A few weeks ago we released our first all new hop-focused beer since the launch of Overhead well over a year ago. Other than some one-off dry hopped versions of Head High and Overhead, and the extremely limited release of Empower Imperial IPA, we’ve been a little quiet on the hop front. This has been in part due to the success of Head High and Overhead, both now year round beers that take up quite a bit of space in the brew calendar. Having three fermentation vessels and two year round IPAs means that our one available fermenter more often than not gets filled with belgian styles and dark seasonals (with the occasional bottled beer squeezed in). However, with a little creative planning of our brew calendar by our brewing staff, we were able to find room to brew Ripple as a late summer/early fall seasonal.
Ripple was born of a single hop Nelson IPA we made for A Wolf Among the Seas back in June. Of the dozen or so different hops we used, we thought Nelson was the most promising as a stand alone hop for a pale ale based beer. In brewing this however, we noticed that the delicate flavors of Nelson required the use of large amounts of the hops to become apparent in the finished product. So it was decided the lighter malt bill of a session ale would be the best foundation to showcase this hop.
In pilot batches, we added a few of our favorite hops just to round things out and avoid a one dimensional feel to Ripple, but still maintained a Nelson to “any other hop” ratio of 2:1 to ensure that signature flavor and aroma would not be lost. Maintaining body and flavor from such a small malt bill was critical to us, so we added caramel 20, cara-pils, and flaked oats to our base of Pilsner malt to make Ripple drink like a session ale without feeling overly thin.
Ripple has the body, flavor, complexity, and the hop profile you expect from our beers–all at a sessionable 4.6%. The first batch was very well received and sold out quickly, but a fresh one is in the tank now and will be available on draft in a couple weeks.
