Elysian brewing – Konishiki Imperial IPA (Draft Only)
on May 24, 2013 at 8:01 am
Way back in 2006 or ’07, I got a call from Darren Gamache of Virgil Gamache Farms, the hop growers who brought the world Amarillo. They had grown three plants of a Japanese hop variety called Sorachi Ace, and pelletized the cones they produced. He proposed sending them all to me for us to fool around with, to see what kinds of beers the hop might produce. Naturally, this was an honor, to be the first North American brewer to use this hop, and to carry the trust of the Gamaches to brew something solid enough to display the best qualities of Sorachi Ace. I first used it in a beer we had not long before begun brewing for Kisaku, the sushi restaurant across the street from Tangletown, a Belgian golden ale fermented with yuzu. The Japanese tie-in seemed like a natural, and we still regularly brew this beer. Next, I brewed a beer inspired by the not-so-distant line of the Rocky Mountains on my way north from Denver the very fist time I visited New Belgium to start our various cooperations there. That beer was called Generic Eminence (in homage to all those other Northwestern beers named after mountains), and in a tasting with the Subpop folks, as we contemplated the beer we would brew for their 20th anniversary, it was a 50-50 blend of this beer and Bifrost that eventually brought Loser to light. Loser was our summer seasonal for a number of years, and now it’s part of our year-round lineup, proudly displaying the Sorachi Ace that was a part of it from the beginning.
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