10 Years Gone #4
Ocelot Brewing Company

The fourth collaboration in our anniversary series takes us furthest away from Ocelot geographically and yet closest to our roots. Ten Years Gone #4 is an 8% West Coast double IPA brewed with a duo of California breweries: Long Beach’s Trademark Brewing and San Diego’s OB Brewery. Naturally, in uniting these California hop maestros, we chose to make a classic West Coast IPA. And because it’s a big anniversary, we made it a big one.

The 8% brew is constructed from a mix of Crisp Malting barleys: a majority of the UK maltster’s exceptionally pale Hana Malt, a minority of its richer Maris Otter. But this is a West Coast DIPA, so let’s talk about the hops. At Trademark’s suggestion, we first wort hopped with Simcoe for a little extra structure. Then we reintroduced Simcoe during the boil and again at whirlpool, where it was joined by some Citra Cryo.

When it came time to dry hop, we got into our bags of Amarillo, Champlain Valley Centennial, and — what do you know — more Simcoe. The end beer pops with passion fruit, pine, and citrus, plus a tad red berry and a hint of florality. It’s a beer that all of us would have loved in 2006, though none of us would have dreamed where’d we be almost two decades later.