All Good Things Come in Threes

This month’s release of house beers has me really excited, because the beers each have some really special elements that make them unique. I got to sit down with Andy to talk about the design phase, products used, and aging process defining the beers that you’ll find on tap this month. 

Hubris

We brew Hubris, our wet hopped ale, every year during the hop harvest in North America. Ensuring the freshness of the hops is crucial to producing a great wet hopped ale, so the production window of this beer is carefully planned. The Beer Team decides on a variety of hops they’d like to use a month or two in advance. This year they chose Cascade hops from the Yakima Valley. When the hops are fully developed, the grower harvests, boxes, and ships the hops to us all in the same day. The grower provides the Beer Team a window for the hops to arrive so they can plan their brew schedule around the shipment. At the time I’m writing this, Andy is brewing Hubris. When the 30 lbs. of Cascade hops arrive, Andy will put them into a huge nylon bag which he’ll hang from one of the cleaned and sanitized tanks. They’ll rack the beer into this tank and steep Hubris in the fresh hops (like giant beer tea) until they’re ready to move the beer into a serving vessel. The professionals call this dry hopping; I prefer “beer tea” apparently. Hubris will be available in house (with all its beer tea glory) beginning September 14th. 

Ceres

Named for the Roman goddess of agriculture and grains, Ceres is set to release later on this month. Ceres will be the Co-op’s second member-owner designed beer, the first being Elba, our spiced wheat ale that received a medal at the Great American Beer Festival. To design Ceres, the Beer Team gathered responses from an online survey to member-owners. Based on the responses, the Beer Team determined that we should make a beer with a nice malt backbone and character and chose a mixture of rye, wheat, and pilsner malts. At a design forum, member-owners participated in a guided sensory analysis to sample different hops, deciding that Hallertau hops would best complement the Ceres’s malt character. In considering what would best accentuate the malts and bring out the quality of the hops, the Beer Team decided to make Ceres the Co-op’s first lager, sourcing yeast from Live Oak Brewing. We thank the member-owners who participated in designing this beer and hope that this beer meets the tastes and preferences of the membership when it’s released later this month.

Aberrant No. 2

The Beer Team will also release the 2nd edition of its small batch barrel aged sour series in September. Originally acquired from Balcones Distillery, the barrels have been aging this current version of Aberrant since February 2014. When it comes on tap today, you should expect a nice malt character, some residual sweetness, mild tartness, and a lot of character from the barrel. Because the barrels are already inoculated with three strains of cultures, expect that future versions of the Aberrant series to be ever changing, with complexities developing from the worts used to make the beer. The Beer Team will place the 31 gallon batch on tap today and expect to have it on tap for a couple weeks. 

We’re releasing some very interesting house beers this month, and we’re very excited to share them with you.