Other Half September, a (mostly) post line world!

I know not much about the state of Oklahoma except how to spell it. Does an American Solera collab provide the worthiness of a weekend line?

 

Nope, a stout however....

 

What exactly consists of collaborations with OH nowadays? From the description that seems like a pretty run of the mill OH ipa. Doesn’t seem like the creativity of them are being elevated at all.

 

I've had a few Solera beers. IPAs are not what they're known for. I can't remember the law I heard in that county but something prevents them from making big IPAs...anyone know?

 

The same thing they've always been -- the out of town brewers come, eat and drink with the uppity-ups at OH, and the peons brew yet another IIPA with slightly less care to ensure the collab is rated lower than just-OH beers.

Simcoe was pretty damn tasty to me at the taproom this past weekend. Preferred it to Forever Simcoe. Also appreciated 6.5% vs. 8.5%. #getoffmylawn #hazegrampsintraining

 

I didn't think Simcoe + Vic was great or bad. It certainly was "different" than the typical OH juice. Also, what's with these cryo-only double hops? Did they skip over regular Mosaic + Simcoe? I was not a fan of Powdered Cheese or that Triangle Test that was all lupulin. They still strike me as gimmicky beers (ridiculous assertion, I know; so much gimmick has creeped into our beers these days, why fight it?).

 

I figured as much. I will say in the past some collabs seem like they actually had more thought put into them (AZ Wilderness and J Wakefield always are unique.) But 90% seem like they consist of nothing more than lip service.

 

when it comes to hops, the only collabs that are worthy of the hype (imo) are the Answer collabs. exceptions to this are the more gimmicky fruited ones like FL Plates, OG City Slickers, Panna e Fragole, etc - even tho a lot of these can fall pretty flat

when it comes to stouts, seems like collabs have actually greatly improved OH's ability to brew dope imperial stouts and most if not all have been awesome since about a year ago (JWB, Evil Twin, Angry Chair, Horus, etc.). at some point actual knowledge seemed to have been shared, though it's possible that they're sorta on autopilot now that they have a better idea of how to do this whole pastry stout thing

 

I was thinking the same thing. The best beers I’ve had from American Solera were wild and wild fruited ales and I don’t think OH has the separate space required for brewing a wild ale. This means the only other option was a new IPA.

Haha. I don’t think there is any law. They make some hefty and delicious imperial stouts as does Prairie, which is right down the road (American Solera brewer(s) is (are) Prairie alums.

 

OK is one of the five states that has the 4% abv law. Anything above that can only be sold with a license and only at room temperature.

 

Not sure about that room temperature part, haha. And I think the 4% is the max ABV for sales in grocery stores.

 

I spent 2 whole minutes reading the Wikipedia entry for Oklahoma's liquor laws so I'm pretty much an expert on this.

 

You’ll find Utah’s laws highly interesting then, haha.

 

As someone who works in marketing/branding, it really grinds my teeth how awful and inconsistently Other Half names their beer. Should have kept up with naming beers after food.

 

Digging the ace and broccoli...

 

It's true that so far this year the only true memorable collab has been Triple Double. Maybe Spicy Meatball, but even that - was no where close to All Dank Everything. It could be that from April/May through July there was too much happening internally - given Green city in June, and quality/ creativity suffered because of it. I still think we'll probably be getting another "superhyped" IPA collab by the end of the year tho, hopefully it's worthy!

 

What can any brewery anywhere in the world do at this point to make a superhyped IPA?

 

I think a Treehouse collaboration that takes things in the Crystal Pepsi / Tab Clear direction

 

Simcoe+Vic secret is pretty good. It's got that smooth dry bitterness.

 

We'll have to wait and see! #plentyleft