Other Half (2020)

How late is the OH taproom open New Years day?

 

Anyone go to the New Years Eve party? What was in your "swag bag"? I ask, because the only thing in ours was a glass. We went 2 years ago and the bag had stickers, a tshirt, a wristband, Hi-Chew, and a barrel aged stout.

 

When I was there yesterday it was pretty mellow. No one seemed to be maxing on anything.

 

Hoping 2020 brings:

• Return of Dual and Single Hops
• OG City Slickers
• Less Triple IPAs
• Showers of Hop Showers

 

Any reviews on the current double space daydream? It’s been kind of an inconsistent beer but when it’s on it’s one of my favorites.

 

It good.

 

Is $24 a price hike for that beer? I don’t know, I’m starting to rebel against the high 4 pack prices again. Maybe others are balking at that amount as well. But then again maybe not. Personally though, I still don’t like going to $20, much less $24.

 

HDHC More Citra debuted @ $22 per four pack. They increased the price on that one

 

Don't you mean DD triples? Now that "H" as been dropped from te tread title?

 

HDHC More Citra is exceptional, definitely one of the most intense IPAs from Other Half.

So finally I can provide my highly anticipated top OH Beers of 2019, in no order

All 5th Anniversary Banana (although probably #1 for me)
Snowbirds 3 VIP
HDHC More Citra Than All Citra
Diamond Reflection
Deep Orbit Cygnus

I also really enjoyed the other Experimental/HDHC stuff they've been putting out. I did like 5th Anniversary a lot, but 4th was just heads and shoulders above it.

My hope for this year is that they continue to put out more HDHC beers, scale back the adjuncts on both sours and stouts, and work to dial them in more with the adjuncts they are using.

 

As much as I yearn for the return of printed cans, I'm really enjoying the peel-away TV dinner label.

 

Saturday announcement is up. What ever happened to BA Rice Proxy Treats someone posted a picture of to the facebook group?

 

Perhaps being saved for the anniversary release early next month?

 

Following on @SpinSamzo, I wanted to add on my hope for OH this year:

There should be a greater focus placed on brewing more "beer"-like beers. Helles and pilsners are a good backbone to build from and given how long they've produced those, it seems a good time to branch out and diversify the portfolio. I think beers that skew more "traditional" or are less "hype" driven is what I'm getting at, which may also be a way of saying beers that brewers want to drink after their shift. Saturday's release and its non-lactosified hazies are a step in that direction, but that's just the tip of the very tippy top of the iceberg in my mind. Pumping out lactose-and-nut-inundated beers has done them well in 2019, but hopefully there's more beer brewed that doesn't force people to carry an epipen or a lactose pill with them to visit the brewery.

Obviously I'm biased on the lactose issue, as is well documented throughout the many posts I've made on the subject, but the very small sample size we have over the past couple weeks (Hops Only + Saturday) hopefully proves a trend and I'm on to something. Seems silly to get my hopes up, of course, as yours truly is almost always wrong with OH predictions, not to mention that there is indeed a time and place for lactose in beer. That time, however, is rarely justified outside of dark beers with a lot of roast, where the sweetness from a small amount of lactose can help offset the bitter, acrid side of roasted malts. Why people like it in beers like NEIPAs, though, befuddles me, which is why I so frequently gripe about the use of it in IPAs. I think there are other ways that mouthfeel and sweetness can be achieved without it. Like oats and wheat and a higher final gravity. Lactose seems a crutch in that pursuit and a more interesting approach would be to stop using it. Get that artificial sweetner-tasting shit out of IPAs, please and thank you.

Ebbs and flows in the current beer culture are hard to get a beat on and lord knows it's hard to move the needle on trends and hype, to be ahead of the curve, but maybe with all the collabs they do and all the events they send beer and people to, OH is seeing a trend of consumers slowly moving away from milky IPAs. That would be a welcomed trend in my book, though I know OH also has to balance being brewers and brewing what they want/like to drink vs. being a company and making a profit. Doubly so given what I assume is a (very) healthy dose of private equity that has been invested in them since their founding and must be looking for a return on investment soon.

Each time I think about OH and its future, I see a great opportunity for them to be educating beer drinkers, and especially new craft drinkers that came to OH by way of coworkers or friends who said they "just had to try this beer", on the many, many styles of beer that exist. Latching on to the point that they have many smaller fermentation tanks vs. larger tanks, it doesn't seem like they would be risking all that much to produce various styles of beer that perhaps don't get all the hype but would help people learn more about beer and enjoy the myriad flavor profiles available to beer drinkers. Early on they used Brett and made other traditional styles, so they clearly know how to, and I'm sure Sam in his two decades of experience has learned a trick or two about brewing an ESB or dark mild. That's not to shoehorn them into any style, though, and I can understand not wanting to re-introduce Brett into the brewery again as a cleanliness/infection safeguard. Educating their fans through the occasional release of an unusual-to-OH style would be pretty cool to see

End thought and TL;DR: educating people more on what beer can be vs. how many ways the same beer can be made and labeled/named differently is my hope/prediction for this year. Don't you all come bashing me when I turn out to be wrong and Daydreamiest and that 5-types-of-vanilla TIPA is re-released for anniversary week -- @EnthusedAboutBeer, I'm talking to you.

 

Getting an early start on ensuring this year's thread reaches whatever random page count @rozzom decides we should shoot for in 11.5 months? I guess some front-loaded effort couldn't hurt.