King Julius Information

So you want to speculate whether or not Nate and Co is lying to you?

 

Understanding the brewing process and ingredients-buying model of breweries is important to understanding why King Julius and similar beers aren't brewed more often. In short, it's super expensive, and takes a big chunk out of a brewery like Tree House's allotment of hops. Shoot, they've scaled back on Green (props to @Evmo31 for sharing the Tweet) because they're running low on Galaxy hops.

Tree House has to manage their available hops. I'm not sure how often they get deliveries - although again from the Tweet they get a huge one late spring - but every time they make a beer that is hopped at, say, 1.5x the rate of their standards, that's half a run of the standard they might not be able to make down the line.

I mean, they could release KJ every week if there were an unlimited supply of the hops involved, and Maine could release Dinner every week, and so on and so forth. But there's a ton of craft breweries all over the country competing for a limited amount of one of the main ingredients. I'm sure TH would love to have nothing but Uber Hype Bombs available every week, but they have to make sure they have enough hops to have 4-6 releases - in good quantities - every week.

Imagine what would happen here if they made too many runs of King Julius and had to have a week of "Welp, sorry folks, we're out of hops. No Julius releases until the end of the quarter." That's not a world I wanna live in.

 

I love chocolate milk.

 

Given that they brew Doppelganger all the time I wouldn't be shocked to see KJ more regularly if the hop situation becomes more favorable. Same recipe with different hops, right?

 

Doppelganger is Haze with different hops. Julius with different hops is Alter Ego. I don't think they have a direct "devil" version of KJ.

 

Unreal. Haha

 

According to the below, Doppelganger is double AE.

DOPPELGANGER (American Double IPA - 8.2% ABV) - This beer is an imperial version of Alter Ego. It is intensely kettle and dry hopped to produce a pungent and flavorful Double IPA that is super pleasant to drink. It is simply and easily described as a juicy and dank citrus bomb.

 

Wait .. isn't Julius with different hops Alter Ego, and Doppelganger the DIPA version of Alter Ego?

 

Ah, you're right, you're right - it is Imperial Alter Ego. My bad.

 

The late Spring delivery is probably the NZ and Australian hops, since it's harvest time that side of the globe.

 

Yeah, I got that one wrong, my bad. So I totally see what you mean; Doppelganger is kind of like KJ with different hops.

 

That Tweet about delivery was specifically responding to a question about Green and Galaxy, which is Australian, so most likely this is the case.

 

OMG this post.

HATERS BEWARE. JEWRICAN23 COMIN' FOR YA!

 

now, why isn't there a Very Sappy, or King Sap

 

How's Chinook in terms of hard-to-acquire hops? I know the different hop varieties are in different levels of demand and availability; do you happen to know what types are easier to get at scale?

And... Sap is mostly Chinook, right?

 

To be honest I thought KJ tasted almost identical to the better cans of Julius I've had. Basically a perfect beer, but less different than one might expect.

 

Agreed- I know Julius has variance here and there, but King Julius and Julius are too similar for me to not just be happy with 10x's more Julius.