How do you say goodbye to a brewery you’ve been visiting since the beginning, made countless memories from, built great friendships and was the place you started your craft beer adventures at? I would like to start by first saying, this sucks. Really sucks!

January 6th will be Ingenious’s official last day open. As someone who supported them through every twist and turn the industry saw, it hit me hard to hear this news. I spent so much time & money at this brewery and stood up for them in many ways. Like many other die hard Ingenious fans, I often went out of my way to share beers I was drinking on social media to spread the love and never left the taproom without buying beer to go. I loved walking in and everyone immediately starts shouting and cheering, truly excited that I was there. This was the one place I could count on feeling right at home. Ingenious even participated in this past year’s Houston Beer Block Party and was quite popular on the block, kicking 3 kegs that day! Much love to them for keeping stouts on year round too. It’s safe to say that Ingenious has etched a special place in my heart that I will never forget.

Normally I’m known for being the serious and strictly beer focused writer with my articles but I want to use this time to acknowledge all the employees I’ve gotten to know over the years and the memories they’ve help create. This team was the pillar of Ingenious Brewing Co. From bullying Graham during trivia with team names themed around him, to laughing with Casey aka DJ C-Note every time I visited. I enjoyed having in depth conversations with him about the Oilwell vending machine in the lobby. Talking metal and music with Krista, she always knew what beers I was walking in for, and Jason being there a short time but being someone who got my humor. There was never a dull moment with him and I loved sampling michelada prototypes he was working on. Derek and I would geek out on beer and he would motivate me to add adjuncts to my home brew to get the desired “Ingenious” effect. Alex and I have had a few moments of me sharing beers from all over and I will certainly miss these conversations. Lee and the funny beers named after him during his birthday celebration, and the night he needed help kicking a keg of a barrel aged stout along with the headache that followed the next morning.  James and I would talk sports and sample beers from the brite tank. James took great pride in all of his beers and loved helping with social media even going emo for a night that will forever live in infamy. Such good times to remember.

So I ask you, please raise a glass to the hardworking team that has ever been a part of Ingenious power house. I wish each and every one of them the best of luck on their future path forward.

It’s not too late to support. Join me in these final days and let’s help them clear out some inventory by buying merchandise, glassware, beer, and stickers to forever have a piece of Humble history. Before you leave, get your hands on the Brewers Reserve. This year’s was aged in still Austin barrels for two years giving that barrel aged finished we all know and love. It’s smooth chocolate note along with a beautiful roast to balance out the bourbon barrel is very delicious. This beer represents James’ focus on his amazing stouts as they only use the barrel and his base recipe. Feeling sour? We know you are. Go get the last batch of Elf’s Blood, a Christmas tradition that comes out every December. Ingenious wasn’t just known for their crazy adjunct focused beers, but was really keeping things fresh with lager and crispy as of late. Go get Layover in Vienna or Das Crisp to quench that thirst. Want a hazy IPA? On Comet and C1000 will definitely not let you down. Channel your inner beer nerd and drink the black IPA aptly named Come and drink it.

I am really going to miss this place. Very sad to see it go.

In case you haven’t noticed, Houston Beer needs your love. With breweries dropping out left and right, the beer fans in this area need to rally together to save these local businesses before it’s too late. Please support your local breweries if you can. Your support and contribution is appreciated more that you know.

Ingenious Brewing Company is located at 1986 S Houston Ave, Humble, TX 77396.

The post Ingenious Brewing Company announces closure first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Ingenious Brewing Company announces closure appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

In the taproom, jazz and zydeco play as the beers pours, while the colorful beads fly everywhere. This is the third year this beer has been brewed for the celebration and they achieved a great flavor balance between the last two years releases and quite frankly, this batch take the best of both worlds. 

The nose immediately brings pastry and cream cheese highlighted by a hint of cinnamon spice. Ingenious manages to get the scent of king cake dead on, that comes more to life as the beer settles in the glass, allowing all the flavors become much more prevalent. This beer is sure to win over any sweets lover. I’m not sure which is better – the aroma on the nose or the tasty flavor which is what Ingenious is known for in their pastry stouts. Cake sugarness and a slight booziness immediately greet your taste buds allowing way to a sweet, lightly roasted vanilla backend. Imperial King Cake has a beautiful creamy and silky mouthfeel that just laces the glass perfectly allowing for great beer photos. After 10 minutes, Imperial King Cake really allows the base beer to play an even bigger part in the sweetness of the beer and bring out the pastry and cream cheese.

 As a bonus celebration to the season, Ingenious has their 4th anniversary coming up March 26th where they will have collaborative bottle releases, guest taps from some fan favorite breweries, and multiple limited small batch beers that will be rotating through the night.

I’ll make sure to provide more details as we get closer, but for now you can find Imperial King Cake coming to H-E-B, on tap throughout the city, a few craft beer stores, and of course on tap at the brewery potentially with variants of this brew to enjoy as well.  Let the good times roll!

The post Have your cake and drink it too! Ingenious Imperial King Cake Milk Stout first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Have your cake and drink it too! Ingenious Imperial King Cake Milk Stout appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

The three beers in question were Fruit Madness: Elf’s Blood, Special Drop #4, and Almost Apple Brandy Jacks. All three were delicious, and defied my expectation of what these styles can achieve. 

First up was the Fruit Madness: Elf’s Blood.

This is an imperial sour with raspberry, white chocolate, macadamia nuts, and sugar cookies. I went into this expecting a cloyingly sweet “beer” with almost a fruit smoothie flavor and a creamy mouthfeel from the white chocolate. In the best world, my hope was the acidity of the raspberry would tone down the sweetness from the sugar cookies. I was so happy to be proven wrong. It poured a beautiful fuschia with a quickly dissipating light pink head. The first sniff gave me a lot of raspberry with a hint of the sugar cookie that slowly gave way to the white chocolate as it warmed up. The first sip reinforced my expectations, being all white chocolate and macadamia nut, but as the beer washed across my palate, the acidity of the raspberry cleaned that sweetness off, making room for the crisp, clean sugar of the sugar cookie. That is then followed by the base acidity of the imperial sour and a little more of the macadamia nut. This cleansing acidity combined with the effervescent mouth feel made a beautiful beer drinking experience, leading you always into the next sip. It truly drank like a high end restaurant dessert. The only real disappointment of the beer was that I didn’t have it all to myself because I shared it with my wife, and it is 9% abv but drinks like it is 6%. Going into this beer, this was a style I had yet to have that I would consider well done. This sets a high bar now going forward.

The second of the beers I had was the Special Drop #4.

Hop Drop is a series they have of NEIPAs of varying hop and malt builds. This iteration showcases a new product the brewers at Ingenious are using. It is a new souring agent you pitch alongside your normal yeast strain. It produces lactic acid, and dies at 3.5%, making it a great option for breweries that want to play in souring, but don’t want the headache of traditional mixed culture yeasts. This is a long way of saying it is a sour Double NEIPA, clocking in at 8% abv. My expectations for this are that grassy hop flavor you get from dry hopping kettle sours paired with the creamy mouthfeel of a hazy DIPA. I poured it into my glass, and it looks exactly like I expected: a hay colored beer I can’t see through with a thick white head. Notes of lemon peel, mango, and a bit of breadiness greeted my nose, to be followed by some peach as it warmed up more. On the first sip, I got peach and lemon with a touch of acidity. As the beer warmed up the peach came out more, overwhelming the acidity. This was all backed up by a very creamy mouthfeel. Overall I do wish there was more of the sour side, but the beer was a delicious departure from the typical hazy IPA and makes me excited to try more beers using this new product.

The final beer was the Almost Apple Brandy Jacks, a blend of russian imperial stouts.

Part was aged in apple brandy barrels, and part was conditioned on Vietnameese cinnamon and the breakfast cereal Apple Jacks. CLocking in at 11% abv, this was the biggest of the three. I expected a booze forward beer and was hoping for an apple pie like quality from the apple jacks and cinnamon. The pour was pure darkness with an espresso crema colored head and a slightly boozy aroma. There was a little apple sweetness that grew as it warmed up. On the palate, it was a nice full bodied stout with a little grainy sweetness on the back end from the cereal. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of cinnamon, but the mouthfeel was exactly what I hope for from a big stout like this. It was viscous enough to represent the abv without being syrupy. Overall, a very drinkable stout with just a hint of the cereal and barrel to make it different from its competitors.

Sadly for everyone involved, Ingenious is now out of the Elf’s Blood, but I know I’m going to be keeping my eyes out for more like it from them. As for the other two, they were released last Wednesday, January 20, and are currently available out of their tap room. The Almost Apple Brandy Jacks is also going to be part of a virtual beer fest being put on by Hop Culture that celebrates breakfast and beer. Check out the festival and see what other beers are included here. 

Cheers, and happy drinking!

The post A Study in Subtlety: Ingenious Brewing Beer Reviews first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post A Study in Subtlety: Ingenious Brewing Beer Reviews 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.