The Future Fortress BeerWorks | Photo courtesy of Fortress BeerWorks

“As huge craft beer fans ourselves, we’re beyond excited to become a part of Houston’s quickly expanding craft beer scene, and eager to help slake the thirsts of the beer drinkers of our great city,” said head brewer and co-owner Dion Billard. “It’s an invigorating time for craft beer in the greater Houston area. We look toward our neighbors to the west at Lone Pint in Magnolia, to the north at B52 Brewing, Copperhead and Southern Star in Conroe, and to the south at 11 Below as inspiration, and can’t wait to make beer that will further cement north Houston’s reputation as a can’t-miss craft beer destination.”

Dion says Fortress BeerWorks expects to launch with a Double India Pale Ale, Blonde Ale, Witbier and the brewery’s signature Smash IPA as they open their doors, with seasonals and special releases throughout the year. Dion also said that Fortress will offer Crowlers, and may also enter the 16-ounce can sale arena down the line as well.

Fortress has plans to send some product out to retail, though expects to spend much of its focus on providing the best possible experience for its patrons at its taproom. The brewery expects to be open Thursday through Sunday at the outset, with expanded hours an eventual possibility. Additionally, they will partner with local food trucks to ensure there is always a food option for taproom visitors.

Local commercial real estate firm NAI Partners arranged the lease transaction for the space. NAI has become something of a go-to firm for craft brewery leases, having also completed Great Heights’ lease on Wakefield Drive last year. (Editor’s note: Larry is VP of Marketing at NAI Partners.)

You can follow Fortress Beerworks on Facebook at @FortressBeerworks, and Instagram at @FortressBeerworks.

The post Fortress Beerworks Aims to Open in Spring This Fall first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Fortress Beerworks Aims to Open in Spring This Fall appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

SpindleTap Juiceton, a leading example of the NEIPA style in Houston. | Photo: Larry Koestler

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Houston Beer Guide was kind enough to publish “Who Will be Houston’s Tree House or Trillium?” It’s even harder to believe how much progress has been made since I wrote that essay.

My initial hope was that a newcomer to the Houston craft beer scene would come online sometime in 2017 with a near-exclusive focus on New England-Style India Pale Ales. It turns out we’re inching ever closer to the launch of a brewer that has indeed stated its desire to make the NEIPA a core focus, alongside huge Imperial Stouts, in the form of Humble’s Ingenious Brewing, whose long-anticipated doors will hopefully be flung open sometime during the first quarter of 2018.

What I didn’t expect was how many already-existing Houston breweries would not only embrace the style in 2017, but end up making some of the most memorable beers of the year, several of which could hold their own among the upper echelon of brewers of the style. And perhaps the most surprising sidebar of all surrounding Houston’s NEIPA craze of 2017 is that this is one of the few instances I can recall where Houston is not only ahead of Austin in a craft beer category, but absolutely smoking our rival to the west. Outside of Pinthouse Pizza, Austin’s breweries seem to be mostly reluctant to explore the style.

While we’re not quite at what I would consider the best-case scenario: fresh cans of NEIPA available seven days a week, something only Boston can currently claim, Houston has made impressive strides in a very short amount of time. For a period of time over the summer into the fall, Brookshire’s Baa Baa Brewhouse was canning a new NEIPA on a near-weekly basis. Conroe’s Copperhead removed some of the most annoying parts of NEIPA culture, the lines and FOMO, and implemented a wonderful online ticketing system. And SpindleTap began to ramp up its production of new iterations of the style while also helpfully adopting the online-ordering & pick-up-at-your-convenience route, delivering some of my favorite beers of the year in the process.

Progress in 2017

In light of all of the progress Houston has made, here’s a quick look at some of the breweries that have helped build a local world of NEIPA (even if some of them would rather not refer to the style under that nomenclature) that didn’t even exist a year ago:

– B-52, technically the very first in the greater Houston area to produce a hazy, juicy IPA back in November/December 2016, continued to delight palates in 2017, first by canning its popular Wheez the Juice, and following that with subsequent crowler and can releases throughout the year. The brewery has also added milkshake variants of many of its NEIPAs to its offerings.

– Whole Foods has been the city’s most steady producer of NEIPAs, along with accompanying milkshake versions of their beers, with new releases more or less weekly since early summer. Whole Foods and B-52 teamed up several months back to produce a hugely dry-hopped DIPA called Whole Payload, and rumor has it that both breweries will be teaming up again in the not-too-distant future, perhaps with some additional friends.

– Sigma Brewing made waves with its 4XDH Medina Sod, and recently released its most-hopped beer ever, The Apparatus.

– Great Heights became the first Houston brewery ever to launch with an NEIPA, Fruity Pellets, and recently released a more amped-up version, Fruitier Pellets.

– No Label threw its hat into the ring, releasing the successful Sittin’ Sidehaze over the summer, and delivering a second NEIPA at the end of he year, Phaze Two.

– Copperhead brought several big, juicy IPAs to the table while still staying true to the brewery’s DNA, with Feeding Frenzy, Citraddicted and Alpha Serpentus all whetting hophead whistles.

– Baa Baa Brewhouse, one of the the smallest breweries in the greater Houston area, went from brewing the first beer in Houston specifically referred to as a New England-Style India Pale Ale, to creating a small frenzy over the summer with its (very) limited canning runs of its small-batch NEIPAs. I know I’m not the only one hoping that the owners, who still run the brewery as a part-time endeavor, decide to go all-in, especially if they keep producing beers of the caliber they delivered in the second half of 2017. An increase in the hours they are open would certainly be welcome. Baa Baa is one of the most difficult breweries for me to pick up beers from, despite being the second closest brewery to my house. Their typical hours, Saturday from 5-8pm, fall right around dinnertime for those of us with young families. And they often underestimate the demand for their beer, leaving folks out of luck upon arrival, but they should be commended for taking advantage of online ticket sales when demand is expected to be exceptionally high. While I’m wary of stoking the hype fires too dramatically, the leveling up in beer quality and the discomfort caused by limited production that Baa Baa has been going through reminds me of the early days of Tree House in 2012. I suppose there are worse problems to have.

– SpindleTap was the first locally to really nail the hallmarks of what I look for in the NEIPA style with Houston Haze, and things only got better from there. After spending the first few months post-Haze focused on production of their new flagship, the brewery started branching out this past summer, and has since released some stellar examples of what the style can be, including the recently re-released Hops Drop, Draped Up, 5% Tint, and Operation Juice Drop and Juiceton, the latter two of which were my top two local beers of 2017. With the brewery set to release its most heavily-hopped beer ever at the end of January, Heavy Hands DIPA (plus another batch of Juiceton), 2018 is already off to a stellar start.

Raising the Bar in 2018

Now with all said, there’s still plenty of work to be done. For every successful local NEIPA, there’s been at least one that didn’t quite work out the way the brewers likely intended it to. That’s to be expected any time an entire city’s worth of producers begins trying its hand at something that no one had really taken a stab at before, but there’s also going to be less room for error going forward. While I’ve never been afraid to call it like I see it, I’ll also admit to occasionally going into cheerleading mode because I want the style to succeed locally.

Going forward, simply brewing a beer that may carry some of the characteristics of the style without the depth and flavor to back it up may not be good enough. There will be less room for forgiveness for stumbles as the beer drinking community gets increasingly exposed to top-tier examples of the style. With several very good NEIPAs having been brewed locally, not to mention geographical rival Parish elevating its game to what many would consider an elite level, Houston’s breweries will have to continue to iterate on and perfect their techniques while developing new and even more flavorful recipes to continue winning the hearts and minds of the city’s juice fiends.

The good news is, a very solid foundation has been laid, and (I still can’t believe I feel this way from where my head was at 365 days ago) I’m confident that Houston has the talent and passion to not only meet the needs of the city’s lovers of the style, but enter the national dialogue as a sought-after destination of juice bombs as well.

The post One Year Later: Houston Breweries Have Risen to the NEIPA Challenge first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post One Year Later: Houston Breweries Have Risen to the NEIPA Challenge appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Photo: Larry Koestler

With the six-month anniversary of my challenge to local breweries to start brewing the hottest beer style in the country — the New England-Style IPA (NEIPA) — rapidly approaching, now seemed like as apt a time as any to check in and see where things stand, especially in light of the unexpectedly impressive amount of style-related activity we’ve seen during this timeframe.

It’s worth noting that there seems to be something of a dividing line among local breweries, with some fully embracing the NEIPA nomenclature — and it’s not going anywhere, with sites like BeerAdvocate and Untappd recognizing its ubiquity and distinctiveness from the classic West Coast-Style IPA and opting to finally categorize it as its own thing — while others seem reluctant to hop on what they presumably perceive as a regional bandwagon phenomenon, and instead have chosen to offer up their own interpretations that are generally described with non-location-based adjectives like “hazy.”

Regardless of what school of thought you subscribe to on the topic of “NEIPA” taxonomy, there have been a slew of beers released in the past six months that many would agree live up to the hallmarks of the NEIPA — aromatic, juicy, soft, creamy, hazy, massively citrus/tropical-forward, and relatively minimal bitterness. Also, while some consider “milkshake”-style beers to be a part of the NEIPA canon — which is totally fine by me! — I personally do not, as I find the flavor profiles of those beers to be different enough that I’m not quite convinced that they belong in the same category (though I could very well be persuaded otherwise! Admittedly I do not have anywhere near as much experience with milkshake IPAs), and so this list does not include those beers.

By my count — and, try as I might, it’s possible I may miss a few, as there really have been a lot of releases — the following should be a mostly comprehensive list of local beers that have been brewed in the style (this list only includes officially released beers, not pilot batches):

• 8th Wonder – S.L.A.B.
• B-52 – Wheez the Juice (16-oz. cans)
• Baa Baa Brewhouse – Cat and the Fiddle
• Baa Baa Brewhouse – Cow Jumped over the Moon (12-oz. cans)
• Baa Baa Brewhouse – Ennie (12-oz. cans)
• Baa Baa Brewhouse – The Little Dog Laughed
• Copperhead – Feeding Frenzy (12-oz. cans)
• Copperhead – Kangaroo Killer
• No Label – Sittin’ Sidehaze
• Sigma – 4X DH Medina Sod
• SpindleTap – Houston Haze (16-oz. cans)
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Detonate
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – DL Double (hasn’t historically been one, but recent Untappd checkins would seem to indicate a revised recipe)
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Haze Phaze
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Hop Explorer X
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Hop Explorer XI
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – NEAF
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Overcast
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Scattered Showers
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Spottie Oaty
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Steady Sippin’
• Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. – Tropical Storms

Which ones do I like best? Drop me a line on Twitter and I’d be happy to have a conversation about it.

The above doesn’t even include forthcoming Ingenious Brewing Co., which expects to open in Humble later this summer, and which I previewed back in February. The duo has had a busy spring, setting up free tastings across the greater Houston-area and further tweaking their already-delicious recipes while adding a slew of additional beers to their portfolio. Highlights include a revised Hop Delivery System, which is now a Double IPA, and Northeast Houston IPA, also retooled as a DIPA.

Photo: SpindleTap Brewery

And lastly, I’m excited to announce that I’m collaborating with SpindleTap and Boston homebrewer Rich Wein on a hazy, juicy double NEIPA called Juiceton, which should be out in cans in the first half of August. Juiceton will be a hazy, juicy AF DIPA clocking in at 8.0%, with the creamy, soft, pillowy mouthfeel you love, propping up heroic quantities of Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe. Hit with multiple rounds of dry-hopping, this worthy successor to Houston Haze will deliver that massively tropical and fruit-forward hop flavor we all crave.

The post Houston Embraces the Haze Craze first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

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SpindleTap Brewery’s Houston Haze NEIPA

When I wrote “Who will be Houston’s Tree House or Trillium?”, I figured we’d see some breweries gradually approach the style and brew some reasonable attempts, but that it would take some time before we saw a true player on the hazy AF juice front. SpindleTap said “f%7* all that noise” and is on the cusp of releasing the most flavorful and true-to-style local NEIPA I’ve had yet. I really enjoyed B-52’s Wheez the Juice, and hope to see its continued production, and Whole Foods Market Brewing Co. also delivered a very tasty IPA last week called NEAF. But SpindleTap’s Houston Haze has thrown down the gauntlet and set a new local standard.

Bursting with orange and grapefruit flavor from heaping amounts of Citra, and pineapple, mango and other tropical fruit notes from Galaxy, Houston Haze is a 6.5% double-dry-hopped delight. It’s close to a textbook example of the kinds of beers I’ve been hoping to see brewed in Houston and that prompted me to write the original essay. It’s also the first of the local stabs at the style that I’ve consumed to truly nail the mouthfeel — one of, if not the most critical component of NEIPA. Houston Haze features a soft, full-bodied creaminess with just the right amount of astringency. The body helps amplify the beer’s character while serving as a canvas for the flavor complexity, a result of the interplay of the heavy post-boil hop load and the London Ale III yeast strain.

And perhaps the most important signifier for me when drinking NEIPA is that, when done right, it lingers on the tongue long after the last sip, coating the palate in lupulin love and making it nigh-impossible to not go back for more. Houston Haze absolutely does this.

Release Details

Recognizing the fragility and best-consumed-fresh nature of NEIPAs, SpindleTap is only selling Houston Haze at the brewery (10622 Hirsch Rd, Houston, TX 77016). Sales begin Friday, March 17, at 10 a.m. SpindleTap only canned 80 cases, and there is a two (2) four-pack-per-person limit. Four-packs are $16. And, in case you miss out this go-round, they’re already planning to brew it again next week. Happy hunting!

The post SpindleTap Nails it With Houston Haze first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post SpindleTap Nails it With Houston Haze appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Ingenious Brewing Co.’s Hop Delivery System, a double dry-hopped IPA

Out of all the local brewery responses to the “Who Will Be Houston’s Trillium or Tree House?“ essay, there was one that carried an unexpected air of intrigue, given that it stemmed from a producer that hasn’t even opened yet. Amid the thread of a Facebook post about the article, one commenter innocuously announced the existence of a forthcoming brewery, alongside said brewery’s intention to make regular production of multiple Northeast-Style IPAs a primary focus and citing Trillium and other northeast legends as key influences. The brewery’s name? Ingenious Brewing Co.

Ingenious Brewing is the brainchild of a Houston native, Justin, and his business partner/brewmaster from Philadelphia, Mike, who met seven years ago while Justin was in grad school in Pennsylvania. The two bonded over their shared love of the emerging craft beer scene in New England, including the explosively hoppy beers that made Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist famous. This later led to a love affair with the current kings of the NEIPA, Trillium and Tree House, as well as other hazy heavy hitters like Tired Hands.

As Justin began making plans to move back to Texas for his career, he expressed his surprise to Mike that no local Houston breweries were making beers in the tropical AF, hazy, creamy NEIPA style. Out of this conversation came the inspiration to bring the juice to Houston, and Ingenious Brewing was born. Shortly after this, Mike — whose background includes a decade of home brewing, along with collaborations with several local PA brewers, moved to Houston and began laying the groundwork for what would ultimately lead to the construction of a new brewery just northeast of the city in Humble. While the brewery hasn’t announced the address quite yet — the closing is imminent — all of the equipment is ready to be installed and the vast majority of permits have been approved, and the duo hope to open the brewery’s doors this May.

I recently had the privilege of getting to try a handful of Ingenious’s test batches, and while I am concerned about setting unreasonable expectations, I will say this: if you are an insatiable hop-requiring animal with a severe case of lupulin lust and a fan of the double dry-hopped turbid juice that’s being produced in New England and the greater New York area, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by what Ingenious intends to bring to the table.

I tasted four(!) different NEIPAs, each of which boasted distinctive fruit-forward flavor profiles that showcased the soft, creamy body and mouthfeel the style is known for. Humble Galaxy is — you guessed it — a 6.5% ABV Galaxy-drenched IPA fermented with Conan yeast. The 6.5% ABV Northeast Houston IPA is something of a hybrid, with generous helpings of Simcoe providing a robust West Coast-Style pine flavor profile (supported by El Dorado for good measure) while retaining the Northeast-Style pillowy body. Breaking things up was an absolute beast of an Imperial Stout, the sublime Barrel-Aged Ice Cream Sundae. Brewed with cacao nibs and strawberries, it was shockingly smooth and easy to drink for a stout checking in at 15% ABV.

And lastly we had what Justin expects will be their flagship, a double dry-hopped beaut called Hop Delivery System, a 6.4% ABV IPA brewed with monstrous amounts of Citra, Galaxy and El Dorado, and a Citra Dry-Hopped Hop Delivery System (both fermented with style vanguard London Ale III). If you’ve read me previously you know I am gaga for Citra-hopped beers (Double Dry-Hopped Fort Point and Julius are my two desert island brews), and while both HDS IPAs were excellent, I enjoyed the regular Hop Delivery System the most, as the interplay of the three hop varietals presented an overwhelmingly tropical flavor and an added layer of complexity.

While there is still a ways to go, I feel comfortable saying that Houstonians are going to be in for a treat once Ingenious is up and running, and their eventual plans to start canning 4-packs of 16-oz tallboys to be sold on-premise only to ensure the freshest possible consumption should be music to NEIPA lovers’ ears.

The post Ingenious Brewing Is Poised to Fill a Hoppy Void in Houston first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Ingenious Brewing Is Poised to Fill a Hoppy Void in Houston appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Apparently I should write about things I want to see happen more often. Since publishing “Who will be Houston’s Trillium or Tree House?” a handful of our area breweries have gone public with their intentions to attempt to brew a beer closely adhering to the style hallmarks — huge tropical fruit flavor thanks to obscene amounts of post-boil dry-hop additions during whirlpool, fermentation and/or under CO2 pressure of uber-popular citrusy hops like Citra, Galaxy, Mosaic, Nelson, Amarillo and El Dorado; super-soft, creamy and juicy body/mouthfeel as a result of the interplay of the water treatment, specialty grain bill and London Ale (1318) or English Ale (007) yeast strains; and minimal (but still present) lingering bitterness due in part to almost no kettle hop additions — of the supernova that is the Northeast-Style India Pale Ale (NEIPA), or at least their interpretation of such.

Baa Baa Brewhouse was among the first to respond, and I enjoyed their initial stab at it, which they are now tweaking in preparation for a more scaled-up release on March 4. Katy’s No Label then announced last week that they are taking a stab at a double dry-hopped New England-Style IPA; as did Spindletap (while also coining #HoustonHaze); it was mentioned in the comments of my Cow Jumped Over the Moon review that Sigma is also planning one (though I haven’t seen an official announcement anywhere yet); and there are a couple of forthcoming breweries with exciting plans whose beers I am very eager to try. In the midst of this flurry of activity, Conroe’s Copperhead Brewery also announced the release of their own double dry-hopped Double IPA, Feeding Frenzy, and were kind enough to invite me out to try it.

Brewed with copious amounts of Citra, alongside Comet, Amarillo and Apollo, Feeding Frenzy announces itself immediately with its huge tropical aroma. It’s a fairly deep orange in appearance, with Fawcett Maris Otter and flaked oats in the grain bill, and pleasantly hazy. Flavor-wise the citrus is robust and plentiful; there’s absolutely no mistaking this beer for anything but Citra-dominated. And it is deceptively, dangerously easy to down for the 8.0% ABV. In fact, it may well be the tastiest Houston-brewed DIPA I’ve had — I actually said the same thing last time I had a Copperhead DIPA almost a year ago, and it’s clear owner and brewmaster Seth Earnest knows his way around hops.

Of course, you’re probably wanting to know whether I thought it was a good representation of a NEIPA. And, my answer is that it’s actually not an NEIPA (nor did Seth say it was one). Granted, Feeding Frenzy was brewed utilizing many of the aforementioned NE-style techniques (and these days specifically calling out double dry-hopping is a signifier in the northeast in particular), but the beer was also fermented with Chico (or American Ale) yeast, which, while historically hailed for its clean character, doesn’t lend itself to the creamy/juicy/soft mouthfeel that is a critical component of the style. As such, Feeding Frenzy still finished decidedly West Coast for me, with a bit of a harsher bitterness than I’d want in an NE-style beer. Seth mentioned to me that for the next batch, which will be appropriately scaled up, he plans to pitch Conan yeast instead, which is best known as the strain that made Heady Topper the most sought-after beer in the world three years ago. I’ll be curious to see what Conan does to Feeding Frenzy, although in my experience, the yeast strain really needs to be either 1318 or 007 to nail the Northeast-style mouthfeel.

That all said, I want to reiterate: it was still a very good beer. And ultimately it doesn’t even matter what I think as the beer was an unequivocal success in their taproom this past weekend, prompting Copperhead to add a new batch to its brew schedule roughly every other month going forward. And there’s even more great news for fans of beer in cans (a.k.a. everyone): while the next batch of Feeding Frenzy will be available in 4-packs of 12-oz. bottles to-go directly from the brewery, Seth intends to start canning all of their hoppy beers in the not-too-distant future, with flagship Striker IPA first up to hit six-packs of 12-oz. cans, eventually followed by Feeding Frenzy later on down the line.

The post A look at Copperhead Brewery’s Feeding Frenzy IIPA first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post A look at Copperhead Brewery’s Feeding Frenzy IIPA appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

photo: @larry_koestler

My recent essay on the greater Houston area’s relative lack of beers brewed in the hottest style in the country, the Northeast-Style or New England-Style India Pale Ale (NEIPA), ended up striking more of a chord than I’d hoped, with a handful of local (and forthcoming) breweries coming out of the woodwork revealing near- and longer-term plans to try and slake the thirst of the insatiable double dry-hopped-lusting masses.

One such brewery in particular, Brookshire newcomer Baa Baa Brewhouse, even went so far as to publicly accept the challenge via video, and released a NE-Style Pale Ale called Cow Jumped Over the Moon this past Sunday. While Conroe’s B-52 Brewing released Wheez the Juice back in December, and Eureka Heights produced Business Time last month, neither brewery had explicitly called out or categorized either beer as Northeast-Style in any of their marketing (as far as I can tell, anyway), making Baa Baa Brewhouse the first local brewery to brew a beer in the style and also refer to it as such (“NEIPA” was even the style descriptor on the brewery chalkboard). And with Baa Baa Brewhouse playfully answering the bell, conveniently being located on my side of town, and being perhaps the most kid-friendly brewery around with a fully dedicated play area for children, I knew I had to take the beer for a spin.

Hopped primarily with Galaxy (with Columbus and Magnum for bittering), the first thing you’ll notice is that the beer mostly looks the part. Color-wise it’s a deeper orange — almost bordering on brown — than many of the best-known examples of the style, and proudly turbid, closer to the Hoof Hearted Egg Drop Soup family of NEIPAs. Aromatically it was a bit dull — always a surprise when a double dry-hopped beer is lacking in aroma — but the beer was probably served too cold, because I also found the overall flavor profile slightly muted during the first few sips. The beer really revealed itself as it warmed, with the soft, juicy mouthfeel NEIPA style hallmarks taking center stage. Galaxy imparted a subtle fruitiness, but didn’t assault the palate with a tropical fruit basket explosion; I’m not sure I would’ve been able to blindly pick out the fact that it was a Galaxy single-hop. The 5.7% ABV also likely played a bit of a role in subduing the taste for me — don’t get me wrong, I adore a flavor-bursting American Pale Ale, but having been on a steady diet of double dry-hopped seven-to-eight-percenters from up north, my perception of just how flavorful a given beer might be is admittedly a bit skewed. There was also a very subtle estery note I was picking up that I wasn’t wild about, but didn’t detract from the overall experience. While NEIPAs are known for being lightly carbed (relative to other styles), this beer was also a bit undercarbed, as astutely noted by the fellow hophead I met who said he drove 40 miles from the city just to try the beer (proving my hypothesis that they will in fact come if you build it).

While the above may sound overly critical, on the whole I enjoyed Cow Jumped Over the Moon, and applaud Baa Baa Brewhouse on a solid first effort. The fact remains that virtually no one locally has even tried to produce something in this style yet, and this was by far the closest anyone has come in the Houston area that I’m aware of. If you’re going in expecting Tree House/Trillium-level insanity, don’t — very few breweries come out of the chute lighting the world on fire. The brewery themselves candidly shared that while they were proud of this effort, they’re excited to take what they’ve learned and continue to make even better beer. I’ll drink to that.

The post Review: Baa Baa Brewhouse’s Cow Jumped Over the Moon – Houston Area’s First NEIPA first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Review: Baa Baa Brewhouse’s Cow Jumped Over the Moon – Houston Area’s First NEIPA appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

photo credit: Instagram user @marylandmob

The Northeast-Style IPA Spreads its Wings

Last April, with a good deal of fanfare (at least within beer geek circles), The Veil Brewing Company in Richmond, Virginia, flung its doors open for the first time on a Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m.

Why does this matter to a primarily Houston-based audience of beer lovers? For starters, The Veil wasn’t just another brewery. With previous stints at The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead and more than one apprenticeship at Cantillon, Veil Co-Founder, Co-Owner and Brewmaster Matt Tarpey boasted one of the most impressive CVs ever of anyone opening a new brewery in the United States.

While Richmond, home to both the highly regarded The Answer Brewpub and Triple Crossing Brewing, wasn’t exactly devoid of quality craft beer options, per Good Beer Hunting part of the driving force behind the eventual launch of The Veil was a desire to do as follows:

“import a bit of what was happening in the Northeast down to The River City. People were willing to make the drive up, surely they’d welcome locally made beers of a similar style.”

Ostensibly, Tarpey and co-founder Dave Durrance’s goal was to produce hoppy beer on par with the heavyweights of the Northeast, minimizing the need to have to travel halfway across the country or spend countless hours and dollars arranging trades to acquire the hugely tropical, hazy AF, creamy, soft-bodied canned IPAs taking the beer world by storm (I favor calling them Northeast-Style IPAs, or NEIPA, but New England-Style IPA is also acceptable).

And true to their mission, The Veil came out of the chute guns blazing, boasting not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different canned beers available ON OPENING DAY, with hoppy pales as three of the four offerings, and announced that they would release fresh cans almost every Tuesday thereafter. I don’t follow The Veil closely enough to know exactly how fast their cans move during a given week, but my general sense of it is, if not the day of release, they appear to sell through the bulk of their canned product within a couple of days.

While The Veil is among the more high-profile examples, an increasing number of breweries throughout the country have already implemented or begun to ape this model of ultra-fresh, double dry-hopped, canned IPAs sold almost exclusively on-premise to unreal levels of success. At this point even more casual beer consumers are likely familiar with the stories of how difficult it can be to procure even half a case (if you’re lucky!) of Tree House beers in Monson, MA; how a lengthy line forms weekly in Brooklyn for Other Half Brewing’s canned hoppy delights; and how the weekly can releases at Tired Hands in Ardmore, PA, have gotten so popular that people have lined their empty chairs up in lieu of waiting themselves to try to assure a place in line after they get out of work.

So What Does This Have to do With Houston?

As anyone familiar with my rants on Twitter and occasional essays on the topic knows, I have been at my wit’s end hoping that one of our fine city’s locally-based purveyors of fermented alcoholic beverages would take a shine to the Northeast-Style India Pale Ale.

What does a Northeast-Style IPA taste and/or look like, and why is it any different than a regular old IPA you can buy at the supermarket? I’m so glad you asked. What sets NEIPA apart from its West Coast-style brethren is as follows:

• preposterous amounts of fruit/tropical fruit hop flavor—as a result of the majority of (MASSIVE) hop additions coming late in the boil, post-boil and during the whirlpool PLUS multiple rounds of POUNDS of dry-hopping (sometimes under CO2 pressure)—which generally results in what many refer to as a “juicy” drinking experience (though I’m beginning to tire of seeing “juicy” or “juice” utilized as a descriptor);
• creamy, soft-yet-full bodied mouthfeel (due in part to the specialty grain bill);
• a deeply opaque appearance that can often resemble a glass of orange juice (as a result of the intermingling of the increased hop polyphenol load, proteins and yeast). Haze is not necessarily a critical component of nailing this distinctive flavor profile, BUT in my experience many of the beers that do look like OJ frequently are among the best-tasting in their class; and,
• a citrusy, punchy-yet-pleasant finish that coats the tongue in lupulin lust, resulting in your taste buds sending a signal to your brain’s pleasure center that you will keel over and die from anticipation if you don’t take that next flavor-overloaded sip as fast as humanly possible.

photo credit: @larry_koestler

One of the problems with this beer style is that, once you get a taste of it, it’s really hard to go back. Last year I drank a ton of IPAs, Double IPAs and American Pale Ales from Boston’s Trillium Brewing—in my opinion the finest producer of this style of beer on the planet—which, while resulting in an incredibly enjoyable drinking experience, also comes with significant downsides, as (a) their beer is so flavorful that it makes pretty much anything else available on store shelves in the India Pale Ale category taste like nothing; and (b) being only available at their brewery locations in Massachusetts makes their beer insanely expensive and logistically time intensive to procure for those that do not live nearby.

A Focus, Not an Afterthought

During the past few months a small handful of Houston breweries have released beers that have purported to feature certain techniques and/or ingredients that are hallmarks of brewing the style—though in fairness to these breweries, they haven’t gone quite so far as to explicitly state “this is our attempt at a New England-Style IPA” but rather their own interpretation of such—but in my experience if you’re going to fully nail the flavor profile that’s making all the hopheads swoon, you need to go all the way. And I don’t believe anyone’s gotten there yet. It’s not like I’m expecting Trillium-level exceptionality here—that’s not a realistic standard for any brewery in any city—but I don’t think it’s out-of-line to expect someone at some point to produce a reasonable approximation of the style.

That said, I recently realized that I’ve been looking at this situation the wrong way. I’ve wanted already-existing local breweries in Houston to take a stab at a style that, in all reality and much to my chagrin, probably doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense for them to even try. I applaud those that have done so. If there’s one thing the Houston beer scene has shown, it’s that locals will support almost any brewery and beer that is produced. If there was such a thing as ranking a city’s support for local craft breweries, Houston would probably be number-one in the country. And so if local breweries are already experiencing success without taking a stab at this admittedly very expensive style to produce—and also not being pushed by their patrons to experiment—then from a business standpoint, why fix what isn’t broken?

However, I believe that as Houston beer consumers continue on their hop journey, and are eventually exposed to the insane flavors coming out of areas like the Northeast (and also now across the country; even breweries on the West Coast are starting to abandon their overly bitter Double IPA ways in favor of the new Northeast normal, with Monkish, Mumford, Kings and others leading the charge in the greater LA area), at some point the pent-up demand will be too great. Heck, being an IPA lover in New York City is like being a kid in a candy store with how quickly breweries have gotten onboard the canned hazy IPA on-premise-sale model. Almost none of the breweries now canning even existed three years ago to this day, and none were canning yet. Now on every single weekend in NYC there is at least one guaranteed can sale — at Other Half — with seven(!) other local breweries offering semi-regular on-premise sales — Threes, Finback, Interboro, LIC Beer Project, Greenpoint Beer & Ale. Co, SingleCut and KCBC — not to mention several of the outstanding breweries in the greater NYC area — Peekskill, Rushing Duck, Barrier and Sand City — also providing hyper-fresh absurdly delicious canned offerings. Three years ago, NYC was almost literally Houston with regards to a lack of canned hazy IPAs. Local breweries recognized they could capitalize on hopheads’ willingness to travel great distances to secure their beloved liquids, the market quickly corrected itself, and everyone won. Now my biggest challenge whenever I travel back to my hometown is figuring out how many cans I can realistically fit in our luggage. And this all happened in less than three years!

I have to imagine at some point there will be enough people like me who love hugely hopped IPAs whose needs aren’t being met locally and who are tired of having to import their beer from the Northeast. This will create a significant opening for whichever genius decides to be first to the Houston market with a brewery that makes NEIPA a core if not outright sole focus of their beer program—similar to the way The Veil hit the market in Virginia with canned NEIPA right out of the gate—and not as an afterthought. The absolute, very last thing Houston needs is yet another brewery opening with Ambers, Blondes, and other styles that do nothing to push the flavor envelope.

If You Build It…

I know one of the biggest concerns/impediments to getting this done in Houston is the fact that this style of beer is extremely expensive to make (I’ve also spoken with some folks who are concerned about replicating the water profile of the Northeast, but there’s tons of information available about treating your water to approximate NE-Style IPAs, and I know it can be done because a buddy of mine homebrewed an exact replica of Bissell Brothers’ Swish, one of the finest DIPAs on the planet). I know about the cost firsthand because I am a co-owner of a craft brewery based in New York City—Third Rail Beer—that released an IPA brewed in this vein and it was the most expensive beer we’ve ever produced by a longshot. The cost of the pounds of hops per barrel during the two rounds of dry-hopping frequently employed by the standard-bearers of the style would make Scrooge McDuck blush. As a result of that price, the cost is passed on to the consumer. $16 four-packs of 16-ounce cans has become the norm throughout much of the Northeast and New England. In fact, even a $16 four-pack is starting to become antiquated, as the higher ABV pales dosed with lupulin powder are routinely commanding $18-$22 for four cans of beer.

Now I’m not necessarily suggesting the Houston market is ready for the $20 four-pack (though it might be!). While I would happily pay that for beer that could approximate what Trillium is doing, I recognize that I am outlier. BUT, I’m also not the only one. Houston is a massive city, and while as we have established, the vast majority of beer drinkers locally may not be familiar with the NEIPA style or breweries that make it, there are also a lot of beer geeks in Houston, and that audience is only growing. And yes, a $4-$5 can of beer might be looked at by some as crazy talk, but when you consider the bulk of sales of canned IPAs are taking place on-premise at their respective breweries, cutting out the middleman, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a new Houston brewery to take a chance on pinning their business model on massively dry-hopped IPAs, putting them into cans, and charging a premium (also, a $4 can remains a great deal when you consider craft pints are now anywhere from $6-$10 in Houston). As long as the beer is very good—and arguably even more importantly, not overproduced (think roughly 200-250 cases per batch)—it’s difficult to envision this model not working.

Two years ago I probably would’ve said the idea of launching a brewery with a business plan calling for the majority of sales to occur on-premise isn’t the most financially sound strategy ever. And while no one should enter the craft beer business expecting to instantaneously replicate what someone like Tree House has done in selling out of every drop of beer they make every week (the best-case scenario by several orders of magnitude), what’s the point of opening a new brewery and feeling like you have to have 10 different styles of what everyone already expects you to be producing, just to keep the doors open? For those who think they need Ambers and Blondes to ensure money comes in the door, in any given week Tree House cans in the vicinity of 2,000 cases of (almost exclusively) the haziest, juiciest, dry-hoppiest IPAs on the planet, and grosses somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 per week, all without a drop of liquid touching the distribution tier. Again, ultra-best-case-scenario, but the monetary rewards are there for the individual or team that can pull this style off successfully. One final potential roadblock to launching an NEIPA factory in Houston is the 10,000-barrel limit that comes with a brewpub license (a necessity in Texas to sell on-premise), which I could see some viewing as an impediment, but if anything I think that the limit benefits a style that many agree is best consumed within a month or so of being canned (also, 10,000 barrels isn’t exactly no beer — it’s the same amount currently produced by Tree House on an annual basis, and if a Houston brewery brewing this style hits that production level and is selling out of everything it makes weekly a la Tree House, I’d file that under “good problems to have.”).

Then once they’re established, all this hypothetical NEIPA producer needs to do is release a new IPA or two every week by subtly tweaking the hop varietals utilized and/or dry-hopping schedules (with beer drinker promiscuity at an all-time high, having something new to offer CONSTANTLY is essential; hell, The Veil hasn’t even been open for a year and has a staggering 92(!) beers in the BeerAdvocate database), and watch the money roll in!

People might not initially line up like they do at Other Half, Tired Hands or Tree House, but if the beer is worthy—and available in relatively limited quantities—they will eventually. Someone in Houston just needs to take a “Field of Dreams”-style leap of faith. Even with The Veil’s pedigree there were no guarantees that the people of Richmond would line up for their beers and buy up almost every drop of liquid they put into aluminum every week. But the beer turned out to be great (as of this writing, an impressive 4.2 out of 5 overall average on BeerAdvocate). Jester King has proven that Texans will wait in line (and pay good money and travel) for great, limited beer. “But that’s Austin,” you begin to protest. Yes, it is, but it’s also A LOT of people driving from Houston and other parts of the state to get something that can’t be procured anywhere else. People who love beer will travel for the very best of it — we’re also starting to see this happen with Parish Brewing in Broussard, Louisiana, who not coincidentally have been very candid about their recent switch to a yeast strain popular in NEIPA brewing circles. Even if someone were to set up shop in, say, Katy, beer geeks have shown that they are willing to travel for greatness—and while many may not want to admit it, exclusivity. And that’s a HUGE component of the mania surrounding the NEIPA these days. Not only is selling it on-premise an imperative from a “best enjoyed as soon as possible and away from the inefficiency of the supply chain” perspective, but it also boosts demand by virtue of only being available at the source.

Now, who’s gonna be first?

The post Who will be Houston’s Tree House or Trillium? first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Who will be Houston’s Tree House or Trillium? appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.