EVEN SHARKS NEED WATER
Brewing New England style IPA’s and Pales is something we have been practising behind the scenes for a couple of years now. Initially we worked on recipes and techniques garnered from our homebrew days without actually tasting the real deal. Subsequently we have really enjoyed Cloudwater’s take on the style and can’t wait to get stuck in to Magic Rock’s tinnies too! Even Sharks Need Water is our first serious foray in to the style.
The new wave of IPA’s being brewed in the states originates in Vermont and the northeast in general. Breweries like Hill Farmstead, Treehouse, Trillium, Other Half and Veil are the masters of the style and having recently had the chance to taste some beers from these guys we have managed to fill in the last remaining gaps in our recipe development.
These beers are hop monsters but not in the dry and bitter kind of way. Everybody talks up the turbid murky appearance of said beers but this is always secondary to the 4 main characteristics of the style:
- Fruity English yeast character that amplifies the hops
- Thick, creamy but light mouthfeel
- Incredibly soft finish with a residual sweetness
- Low bitterness
For Sharks we settled on a very vigorous English Yeast strain that provides a light fruitiness to the beer and attenuates lower than US-05. With this batch we dry hopped the beer during the last few points of active fermentation with Citra, Chinook and Centennial hops. The yeast and hop interaction both creates new and exciting hop flavours but also causes the yeast to almost completely lose its flocculating characteristics. In a nutshell this beer remains cloudy for a long time with a high yeast cell count in suspension. These yeast cells are attached to the hop oils imparted through dry hopping. The result is a juicy hop and yeast driven beer that tastes of sherbet refresher sweets with lashings of peppery mango, lemon and grapefruit. Smooth, full and fun to drink!
To help accentuate the fullness derived from our yeast choice we used a Chloride heavy water profile and piled in some flaked grains. We will continue to release iterations of this beer with the aim to eventually have an alternate beer range that runs parallel to our core products. Look out for new ‘Vermont style’ beers: ‘High Level Kink’, ‘Roy I Want A Hilux’ and ‘Maybe One More PSI’ in the not too distant future.
Malt:
- Simpsons Golden Promise
- Crisp Flaked Barley
- Crisp Torrified Wheat
- Superfast Porridge Oats
- Simpsons caramalt
Hops:
- Centennial
- Chinook
- Citra
- Columbus
- Magnum
Yeast: WY1318
Colour = 10.2 EBC
Final Gravity = 1.017
Even Sharks Need Water was originally released for Indy man beer Conference in October. Now on its debut full release in Keg and Can
