New Lord Hobo Head Brewer?

Consolation Prize is easily the best of the beers. It was the best (to me at least) from the very start and has gotten quite good. It's also the one I see around least often. I've love to see them focus on that. Hell, rebrand it as Boom Sauce, since that name seems more fitting for a 9.5% beer in a pint can...

 

100% agreed, it was my favorite trying them for first time at Hobo's months ago and is best from the "new batches" I have had recently. Im looking forward to picking up more of them

 

1) Lanigan told them to brew an IPA with a firm sweet malt backbone with a big juicy flavor and assertive bitterness. Lanigan wanted a West Coast-style IPA with some influence of the hop profiles from these juicy IPAs. Of course the lack of that malt sweetness and lingering bitterness is the defining trait of those IPAs, so that doesn't make much sense, especially if you advertise it like it's one of those IPAs. He was unable to secure contracts for any Galaxy, Citra, Mosaic, etc. (until very recently). Then he told them to blend 3 beers to make that one beer, a technique that causes mayhem with brew schedules and opens up so many possibilities for oxidation and degradation. Do you see how a brewer in that position might be set up for failure from the beginning? Saying "No excuses" when there are perfectly valid excuses is so inane.

2) Brewing at the scale that Hobo is brewing for a first time brewery is insane. Vince may have been over his head with this, but I think any brewer who didn't have a lot of experience with a system this big would have a learning curve. Perhaps for that reason he wasn't a great hire, but it's not because of his talent or ability to brew a good IPA. As to your research and tastings comment, Lanigan told me that the pilot system Boom Sauce was exactly what he wanted, but for a long time they were unable to replicate it at scale. The big brewhouse was too efficient and kept extracting more malt flavor than they wanted. They scaled it back each batch and eventually eliminated a specialty malt entirely because in any amount it was impacting the flavor too much. Again, these are lessons that breweries learn as they slowly scale or if they have proper lead time before opening, but the fact that Hobo jumped into the deep end from the start led to many issues.

3) Every brewery takes time to dial in recipes. If you taste Boom Sauce now, it tastes exactly like the description Lanigan put forth above. That's the true test of a brewer, getting the recipe to taste exactly what you set out to make.

4) The brewers pleaded to stop with the blending, for obvious reasons. Lanigan finally relented at some point last year, and the batch that everyone thought was much better (around the beginning of January) was definitely not blended and as far as I am aware it is still not blended now, although Lanigan says he wants to go back to blending at some point.

 

Have they started using new Boom Sauce cans? All the ones I've seen still peg the abv at 8% and refer to it as a blend, but reports here and elsewhere suggest blending isn't being done anymore and the abv is in the 7s

 

@Auror Source?

 

My conversations with both Vince and Daniel Lanigan.

 

What was his tone like when telling you all this? When can we expect the apology from Lanigan for his hubris, his completely lack of understanding of how consistent beer gets brewed with his 'blending' vision, and all the money spent over the past year as he's changed his "juice blanket" recipe over and over? The news that he didn't even have the 'juicy' hops at all (Mosaic, Galaxy, Citra) until recently shows just how arrogant he was.

I feel like other breweries are apologetic and transparent about things like this. But the tone of LHBC for the past year+ has been "nah, keep buying it, it'll be as good as it's supposed to be someday soon."

 

I seriously doubt any Brewer takes a look at what Beer Advocate users express a preference for when deciding what beer to make.

You don't want to ride on a trend's coattails, you want to start the next trend

 

Had a Boomsauce on tap at Doherty's Ale House in RI. The stuff was soooo much better than the cans I tried in the fall. Whoever the new brewer is, they did a good job improving that pile of crap. It's not even close to the same beer. Cheers to the new brewer.

 

What new brewer?

 

That's still beer made by old brewer. He just left like last week.

 

Good job by him then.

 

Out of curiosity (and the staunch defense) who are you? Why push this exchange?

 

I don't know if that big auror post gives me twice as much respect for LH or if it takes as much away. Some hilarious details in there. Good on them for evolving, though.

 

Had a Hobo Life last night at LH in Cambridge. I thoughtf it was tasty.

 

Wouldn't even say my defense was the staunchest.

I have met Vince on a few occasions and for a very brief time was in the same homebrew club as him a few years back. I have also worked in the industry, but currently do not.

 

So if they are down a brewer, who is making all of the beer they normally put out into the market?

 

This would be a perfect time for the owner to chime in. Whether it be here or on another form of social media.

 

Disagree. Given the ongoing rancor that has been raised on this board over Lord Hobo and its beers, I'd be staying farrrr away from here.

 

I disagree. He could actually chime in, come clean and earn people's respect