Other Half Brewing, Then & Now

Since you entitled it then and now this is my then experience…

I’m not an other half expert by any means so this may be taken with a grain of salt but…the other half I visited and tried in 2015 was very different. I thought the best way to describe their beers like all green and green diamonds was in your face hoppy abrasiveness, the words juicy I don’t think ever popped in my head.

So I opened Untappd and I thought this was interesting: I checked a friends old check in (see below) of green diamonds not the best lighting but that thing is not the murk bomb (now) or even close in color to what it appears to be in recent check ins…



To the OH experts does the green diamonds of NOW taste at all like the green diamonds from THEN?

 

I'm using that beer and their original flagships in general to answer your question. In my experience that would be no, and worse respectively, though I'm sure others may disagree.

I am curious to see what others think that have more experience though.

 

I started drinking Other Half 6-7 years ago so I never had the OG beers I guess. I’ll say that they still make extremely tasty NE style IPAs. I won’t comment on the stouts and other styles. I think they’ve done a good job overall of keeping quality up with all the expansion. I’m happy that I can walk into my local Wegmans and get a fresh four pack (when I feel like overpaying for something delicious) and not drive into Brooklyn (although I did enjoy hitting that Brooklyn spot to have a small pour or two). Way less hype obviously now that they’re all over the place out here. But that’s a good thing.

 

Its very different now but that's intentional, OG Green Diamonds was sort of more West Coast leaning, they stopped brewing it for a while cause it didn't really fit with the rest of what they were doing and brought it back as an NEIPA.

 

Was Green Diamonds the only "more West Coast leaning" beer from OH back in the day (e.g., 2014 - 2015)? Were all of the other OH hoppy beers (IPAs, DIPAs) back in the day of the Juicy/Hazy type?

Cheers!

 

Other Half IPA was a straight up West Coast IPA for one. OG All Green Everything was also a bit more West Coast Leaning, they did basically the same thing when they released DDH AGE, changing up the yeast strain to what they use for NEIPAs. There are probably some others I don't know about since I only got into Other Half in like Summer 2016.

 

By 2016 were their hoppy beers mostly of the Juicy/Hazy substyle?

Is it fair to state that at some point they transitioned from non-Juicy/Hazy to Juicy/Hazy?

For completeness I have zero experience with Other Half Brewing.

Cheers!

 

The current iterations of All Green Everything and Green Diamonds are nothing like the originals. They were definitely more abrasive (good word). I started going there shortly after they opened the taproom. I remember the first time I had Treehouse Julius, it was a "WTF" moment for me.

For me, Other Half made a pivotal change to "juicy IPAs" when they did "Topical Depression" with The Veil.

 

That beer was added to the BA database in July 2016. That was the beginning of Other Half entering the Juicy/Hazy phase?

Cheers!

 

This is what I assumed base on my early experience. What I didn’t know was there seems to be a clear cut, almost?, time when they pivoted towards the juicier side of things.

I’d love to go back in time and try that old green diamonds or hops showers again.

Though I will add it was obviously a good business decision for them to change cause they have opened a lot of taprooms since then.

 

They were definitely into the hazies by summer 2016 since they was my first visit to the brewery and experience taking home cans. I remember hearing that originally they were more west coast style or at least not super NE style like they’ve been for several years.

 

I didn't discover OH until 2017 but the story I heard is that it was the Trillium collab Street Green that turned them onto the haze train. The first BA entry for that is 2015 and people describe it as murky, so that seems to add up.

 

The first 2 OH beers that I got in a trade were Topical Depression and Greenprint back in August 2016. Both were hazy and I remember liking Greenprint a lot more than Topical Depression. They were still making OH IPA at this time too.

I've been drinking OH a lot more lately now that I'm commuting back into Manhattan on a weekly basis and they opened a taproom right in Midtown. I still think they make killer hazy beer, but unfortunately the floor is a bit lower now that they're brewing out of multiple locations. The Brooklyn brewed stuff tends to rate highest for me.

 

I think Street Green with Trillium was when they went full juice mode, looks like this was around November 2015.

 

Similar opinion here, though my first beer ever from them was Coir Boys. Nothing worse than that. But yeah, pretty simple situation I think. Higher volume, multiple sites, less hands on approach by the owners/ original brewers means variations in quality. That said most of my early favorite beers contained galaxy, and generally I find galaxy beers to have a higher rate of earthiness rather than stone fruit no matter the brewery. Also, green power, batch 1, that came out with the new taproom a handful of years ago was tasty but a warning of the extensive overripe melon that a lot of samey OH IPAs have. As a switch up it was nice. So I'd say on the whole not only did they become a hazy maker after brewing west coast, they've on average made beers that are sweeter and less bitter even compared to a few years ago, well into brewing haze. Thankfully they still put out some solid collabs, great cores, and the occasional BK brewed single or double hop beers (even the DC Citra though was very good the other week and certainly not overly sweet).

 

Yes, AGE was a super-abrasive, dank WCIPA to start out with. I actually like the most recent iteration I tried, brewed in Brooklyn, with a lot of the original dankness and the tropical flavors dialed way down. Reminded me a lot of the original, but hazy instead of clear. I like a lot of what I've had lately, after a period of a couple of years where there was a really annoying melon aftertaste to almost everything they brewed.

 

I remember waiting in the line for this one! Crazy day.

 

The first time I ever had All Green and Diamonds were experiences I'll never forget. Can't say much about beer does that anymore.