Steve Luke to open brewery

why do a lot of folks have hard preferences for filtered beer?

 

I don't really care either way as long as the beer isn't a mess.

 

My wife feels the same way. Always gets bummed if she orders a beer, particularly IPAs, and it's all cloudy. I care about aesthetics, too, but flavor outweighs it for me.

 

I for one think the cloudy IPAs (Tree House style) are dead sexy

 

They must use English yeast . . .

 

They use the classic California ale yeast. Judging on their malt stacked in the brewery, the cloudiness in some of their IPAs is coming from white wheat/flaked oats and no filtering.

 

Do you know this for sure? The yeast doesn't taste like/doesn't hav rthe mouthfeel of 1056/001 to me. I use wheat and or oats in all of my own beers, and do not get that level of turbidity unless I use an English yeast.

 

The easy solution is to drink the beer from ceramic mugs, complete with handles. But there is a reason that filtered beers sell better, and as long we use glass, people will demand clear(er) beers.

 

Never really cared about aesthetics that much, but if a beer looks like pure mud water it can be a bit of an initial turn off (usually because those one's often taste bad too). Never understood why "clear" is the preferred aesthetic though...? To me that's purely a product of marketing all beverages, followed by perhaps a very old ingrained knowledge that clear water was less likely to kill you in the olden days.

 

Hi all - just a quick chime in, to nip a "mud water" reference in the bud. None of the IPAs we've released at Cloudburst have ever been turbid, or even murky. Yes, there will always be a haze to them - we don't filter, and we do dry-hop heavily - so there are plenty of polyphenols in suspension. However, we fine every beer, so that our IPA haze is a consistent, stable haze - i.e. there will never be sediment left at the bottom of your pint glass, and it will never look like murk or mud. Other beers we make are completely bright by design (like our Pils, current DH Pale, and Blonde). Our IPAs are less bright because we dry hop egregiously.

I will say, the one beer we have had clarity issues with is our rotating Saison - where a 1/3rd of the malt bill is WA wheat, which has an extremely high protein content contributing to the haze. In addition, we add more bizarre ingredients to each version of this beer that also increases the haze. Still, the soft mouthfeel from the wheat balances the bone dry finish of our French Saison strain in a manner that we overlook the haze in favor of balance.

At the end of the day, we want to produce the best beer we can on our system without sacrificing flavor & aroma. Some will be hazier than others, but they'll never be muddy, sludgy or murky by design.

 

I think No Recess is probably my favorite IPA at the moment. Lots of citrus flavors but with our west coast levels of bitterness and the mouthfeel is like drinking silk. Could happily drink pint after pint of that stuff. Impressive how great the beer has been right out of the gates.

 

Couldn't agree more. In fact, my check-in comments last night: "Tropical for days plus that west coast bitterness. This could be a local go-to for sure." I agree about the mouthfeel too.

https://untappd.com/user/itsThatBoyE/checkin/274877424

 

Damn, you know what else is funny is that I checked it in right before you did and we both gave it the same rating!

 

New IPA: Hotline Bling IPA. From instagram...

i'm starting to get a feeling Steve is a fan of hip-hop.

 

I'm sad that Psycho Hosebeast is lost on a generation of new craft beer fans...

 

new IPA: cosmic lust. i wonder what it tastes like.

side-note: i'm so happy.