A few weeks ago, BlackDuck and I decided to brew a collaboration pale ale since we both really like the style and have shared beers in the past. We began by kicking around ideas for a California/Ohio combination, trying to incorporate ingredients that represent both of our locations. We also decided early on that we wanted to use Mandarina Bavaria hops in this brew. Some emails were traded, thoughts shared and we started to kick around a recipe and then.....
I attended my local beer fest, sampling many a beer and just generally having a good time. Firestone Walker had a booth there and I chatted up the rep pouring for them. They were pouring a number of beers including 805, Union Jack, Luponic Distortion and their latest release of Leo v, Ursus (a chronology of beers that shift stylistically with each limited quarterly release). I took a liking to the Luponic Distortion tap handle that they were pouring from and inquired about what it would take to get my hands on it. The rep noted that it wasn't out of the question to obtain it, but to find him at the end of the day. So I did. To keep the story moving I will summarize here, that I ended up going home with the tap handle, a can or two of Leo v Ursus (that I hadn't been able to find yet) and his card - he was the Regional Sales Rep for the area.
The next day I took a picture of the tap handle on my keg and a picture of my beer fridge showing all the FW beer I had in it - just so he would know it went to a good home.
After exchanging a few emails, he generally said, "If there is anything I can ever do for you let me know". I took that at face value and replied with, "I know you're not on the brewing team, but do you happen to know if a recipe for Easy Jack (session IPA) has ever been released?"
Within the hour, he had forwarded my email with a note to Matt Brynildson - head brewer @ FW. He forwarded me the email back that had a home brew version attached - directly from Matt himself!
Looking at the recipe, and loving this beer, I was pretty excited. I became more excited when I remembered, and then saw, that it included Mandarina Bavaria so it would fit perfectly with the ideas that BlackDuck and I wanted to use in our brew. A session IPA is close enough to a pale ale so we decided to move forward with this beer. We made a few minor tweaks and had to make some assumptions since the recipe wasn't detailed to provide exactly the amount of hops to use at which intervals, but it gave us enough of an idea to come up with something that we think is going to be tasty as hell.
Neither of us were planning to brew it for a while but my schedule opened up this weekend and I was able to brew it yesterday. This was the first time I used a step mash and the first time I used my new refractometer and things went very smoothly. Target OG was 1.047 and my hydro sample (used to confirm readings of my refractomoeter since it was the virgin voyage for that) came it at 1.053, but I was a bit low on volume. I quickly used the Beersmith tools to determine how much water I could add to dillute to my target 1.047 and I ended up with 5.5G in the fermentor, spot on the recipe's gravity.
This morning, it is bubbling away happily and I'll be checking gravity on Friday to add the dry hops. Sometimes, things work in yoru favor and this was one of those times. I feel like the stars aligned to allow us to get a recipe and brew this up, so I'm excited to see how it comes out in a few weeks when it is time to drink it.
