Lamplighter Brewing

Does anyone know what's the furthers spot North that might sell somes cans, if they even make it out of the city? I haven't had a chance to get down there yet from Portsmouth. I've been following them since before opening as we used to live close by their space in E Watertown years ago. Wish it had been around. I ended up shooting the breeze with someone in line at Bissell last weekend who had great things to say.

 

http://www.lamplighterbrewing.com/availability/

 

Perfect, Thank you

 

Just want to say I popped in last week and this place was pretty great: hop offerings were good but Werewolves definitely stole the show!

 

Ok help an old drunkard out here. Picked up some Lucid Nonsense from the brewery yesterday. Just poured one today and, well, it doesn't look like LN.

I've had it a couple of times and I was sure it was a nice turbid opaque orange.

In my glass at the moment is a perfectly clear golden straw colored IPA. Doesn't look like an oat IPA.

Have I pickled my brain with ale so much that I've completely forgotten what this beer looked like first time I tried it?

 

How does it taste...

 

Kinda double IPA-ish. Like a so much for subtlety. I'll try to upload a picture

 

Haha! Fail!!

Here's the link

 

Here's a picture I took of a batch around July 7th.

 

Yeah that's clearly not what's in my glass.

 

Yeah, I don't know. I'd say that haze isn't necessarily the desired goal for these beers (aroma, taste, and mouthfeel is), but that's very different. I don't know if the beer spent more time in the brite tank or something. Not to put him on the spot, but I'm sure @ACJones119 would answer any questions. Feel like Lamplighter has been pretty responsive about their beer on this forum.

 

Yeah it's odd. I grabbed 2 4pks, left 2 cans in my fridge, grabbed a few assorted others and went to a cookout and threw them into a cooler for all to share. Everyone was drinking out of red solos so I never noticed the color of the beer. Couple of fellas said they thought it was a good beer and enjoyed it. That's what I'd hoped for. Introduce people to lamplighter. I drank a few other things and then had LN one late in the evening and instantly thought there was something different. It didn't have thst creaminess of an oat IPA. Didn't have the juiciness that id remembered. Very clear, very much a dipa taste and mouthfeel. But I'd had a few so didn't think much of it.

So tonite when I poured one into a glass it just didn't look right. Or taste as I'd remembered. It really does remind me of the latest so much, but my palate is useless so I couldn't say that it's an Idaho 7 IPA or whatever the last round was.

Anyway. I could be way off, but seeing rknrll's pic it's certainly piqued my interest.

Can dated 8/8/17. Says "goin' for trips" on the base.

 

Lamplighter response

"Definitely still Oaty - new base malt changed the way the yeast dropped out. Everything else is the same!"

So they changed the recipe. Turned it from a creamy oaty IPA to a clear crisp IPA. Fair enough. Maybe advertise or announce if you're gonna change the recipe?

 

Heyo -

Sorry for the confusion - this batch has certainly been an interesting ride for us.

We use two different yeast strains in our IPA's, resulting in two different "families" - Rabbit Rabbit, Birds and Pressure Drop is one, Subtlety, Stardust, Lucid, Lady Knox is the second.

The first one is our New England IPA strain, the second is (typically) an incredibly high floccing strain that leaves hop haze, but no yeast haze. At least, most of the time.

The first batch of Lucid was not originally intended to be as thick as it was - and this batch was far, far more clear than expected. Two things changed - first, new base malt, so yes in that regard a recipe change.

The second, and probably the much more dramatic in this case, was what generation the yeast was. First batch of Lucid, it was the sixth generation of that strain - this one it was a fresh pitch.

We have seen some change in flocculation characteristics from generation to generation, but haven't seen nearly this dramatic of a shift in clarity from one to another before. so my best guess is that combination of the two, yeast generation AND change in base malt resulting in different yeast protein interactions led to this vast difference in appearance.

This beer, as a whole, I think has a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel from the oats, which is certainly different than a yeast-in-suspension based mouthfeel of the previous batch but you are definitely right to be wondering what the hell is going on. Flavor wise I think it is actually very similar - I put the previous batch up to this batch blind and could tell the difference, but mostly just through viscosity, so I didn't think overly much about it - but that was, in hind sight, pretty silly. Appearance is clearly the most obvious place to see differences in batch to batch.

I think we'll probably post something on social media tomorrow when it goes out to accounts for the first time about the difference so as to not catch anyone else off guard (thank you!)

Hopefully you are enjoying it as it is - but if not, please feel free to bring them back to the brewery and we'll be happy to swap out for a different beer (another release this Thursday!!) - and our apologies for the lack of clarity (or... too much clarity? hmm...)

Thank you guys, as always, for supporting us - it means a ton to us all -

AC + Cayla

 

Cheers for the reply. I'll not be returning the beer as I had to drink it all to ensure I was getting an accurate read on it!

Its still a good beer but definitely different to the previous batch that I think i had raved about in previous posts in this thread. LN was one of my favorite beers of the moment, and I've been telling anyone who will listen to me to grab it when they see it. Also, the reason i picked it up was because I wanted to share it at a cookout over the weekend. So yeah even though the taste may be fairly similar, the look and feel of it is different and it struck me as a very different beer, which is a bit of a shame seeing as I loved that previous batch

 

Hey, that's super awesome that you were so keen on sharing - I really can't thank you enough for that. Sorry that we fell short for you on this one - my guess is that in the very near future we will do an almost identical beer but with our other strain, which should result in an product much more like lucid batch one than lucid batch two, and we'll add that into the rotation on the regular.

I don't think we can expect this strain to behave like it did the first time in the future, unless there is significant mid fermentation dry hop, it drops clear as a bell - and I think the first lucid batch was due to some series drift in the strain.

A

 

I think it's great that you respond on BA. You don't have to have this kind of accountability but it's nice to see that your customers are important to you. I think most beer drinkers realize that ingredients will change from season to season and subtle changes are to be expected. In this case there was a significant visual change, as well as mouthfeel. I'm sure it was still a nice tasting beer as Belmonty has stated, just not the same as the original.

Thanks for coming on here and explaining.

 

My pleasure - I apologize for not getting out in front of it!

 

Had Major Tom (NE IPA with all Galaxy hops) last night. Not even a huge fan of Galaxy, but thought this was Lamplighter's best beer yet. Tropical aroma, juicy, nice bitter finish.