It has been a while since we’ve really experimented with new ingredients. After years of producing literally hundreds of different beers we kind of got into a groove with a base formula and the demand for our best sellers has been beyond what we’ve been able to produce for many years. This hasn’t left a whole lot of room for experimenting as much as we like. But for our brewers, the creative brain never really stops working and we needed to break it up with some deviation from the formula. Our goal for hazy beers has always been to use different hop blends to create a complete hop profile and to skew the beers in different directions with either bright and delicate hop aromas or more bold, sticky hop flavors. Then within that we have used a yeast strain that produces juicy, peachy flavors with a soft mouthfeel. In our descriptions on the beer cans you can sometimes start to pick out common descriptors: Passion fruit, lychee, orange, etc. When we started brewing the Bright and Juicy series of beers years ago we really leaned heavily into the passion fruit and ruby red grapefruit flavors.

As we’ve been feeling the itch to try things out, we found a very natural partner with Berkeley Yeast where they’ve taken the same yeast strain that we’ve used in hour hazies since 2016 and they were able to modify it in a way to create thiols. The new strain exhibits all of the same characteristics that we’re accustomed to with the juicy, peachy flavor and the same soft mouthfeel, but it can now convert precursors found in malts and hops into thiols which naturally creates a greater intensity of passion fruit and guava flavors. Since the flavor is derived from yeast rather than hops, it’s also a more stable flavor than would be found in hops. This has resulted in some very exciting flavors in our first test batches. Many people noted how tasty the recent “Now That’s What I Call Hops” series was which was the first hazies that we’ve produced with this new strain. Our brewers were so pleased that we immediately ordered more of the yeast to use in our upcoming Amarillo IPA and we also ordered a lager strain that has been modified in the same way to produce tropical lagers (Brewer’s favorite Neoclassic American Pils coming up!), plus a non-alcoholic yeast strain for the first of our NA beer experiments.

While many breweries have expressed that using these strains has allowed them to reduce their hop dosage rates, we’ve found this to be a perfect compliment to our intensely hopped beers. We’ve pushed the limits of hop dosing rates well into the area of diminishing returns where more hops don’t necessarily equal more flavor, but the use of these tropical, thiolized yeasts has pushed the flavor intensity and quality to new heights that were previously not achievable. Grab a 4 pack of Now That’s What I Call Hops in any of our taprooms and be on the lookout for the upcoming Amarillo IPA to get your first tastes of what these strains can do. We’re sure to be producing many beers with these strains in the near future!