![]() We have a sour tank (Lactobacillus Reaction Vessel) that has housed our house culture since 2016. Mash salts include Calcium Sulfate (Gypsum) and Calcium Chloride, Food grade Phosphoric acid is used for mash pH adjustment Between the high gravity and the low pH of the sour wort, the low conversion point creates easy fermentable sugar and helps achieve the desired FG even as the yeast starts to struggle towards the end of fermentation. Note the grist bill in itself will not hit the desired gravity. We’re shooting for between 9.75% and 10.5% ABV (Depending on the FG being between 5P and 6P (1.020 -1.024)). We’re also shooting to make this an imperial sour beer as we will later be essentially diluting the beer with unfermented fruit puree. The goal for us is to build a base beer that has a lot of body to stand up to the acid from the souring and fruit as well as provide a great base for any other additions that we may be adding later in maturation. We start with a grain bill that reads very similar to our core Hazy IPA recipe. How Our Smoothie Sours Are Made - Step by Step So began our rabbit hole journey into creating new and exciting smoothie beer flavors! We were clear out of all 80 cases within one week of release, and our social media was blowing up asking when we would be making new versions. We made 80-6/4/16oz cases as well as draft, and put it on sale on a Thursday for $23 per 4-pack. We had transitioned to releasing all of our pilot beers in 16oz cans at the beginning of June, and made Theme our second can release of the month. ![]() We wanted to ensure that we understood what was expected of the style the good and the bad how to make the beers stand out as unique in a growing landscape and how, to the best of our ability, to prevent refermentation and exploding cans, as well as consumer and company response to those issues (more on this later). ![]() In late June of last year, we introduced “Theme From The Bottom - Triple Berry Smoothie Sour.” Our initial hesitation in tackling the style came from many different angles. Smoothie Sours had been on a nearly two-and-a-half-year meteoric rise, similar to hazy and milkshake IPAs, before we decided to throw our hat in the ring. We want to see how people are doing them, why people like them, try recognized examples of the styles, and formulate a plan on how we would improve upon them in our own way. That being said, we always play it cautious when new and cool beers styles make their way to the forefront. I think new is good, especially for small breweries with good direct-to-consumer bases. I’ve always been curious when new styles enter the fray of existence within craft. Sometimes they turn out great and other times they end up a big miss the ones doing it right are truly pushing the bounds of flavor. As the craze continues to grow, it is continually amazing to see the types of ingredients brewers are adding to beer in pursuit of experimentation. ![]() After that is achieved, there is a never ending list of adjuncts and spices that can be added to create whatever flavor a brewer wants. By leaving the fruit unfermented, the brewer is essentially trying to make a beer that looks, smells, and drinks like a fruit smoothie from a juice café, but with alcohol. Eventually, brewers began to drift to other styles-specifically kettle soured beer-as the new vehicle to explore these wild and crazy fruit and adjunct combinations.Īt their essence, when talking about any type of smoothie or milkshake beer, the common denominator is always extremely large amounts of unfermented fruit puree. This all came to a head in 2015 when Pennsylvania’s Tired Hands Brewing and Sweden’s Omnipollo Brewing teamed up to create the first “Milkshake” IPAs using large amounts of fruit, vanilla beans, milk sugar (lactose) and spices along with a ton of hops from there the smoothie craze was born. Around the same time, brewers began to add non-traditional ingredients to traditional-styles in an attempt to recreate baked goods and desserts in liquid form. Smoothie sour beers (also known as pastry sours) are the evolution of the fruited kettle soured beers (such as Gose and Berliner Weisse) that made a resurgence and grew incredibly popular in the early part of the 2010s. In all that time, there has not been a more polarizing decade in beer than the 2010s, and it continues into 2021 with the fight over smoothie sour beer. Everyone had a place to make their opinion known, and known it was. As craft continued to transform from a corner niche market into full-blown mainstream, beer internet forums began to become flooded with old-school drinkers, first time consumers, homebrewers and hard-core beer geeks. Since Ken Grossman brewed his first batch of Sierra Nevada Stout (predating the first batches of Pale Ale), there have always been polarizing opinions within the beer community about up-and-coming beer styles.
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