The Sour Side of Spring

We’re releasing a brand new beer at the end of the week, Acid Jazz (4.5%), a dry-hopped kettle sour. 

You may remember our first venture into the world of kettle souring, our Surfer Gose. We’ve since made two batches of the gose, but wanted to try a completely different type of kettle sour, that features some juicy hop varieties.

We decided to try out a new hop to us, Ekuanot (the hop formerly known as Equinox) along with Galaxy (one of our favourites).  Ekuanot is known for its aromas and flavours of melon, berry, orange peel, lime, papaya and fresh peppers.  Combined with Galaxy, which boasts distinct passionfruit and citrus aromas, we thought it could be a match made in heaven to complement the sourness.

A lactobacillus culture (lactic acid producing bacteria, like what’s used in making yoghurt) was added to the wort prior to boiling to sour the beer over 24 hours. Once the desired sourness level was reached we boiled the wort to kill off the bacteria and continued with the brew as usual.

To keep any bitterness to a minimum, we didn’t add any hops during the brew.  All the hops were added after fermentation as dry hops to maximize aroma and flavour.  It turned out to be a huge citrus bomb, with aromas and flavours of orange peel, lime and grapefruit pith, with a slight tropical twang. 

Acid Jazz is refreshingly tart through and through and will be released this Friday.  It’s a great beer to ring in spring, even though spring doesn’t really show up for another month for us Yukoners.