Grand Teton – Pilot IPA Program & Bottle Dating
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MyBeer Buzz
From Grand Teton:
One of the most popular “words” in all of craft beer: I-P-A. What does it really mean? Hoppy, bitter, aromatic and flavorful? Piney, tropical, herbal and earthy? At Grand Teton Brewing, we are still on our quest to find the perfect IPA (India Pale Ale) for our beer offering lineup. This ultimately means answering the above questions while addressing our own needs and wants, as well as those of you, our customer.
We aren’t afraid of our hops here at Grand Teton Brewing and that is clearly displayed through Sweetgrass but even more so in beers like Pursuit of Hoppiness, Lost Continent and Trout Hop. The major issue in developing a standout IPA is how to display our love of hops differently than we do in one of the hop forward beers we already produce.
To start, we have decided to use hops in our IPA that we don’t showcase in any of our other beers. This has led us to tap into foreign hop markets that are beginning to produce some very high quality hops. We have also been experimenting with grain bills and malts we don’t normally use in our beers.
We love our water here in Teton Valley. It is what makes our German-style beers so well rounded and extremely similar to those actually brewed in Germany. The natural water characteristics, however, may not provide the taste we are looking for in our IPA.
In the middle of October, we will release our Fresh Hop IPA under the Pilot IPA program (IPA #8). For this beer, we travelled to Parma, Idaho and visited with Diane Gooding of Gooding Farms. We spent the better portion of a day seeing the harvesting, picking, drying and packaging operation of a hop farm. It was incredibly informative. IPA #8 will feature Chinook and Jarrylo Hops as well as 115 pounds of fresh Idaho, El Dorado Hops. At 5.7% ABV it should be a wonderful beer to enjoy on a fall afternoon!
Bottled On Date
We strive to consistently provide our customers with a top quality product. Great efforts are taken to keep our products fresh in all our markets, but inevitably some old product slips through the cracks or is stored too long. Our signature and seasonal beers should be consumed within the first 4 months after being bottled or kegged. We brew beers that can be cellared and aged, but those beers are confined to our Cellar Reserve and Brewers Series.
Every bottle and every keg of beer we produce is marked with the date it was filled. Next time you are perusing the beer shelves, check the date codes. Let the store owner/manager know if they have old product on the shelf. If you can’t find a date code or if it’s too old, don’t buy it.
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