a “neo-Berliner weisse” (as Dogfish Head called Festina Peche), a “Berliner weisse,” a “Floridian Berliner weisse,” or simply a “Florida weisse” is so contentious as to drive both supporters and detractors to drink.

When asked about the style’s divisive name, RateBeer executive director Joe Tucker was quoted in the Tampa Bay Times saying, “There’s been an ongoing stink about it at RateBeer—it’s not a traditional Berliner weisse because it’s brewed with the fruit, the fruit’s not added at the end. There are purists who would never put the sweet fruit in early. [The style] has gained a lot of attention.”

Justin Clark, vice president of Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing, puts it another way: “If brewers in the Pacific Northwest can call their beer a Cascadian Dark Ale, then why can’t Florida brewers call theirs a Florida weisse?”

Cigar City produces several Florida weisse beers and has added ‘Florida Weisse’ to the description on their draft board. When asked if this was a conscious decision, founder Joey Redner gives a wry smile and says he was ”just going with the crowd, following the stampede.”

Florida Weisse Popularity Continues to Grow

Enthusiasium for these deep-hued tart ales continues to grow among Floridian craft beer drinkers. As Johnathan Wakefield began to build J. Wakefield Brewing in Miami, he created a crowdfunding campaign on CrowdBrewed.com. In his video, Wakefield promised to devote 25 percent of his production schedule to Florida weisse, based on availability of seasonal fruit grown in the Miami area.

While Cycle Brewing has cut back its production of Florida weisse, in April 2014, assistant brewers at Cycle brewed a limited production of Ecto Cooliner-Weiss, a green Florida Berliner weiss made to taste like Hi-C’s Ecto-Cooler drink.

7venth Sun’s Stange says he believes that the style could spread widely along with the growing popularity of a technique called kettle souring, which greatly reduces the potential for lactobacillus infection. In the meantime, 7venth Sun has continued to not only make Florida weisse, but has also earned the title of first Florida brewery to can a Berliner weisse.

From Berliners to Berliner Bash

Once several Florida brewers made the decision to produce and support the style, Dozark and Wakefield banded together to organize a festival dedicated to the style, and Berliner Bash on the Bay was born in 2012.

Now in its third year, the festival most recently boasted ten commercial breweries and two breweries-in-planning, and the name of the festival has changed to the Florida Weiss Bash. The 2015 festival will be hosted at J. Wakefield Brewing in Miami.

While makers of these tart treasures agree that the Berliner weisse did not originate in Florida, they will say that the style’s new direction is uniquely Floridian.

Florida Berliner Weisse Examples

Champ Juice Tangerine | Green Bench Brewing Co. | St. Petersburg, FL A recent contributor to the Florida craze, this thick and orange beer lets no light through. It bites with a tart tangerine tang that finishes with a crisp acidity as fresh as Saint Petersburg itself. For fun, brewer Khris Johnson prepared a treatment of Champ Juice for Berliner Bash 2014 with habanero peppers to combine heat, sweet and pucker.

Dos Años Kumquat | Cigar City Brewing | Tampa, FL One of Cigar City’s first attempts at the style, Dos Años combines the sour quality of a Berliner weisse with the deep color and the lovable, heavy fruit character of copious colorful kumquats.

Key Lime Sublime | 7venth Sun Brewery | Dunedin, FL This Florida Berliner weisse combines the light body of a Berliner weisse with a heavy dose of key lime for a citric surprise amongst the already acidic style. Key Lime Sublime promises to go easy on the first try, but then becomes a cult favorite.

PFDF (Passionfruit/Dragonfruit) | J. Wakefield Brewing | Miami, FL One of the staples of the style, PFDF pours an almost florescent pink while erupting with an overabundance of its namesake fruits. Acidic and a bruiser of a beer, it has a take-no-prisoners approach and consistently ranks among the top Berliner weisses in the world on RateBeer.com and BeerAdvocate.com.

Rainbow Jelly Donut | Peg’s Cantina and Brew Pub | Gulfport, FL One of the originals of the Florida weisse style, this hazy beer was so tart that it had to be retired. Toward the end of its lifetime, RJD never lived long on tap lists and was the star of the First Annual Berliner Bash on the Bay in Gulfport.

The post Florida Berliner Weisse: The Champagne of the South appeared first on CraftBeer.com.