Stone Brewing / Portsmouth–Cluster’s Last Stand IPA–The Details!

Looks like out pal Mitch Steele from Stone & Tod Mott from Portsmouth Brewery got together today to co-brew a beer to be named Cluster’s Last Stand IPA/  Look for CLSIPA to be released on Jan 19th 2012 (possibly for the MBAA meeting on 1/20)…stay tuned for details!

UPDATE 12/19…looks like Mitch is a busy boy…From his Facebook….yet another collaboration brew. today w/ Matt Cole @Fatheads and Rich Norgrove @Bear Republic

Here are the details:

Cluster’s Last Stand
62 IBU
6.5% abv
…
Malts: North American 2-Row Pale Malt, Caramel 80 and Carahell
Hops: Cluster, Bullion and Tomahawk
Yeast: WLP001 California Ale
Cluster’s Last Stand is a tweaked version of one of America’s earliest IPAs.

Three brewers, Mitch Steele, Brewmaster of Stone Brewing Company, Dave Yarrington, Smuttynose’s DoBrO and host brewer/New England brewing legend Tod Mott (Portsmouth Brewery) have taken a classic American IPA recipe and recreated it with a few modern twists.

Ballantine Brewery’s original IPA recipe as a base used Bullion hops exclusively. Given the punny name of the beer, our veteran trio of brewers substituted Cluster as the bittering hop and keeping Bullion as the flavor contribution. The first tweak was to pack a few more finishing hops in, with sizable additions of Tomahawk going in at 5 minutes and again in the hopback during wort cooling.

Another modern twist makes Cluster’s Last Stand the first Skype-based collaboration brew that we know of. As many of you know, Stone is located in San Diego County, California. It made no sense for Mitch to travel out here twice and everyone decided that they’d rather drink together than work together, so we connected with Mitch over the internet for the brewday. He will be joining us for the tapping on January 19 at 5:30 in the side room at Portsmouth Brewery. You don’t need reservations, just stop on by. We’ve only brewed seven barrels of this beer and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.