Idle Hands

Really looking forward to trying Galaxy Four Seam. OG has been the hit of the summer for me so far.

 

Brocktoberfest and Galaxy Fourseam are making their way around Boston today

 

Yup. Plenty at the brewery.

 

I picked up some Four Seam at CBC Braintree yesterday

 

Man this Galwxy Four Seam is tasty. Gonna bring some on my trip to Ireland this week to share the love

 

I can confirm this was still true yesterday afternoon. I can also confirm the Galaxy Four Seam is tasty.

See you guys at the Oktoberfest in a couple weeks.

 

They have cases of 4 seam up in VT.

Nice beer for sure, they nailed the look

 

Had brunch at Atwood's Tavern this morning, followed by 2 servings of Change Up #9. Super delicious beer. Very impressed.

 

Thanks! CU9 is a final tune up for our forthcoming Six Seam New England Double IPA which we'll be releasing in a week and a half or so.

 

Definitely looking forward to that! Quick question if you might be inclined to answer.

Did you guys approach producing NE IPAs as more of a "hey, they sell like hotcakes so why miss out?" thing or as more of a "yeesh, in todays market you're really fighting an uphill battle if you don't offer one" thing?

I'm just curious how much of a "stranglehold" the style has on things these days. And no worries if you don't want to talk shop.

ETA: I meant to add that I really enjoyed the canned Brocktoberfest.

 

I think you missed the one option of, "oh, we really like this style so we'll brew and sell them, and make it to the best of our ability."

 

I'm missing that because I'm pretty sure Chris, the owner of Idle Hands, has been very open about not particularly caring for IPAs himself and they avoided making them (or at least making them a focal point) for a long time.

And the fact that a place like Idle Hands is going to make anything they make to the best of their ability pretty much goes without saying.

 

Oops, missed the edit deadline but with Mystic, another brewery that focused on Belgian beers, also recently adding NE IPAs to their list, I'm extra curious about how breweries like these are viewing today's market.

 

It is 80% the latter and 20% the former. It is really tough to survive w/o an IPA in your stable. Particularly if you have a tap room that you want to keep busy. When we first set out, we wanted to be a 100% belgian focused brewery as we thought that was where the growth was. Boy were we wrong. Now we're playing catch up, trying to win over customers that wrote us off long ago because we didn't have an IPA. Do I love IPAs? I don't hate them and do drink them frequently, but I do find other styles more interesting and tend to pick something else when faced with a choice.

As with any beer that we brew, we are not going to half-ass it just so that we can say we brewed X. We are going to brew everyone of our beers to the best of our ability. And if that's not good enough, it goes down the drain. Hence why we started with the Change Up series and used it to pilot new processes, hop combinations, malt profiles, etc to ultimately land on something that we were proud of (e.i. Four Seam and now Six Seam).

Four Seam allows us to brew the beers like Brocktoberfest, Klara (being canned in November) and the other German lagers (amongst others) that we have come to love.

Glad people are starting to notice them.

 

Thanks much for the thoughts. It's interesting to think that there was a time not too long ago when Belgians might have looked like the next thing to really breakout.

Glad to hear Klara's next on the block. That's actually the beer that put you guys on the map for me since I'm not a huge Belgian fan myself (though I have come to like the darker ones and I liked your recent Grissette as well).

 

Love me some Klara! Looking forward to cans!

 

Drinking a 34 tonight, and boy is it delicious! Kinda regretting I only picked up a single.

 

Had this on tap at the brewery last November. I was very impressed. So impressed that I remember having it almost a year ago.

 

Well next month is the perfect time to revisit. Hugh O'Neil's typically has flights of different Bourbon County vintages Black Friday/that weekend. Idle Hands is a quick walk from there.

I did this last year, it was awesome.

 

That sounds great though Good look on the recommendation. I've now moved to NH and got a puppy so ATM my ability to do these things has shrunken.

Beer < not driving far away and coming back to shit and piss everywhere. Hoping to make it back in the (hopefully near) future.