Beer of the Week! 12/13/22
Three Notch’d Nephology Series: Rakau
Regularly $15.99 / Now on Sale for $14.96
New England Style IPA
Three Notch’d Brewing Company’s Nephology Series — named after the scientific study of clouds — is Three Notch’d’s continued perambulation through the world of hazy IPAs. For this latest offering, they’ve decided to zero in on a single hop, New Zealand’s Rakau hop.
As of the beginning of 2021, New Zealand had over 200 craft breweries on two islands that are approximately the size of Virginia, both Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama. Spread over all that land is a little more than half the population of New York City (and a bunch of sheep!). So according to New Zealand’s government, this means they have more breweries per capita than anywhere else in the world. What can we say, they like their beer.
They like their beer so much that in the 1950s, when their American hops were dying of disease, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research began a hop breeding program. After developing disease resistant hops in the early 1960s, the DSIR was off and running. Today, New Zealand hops are a staple of craft brewing, and the overwhelming majority of those hops were developed by DSIR’s successor, the Plant & Food Research division. One such hop is the Rakau.
New Zealand hops are known for their fruit notes. So it’s significant that one of Rakau’s breeders famously described the flavors it imparts as “the whole orchard.” That quality is in full display in the Nephology: Rakau, which gives you a lush, juicy NEIPA with just a turn of mint or lime on the finish to wrap the experience up.
Thanks to Three Notch’d for giving us this tasty single-hop deep dive.
Bonus Beer of the Week (‘Cause, like the cool hipster kids, we dig the B-sides.)
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
Regularly $14.99 / Now on Sale for $13.96
Imperial Stout
Steve Hindy was a journalist in the Middle East in the 70s and 80s. Do you remember the Middle East journalistic coverage in the 70s and 80s? We do, and, thus, it’s no surprise that in 1984, Hindy succumbed to his family’s urging to come home!
During those years in religiously fervent lands that banned alcohol sales, foreign journalists surreptitiously brewed their own beer. Hindy brought these skills back with him when he and his family settled in Brooklyn. Four years later, Hindy and banker Tom Potter founded Brooklyn Brewing Company, which became the first successful Brooklyn brewery since Schaefer and Rheingold had closed a dozen years before.
Of course, Brooklyn Brewing Company is most known for its brewmaster Garrett Oliver, the man who literally wrote the book on pairing food with beer (2003’s The Brewmaster’s Table). In 2011, Oxford University Press added to their prestigious Oxford Companion series with the Oxford Companion of Beer, constructed from the knowledge of 166 beer experts in 24 counties. Oh … and Garrett Oliver was its Editor-in-Chief. (You know, as one often is.) Legend has it that in 1994, his audition to be Brooklyn’s brewmaster was this beer.
Despite what its name suggests, the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout is not a chocolate stout. It’s an Imperial Stout inspired by the English Imperial Russian Stouts, composed of half a dozen different malts and bittered by Fuggles and Willamette hops. It is a good, old-fashioned roasty-toasty stout. (In fact, maybe it should be called the “Brooklyn Dark Chocolate Stout.”)
Lately, we’ve been enjoying beers from a bunch of new Brooklyn breweries, but it’s good to remind ourselves that THE Brooklyn brewery still makes beers of note.
Remember!
You can see our entire beer inventory on Untappd.com!