Medusa Brewing

Hoping to have a follow up batch of Duchovni on in about 3-4 weeks! It's somewhat magical when something outsells IPA for a few weeks.

 

Medusa joins the canning movement:

Very cool. Lazer Cat is very good but I hope they expand this to include some of their other beers, hoppy and non-hoppy alike. I love a bunch of their beers: ruction old school IPA, transcontinental APA, Squiffy Vicar ESB, and of course Duchovni pilsner.

Of course I wish them all the best but I hope the bar stays fairly low key as it's an ideal after work grab a pint or two spot.

 

We'll see how things go, but the current plan is to do a few runs of just Laser Cat, and later on, split canning with some other beers. These will probably be hoppy, for the most part; we didn't set this place up for this kind of packaging, so we have very little capacity to store cans for very long and initialpriority will go to the beers that are likely to move quickly. But we do hope to sneak in some other styles from time to time.

 

Laser Cat fresh in the can is my new favorite beer! Kudos to Medusa for an outstanding beer and a well-handled release - they moved a lot of people through the line very quickly. Dark DIPA color, rich, powerful head, aromatic dank smell, powdery citrus and pine on top of fruity-syrupy taste, chewy mouth-feel, and overall it's just an amazing achievement. Look out Trillium and Tree House! These guys have something special going on.

 

Laser Cat is a very good beer, I'm glad I was able to swing by and get some cans. Kinda similar to hi-def from castle island based on my shitty taste buds. That being said...I wouldn't wait in line for it.

 

I also swung by this morning and picked up a couple of 4 packs! haven't tried one yet, but I did have a nice pint of Solo Project: Vic Secret, very nice pale indeed!

 

swung by on Thursday and picked up a 4 pack of Hidden City (el dorado IPA), Laser Cat (DIPA), and a growler of ruction (old school west coast IPA heavy on the C* hops).

I've had laser cat a few times before and I've always really liked it. Bit more of an old school DIPA with a new school swing. A beer. I've had ruction before on tap.. this was a bit more malty than I remembered but that's probably just me. Reminds me a lot of SN Celebration, tbh. Very good west coast IPA.

But Hidden City, not sure if I've had this before... this is great. I'm very impressed. Can't say I've had a ton of el dorado focused IPAs, but I've had Trillium's Sleeper Street, and I like this more. Really well done.

 

Hidden City is great.

I have to say I am disappointed in Lazer Cat in the cans. Kind of a malt bomb for me, totally different from having it on tap, I actually dumped one out.
Anxiously waiting for Citra Legacy to be canned, will that ever happen?

 

Agree completely with both of these things. Hidden City was terrific on tap (I haven't tried a can yet) and the 01/18 can of Laser Cat I'm drinking - lo, even as I type this - is, in fact, something of a boozy malt bomb. I would absolutely not pour it out, but it surely isn't what I was hoping for.

It was a long afternoon in the pappomobile. First to Tree House, then my first ever visit to Medusa, then back west again for cans at Vanished Valley before finally eeling back up 91, to the ice-encrusted hell that is Currier & Ives country. Hopefully that'll hold me for a few days.

 

I picked up an eight pack of the first canning run of Laser Cat by Medusa, and I can unequivocally say it was not a malt bomb, if anything it was more hoppy than the beers that I currently gravitate toward. Maybe this batch was off.....I might swing by and see for myself.

 

I couldn't really say where the perception of Laser Cat being a "boozy malt bomb" is coming from. That's certainly not in line with the feedback we've received since we began canning, and the taproom staff I've consulted with were surprised to hear that, to say the least. I've personally consumed a lot more Laser Cat since we started canning it, since it's a lot less ounces to commit to versus a 32oz growler, and it's always tasted the way I expect it to. We maintain a small archive of cans from past canning runs that we can check for QC purposes, and to date we've not noted any real changes in the beer apart from the general diminishing of hop character you'd expect as the weeks and months go by.

From a recipe standpoint, Laser Cat hasn't changed at all since the first batch in 2015, apart from the fact that the dry hopping used to occur in two rounds. (We began mechanically recirculating dry hops in IPAs and such about two years ago). It's 90% 2-row , 5% specialty malts, and 5% simple sugars, and has rather a low finishing gravity (around 2 Plato). We use a fairly typical ale strain that's a low diacetyl producer, fermented somewhat on the cool side. Hidden City employs the same yeast and a similar malt bill (minus the sugar) and typically finishes a bit higher in gravity.

We use a mobile canning company, so we do surrender control of the beer when it leaves the tank, but Iron Heart's own QC processes seem pretty rigorous.

 

You made me go to the basement to get another can and I'm going to partially retract my unkind slur. In my defense, it was the end of a long day of driving - which is a lame defense, but it's all I've got.

SO, unless there's a lot of variation from can to can, and I can't think why there would be, it is less of a boozy malt bomb than I remember and, in fact, I'm barely perceiving the 'boozy' part at all right now. Certainly the beer doesn't feel as heavy to me now as it did then. As far as the 'malty' part, some of that, I think, is owing to the nugget hops - there's such a huge association in my mind between that flavour profile and the more malt-centric styles of beer that, even though my brain knows better, and I can taste the bitterness, the nugget is totally dominating the citra and my palate keeps insisting that it's heavily malty. I know it's not but I taste that it is. Whether or not that makes any sense at all.

 

I would say laser cat has a bit more prominent malt base than some current en vogue DIPAs, but it is certainly no malt bomb.

 

I'm the last person that would try to tell someone what they're tasting. There's any number of factors that will alter one's perceptions of a beer; some are obvious, and others are probably a bit more ephemeral. As an aside, I can add further that the ratio of Citra to Nugget in Laser Cat is more than 3:1.

Certainly true, with many contemporary IPAs (especially in the northeast) eschewing any sort of dextrinous malt whatsoever (to say nothing of increasingly heavy oat or wheat inclusions). Our hoppy beers cover a decent spectrum, but it's very true that most of them contain some notion of caramel malts. And also true that we favor more classic bitterness profiles (~70 for most IPAs, ~100 for DIPAs) than is generally fashionable at the moment. So we do tend to get the label "old school" applied to us more often than not, though fortunately it's usually said with fondness.

We did a lot of Laser Cat through the end of 2017 as there was considerable demand and we had some art and branding for it that we felt was exceptional. Throughout 2018, we'll be rotating through some different brands, though I anticipate Laser Cat will return with some frequency, as well as Hidden City. In a few weeks we'll be releasing some Friendly Territory (our 100% Massachusetts malt and hops DIPA) and Activate (coffee porter). Citra Legacy should be showing up sometime in March.

 

I'm looking forward to Activate and Citra Legacy in cans. My two favorites from Medusa

 

The Reggae night yesterday was a blast. Great line up of beers

 

Nugget also triggers the 'malty' sensors for my tastes. It's in a different way but it's a way I enjoy. I bitter most of my home brew IPA with nugget and also frequently toss another bit in around 10 min. It shoves most flavor profiles in a direction I enjoy.

I also love laser cat so I'm certainly biased.

 

I had Reactivated for the second time yesterday. Awesome BA coffee stout. Between that and Bourbon Barrel Archaism, I'm really digging the woody whiskey character that Medusa extracts from barrels. I'd love to see BA Medusa canned or bottled.

 

Reactivated was the happy result of needing to empty our little rack of barrels to make room for a new brite tank to support the imminent canning project. We had an unexpected drought of empty kegs coming back from our distributor but we did have an empty 7 BBL serving tank, so we just went for the blend. Turned out pretty nice and we'd love to do that again some day. We were actually supposed to acquire some additional space in the building a year ago, which we intended to use for a much expanded barrel and foeder project, but the present occupant had to postpone their move. Hoping to at least build out some barrel space in our current cellar, and we have some foeder space earmarked in our major expansion project.