WHAT’S BREWING

P.2 Green Flash

P.4 Get Your Fix

P.6 Do You Bel ieve in GOSE?

P.7 A Couple of Cider Makers

P.8 Leinenkugel Grapefruit Shandy

JUNE/JULY 2015

Off Tap. is a bimonthly publication of ABC Fine Wine & Spirits. Copyright 2015 ABC Liquors, Inc. All rights reserved. Not all products are available in all stores. If the product you’re looking for isn’t available, ask us to order it for you! Meghan Guarino Editor Allie Smallwood Contributing Editor Lorena Streeter Contributing Editor

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Green FlashGreen Flash Brewing Company is similar to other craft breweries in that they put creativity and quality above all else. But what’s different about Green Flash is that the creativity does not start and end with or revolve around their brewmaster. This is a company that sources creativity from every employee, every experience and every program or campaign they produce. Don’t get me wrong—Chuck Silva is an amazing brewmaster with a keen palate and a creative mind. Just look at Le Freak. The Belgian-American hybrid is arguably Green Flash’s most popular brew.

“I mean, you could call it a Belgian IPA,” Silva said of the award-winning Le Freak, “but I wouldn’t necessarily limit it to that as a description. I think it’s a bit different still, than just a Belgian IPA. It’s kind of an imperial IPA meets Belgian tripel stylistically—it kind of meets in the middle. I think it has inspired brewers as well as drinkers.”

This inability to categorize a craft beer and the ability to inspire beer enthusiasts along the way is exactly the type of creativity Green Flash strives for.

“Inspiration comes from all different directions,” Silva said, including programs like Cellar 3, a series that allows for a lot of experimentation, the Treasure Chest beer, a one-off brew created to raise money for breast cancer awareness, and their Genius Lab, an internal program that “allows anyone in the company to make a beer. So you just partner with another person from either the office or the brewery or partner with a brewer and get your idea in and actually develop a recipe. It’s a unique opportunity.”

These beers are offered on tap in the brewery’s tasting room.

Silva also explained, “Sometimes I’m inspired by other brewers and my own brewers and sometimes it’s just Mike Hinkley (founder of Green Flash) coming to me and saying, “Hey I want to make a new IPA but I want you to kind of go in this direction.” And that’s exactly how their newly released and currently narrowly distributed Soul Style IPA came to be.

But aside from focusing on their creative, collaborative company culture, Green Flash is pushing their literal limits and growing fast.

In 2014, the San Diego-based brewery announced their plans to open another brewery… on the other side of the country. Green Flash Brewing Company will be making beer coast-to-coast when their new Virginia Beach location opens next year. “We were growing at a rate that will have us reaching capacity within the next couple of years so we needed a plan—we’re done expanding here…

MEGHAN GUARINO

abcfws.com

Green Flash Brewing Co., San Diego, California

A rendering of the future Green Flash brewery in Virginia Beach

LE FREAK Spawned over barstool pontifications between Publican and Brewmaster, this zesty Amarillo dry-hopped, bottle-conditioned marvel entices with fruity Belgian yeast aromatics and a firm, dry finish. – Brewery Notes

WEST COAST IPA Simcoe for tropical and grapefruit zest, Columbus for hop pungency, Centennial for pine notes, Citra for citrus zest and Cascade for floral aroma are layered throughout the brewing process. West Coast IPA exemplifies the Green Flash spirit of adventure and discovery. – Brewery Notes

HOP HEAD RED A luscious beauty, Hop Head Red Double IPA exudes resinous hoppy qualities from Amarillo, Warrior and Nugget to overtake the full-bodied depths of a caramel malt base. Captivating and seductive floral aromas and alluring hop flavors are the result of dry hopping with mountains of Amarillo. – Brewery Notes

HOP ODYSSEY CITRA SESSION *seasonal Our Citra Session IPA is brewed with high-quality Marris Otter and Vienna malt but the flavor is dominated by the Citra hops introduced throughout the boil and again in the dry hop for maximum aroma intensity. Notes of lemon, orange and grapefruit make this hop-laden brew a perfectly potable summer session IPA. – Brewery Notes

ROAD WARRIOR *seasonal Road Warrior charges full flavor forward. Columbus and Mosaic hops, rich crystal and spicy rye malts pave the way for Mosaic and Amarillo dry hopping to boldly shine through the finish. – Brewery Notes

SILVA STOUT *limited release Our double stout ages in oak bourbon barrels and artfully emerges as Silva Stout. This midnight black ale features elegant notes of oak, vanilla, dark chocolate, coffee, roasted barley and ripe cherry. Round and delicately balanced in body, each sip envelops the palate with its impressively complex craft composition. – Brewery Notes

there’s no room to do further expansion, so the idea became clear to build another brewery,” Silva said.

A big part of the reason for moving across the country was shipping. With 30-40% of their beer sold on the East Coast, it made sense to build a facility that could handle that part of their distribution. “Virginia Beach is a good location with cultural similarities—beach town, a navy town as well and a good work force—and already some evolving and developing beer culture,” Silva said. “We’ve been selling beer in Virginia Beach for a number of years already and when we talked to

the city they were very excited about us, they had a property in mind and then there was just no looking back.”

Green Flash is hoping to open their East Coast expansion in 2016. The facility will brew the company’s core lines, though with such a highly creative mindset and a new brewery in full operation, there is always the opportunity to do more. And we do hope there is more.

The taproom at Green Flash brewery

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GET YOUR FIX Do You Believe in GOSE?

RIVERTOWN DIVERGENT BERLINER WEISSE

Crisp, delicate, cutting

edge, complex and tart,

pouring a bright citrine

with a nose of gently

soured rind fruit.

– Brewery Notes

OSKAR BLUES DALE’S PALE ALE

A hoppy nose with

balanced flavors of

pale malts and citrusy

floral hops from start

to finish.

– Brewery Notes

LEFFE BLOND

Smooth and subtle,

Leffe Blond is an

authentic blond

abbey beer with

a slight hint

of bitterness to it.

– Brewery Notes

FOUNDERS ALL DAY IPA

Brewed with an array

of malts, grains and

hops and balanced

for optimal aromatics

and a clean finish.

– Brewery Notes

MEGHAN GUARINO

Fries are the sidekick to almost any summer meal, be it burgers by the beach or backyard barbecues. And while most focus on pairing their brews to the main meat, don’t forget those salty, greasy, golden sticks of goodness need some love too. Pair your summertime fries with beers that go down just as easily as this ketchup-coated side dish.

GET YOUR FIX

Yeah, I knew I’d get your attention with that... Now that you have made it past the bad pun, keep reading! You know the beer style that gets everyone into craft beer then they leave it behind for other styles like pale ales and IPAs? The style that seems to get a decent but lackluster rap on beer rating websites like Beer Advocate or RateBeer but it is always solid and popular at bars and in stores? I’m talking about wheat beers—not just hefeweizens, but flavored wheats and hoppy versions like Boulevard’s Hoppy Wheat. However, I am not here to talk about them in general. Instead, let’s talk gose!

Gose, an old German style from Leipzig, is an unfiltered wheat beer made with 50-60% malted wheat, which creates a cloudy yellow color and provides a refreshing crispness and twang. That “twang” is the key. I might classify it as a sour, my beer of choice whenever I can find it (it’s not the most popular of styles). It’s like being hit in the mouth by a Sour Patch Kid, liking it and inviting them back for another punch. It’s perfect for cheese or any tapas due to the fact that it’s the ultimate palate cleanser. It’s also low in ABV (sessionable) so you could enjoy it for your day-drinking

experiences and not be useless by the time night rolls around.

The one that has grabbed my attention is the Highway 128 Session Series: Blood Orange Gose by Anderson Valley Brewing Company. Contrary to the name, it is not blood orange in color or overpowering in flavor. It is representative of its roots with a light body and tangy style, but the blood orange cools off the sourness (just a little) and is almost like an afterthought, which in my humble opinion makes this the perfect hot-weather brew. Its Champagne-like quality also makes it perfect to mix with OJ (or just by itself) for those Sunday brunches when you want something that isn’t too strong.

I will admit that gose is a difficult style of beer to find out there in the ale-heavy beer world we live in, so I invite you to try its more common cousins: saison and lambic.

Ommegang’s Hennepin and Saison DuPont are good traditional examples of a farmhouse ale that dabbles in the sour category, plus they’re relatively easy to find. Kriek Lambic by Lindeman’s, a beer closely related to gueuze, is another alternative worth checking out.

If you want something light, not sweet and something you can enjoy for hours this is your style. What can I say? What comes around, gose around. (I really love puns.)

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Do You Believe in GOSE?JAMES BEAVER, BEER CONSULTANT – LAKE BUENA VISTA

Q & A with a Couple of Cider Makers

ALLIE SMALLWOOD

You may know the following guys as the hands behind Woodchuck Cider. Between the two of them they have some extraordinary apple expertise. From a core series of mainstay ciders to their ever-changing Out on a Limb series (Oopsy Daisy is the current liquid), it’s pretty clear that Woodchuck Cidery knows their apples… and their consumer.

So, your apples; the pride and joy of your job. Where do they come from?John: We get apples from all over; we buy about 50% of the available cider fruit in Vermont, but because our brands are distributed nationally and internationally, we buy apples and juice from all across the country, all across Europe and even some places in the Southern Hemisphere.

Besides being filled with apples instead of hops or grapes, how is a cidery different than a brewery or winery? Ben: A lot of the cider making process is like winemaking, where you’re really interested in fruit and fruit quality/chemistry, and taking juice and pressing it, fermenting it, aging it and bringing it to market. But a lot of cider making is also like beer making. We’re

carbonating, we’re kegging, we’re making a new batch of cider, we’re doing fermentations every single week, we’re experimenting with flavors, so I think having two different backgrounds (John’s prior career was in brewing) and levels of expertise makes us a strong team.

What’s your favorite cider to brew and why?Ben: I’m pretty new to the team, (I’ve been here for 6 weeks) and my favorite cider so far is the Local Nectar. It’s made with Vermont apples and we get to work with local orchards and support our neighbors. The added benefit for me is that it’s my favorite tasting cider. John: I have a tendency to like drier ciders, so I’ve had a little more fun playing around with some juice that we’ve acquired from Europe and with some different apple varieties, like the bittersweets and sharps, and I think there’s an added layer of complexity there that I’m really interested in.

Why do you enjoy the taste of this particular variation so much? Ben: Here in Vermont, we’re surrounded by a world class apple growing region, so the apples we get here are different than what you can get in Washington or Michigan or England. The terroir of the cider allows us to make a very specific batch of cider with local apples. It’s a really fun project because the flavors and chemistry of those local apples really come through in the final product.

What inspired Gumption?John: Really, it sums up our company. Having the gumption to make hard cider [in a time when it wasn’t really a category]… is where it came from, and it gave us an opportunity to showcase these cider apple qualities. We have the opportunity to source some apples that a lot of people don’t have, so it’s a chance to step outside and lead the way. It goes back to the company’s roots. Ben: You can make a delicious cider with American style apples, and the same with European style apples, but there really isn’t an example in the U.S. of someone combining the two and making a unique hybrid. We’ve definitely hit a home run with this liquid and we’re getting an awesome response from it.

Ben John

Woodchuck Cidery, Vermont

With IPAs really taking off in the past three years, how do you plan to combine that beloved bitter flavor profile into ciders for the IPA drinker? John: I’ve actually already developed a liquid that will be going into bottles this fall. But we already do our Hopsation Cider, which is more like a pale in terms of bitterness units, but we definitely kicked up the hops flavor in this new liquid and we’re excited to roll that one out this fall.

Out on a Limb series, tell me about that. Seems like the most fun to brew. Ben: Yea, with over 25 styles, at some point you can’t go into a store and have 25 placements just for us, so we really [wanted a place for all of our new ideas]. So we keep the packaging, keep the price and just change the liquid on the inside [according to all of our new ideas].

Where do these ideas come from? John: I pray a lot. The voices in my head… no, just kidding, I read Beverage Trend Magazine and I’m always trying different things when I travel to different places, or it might be a conversation I have with a friend or a coworker, so these ideas really come from everywhere.

What’s your favorite food recipe to make using cider? Ben: If there’s any dish you would make with an apple, use hard cider as well. Any pork dish is a great candidate. It’s great for glazing meats, when you reduce it in a pan and concentrate the flavors, it’s a really nice reduction in that way. One of my favorite recipes during the fall is you take five or six apples, cut them up and braise them in a pan with butter, sage and a little bit of hard cider, and it’s a really tasty side dish.

While we don’t have many apple orchards in Florida, it’s ok because we carry that same tart goodness from Vermont-based Woodchuck Cidery at your local ABC. Here are some facts to take away from behind- the-scenes conversations with the cider makers: a cider apple is the same as an eating apple, Woodchuck Cidery consists of 150 kick-butt employees, and Local Nectar has expanded beyond Vermont into Michigan.

Emptying barrels at Woodchuck Cidery

8989 South Orange Ave.Orlando, Florida 32824

Leinenkugel Grapefruit Shandy is a

refreshing summer brew that hits you

up front with a fresh grapefruit aroma.

Not as tart as the lemony Summer

Shandy, this grapefruit version is clean

and crisp with notes of grapefruit citrus

and breadiness with a nice pillowy

head and creamy mouthfeel.

Since I’m one who loves to cook with

beer, I had to come up with something

interesting for this shandy: Grapefruit

Shandy Clams with angel hair pasta.

INGREDIENTS

1 T olive oil

1 shallot, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

24 oz Grapefruit Summer Shandy (2 bottles)

2 lb clams, cleaned

1 T chopped parsley

1 lb angel hair pasta

2 T butter,

½ cup freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

1 tsp grapefruit zest

¼ cup grated parmesan

DIRECTIONS

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan

over medium heat. When hot, sauté

shallots and garlic. Stir until it just

begins to color, about 2-3 minutes.

Add the Grapefruit Shandy and bring

to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and

add the clams to the pot. Cover and

cook until the shells open, about 4-6

minutes. Add butter and half

the chopped parsley to the pot and

stir to combine. Transfer clams with

a slotted spoon to separate bowl.

Spoon some of the cooking liquid

over the clams.

While the clams are cooking, bring

a pot of lightly salted water to a boil.

Add the angel hair and cook until

al dente. Drain pasta and return to

the pot with the butter. Add ½ cup

freshly squeezed grapefruit juice,

grapefruit zest and the remainder

of the chopped parsley.

Serve angel hair in bowls and top with

clams and grated parmesan cheese.

Garnish with grapefruit wedges.

RICK SWARTZ, BEER CONSULTANT – VERO BEACH@ABCBEERRICK

Leinenkugel Grapefruit Shandy Savory shandy and zesty clams