Long Hammer IPA taps into love of bitter beers

I sat down Sunday morning at Buffalo Wild Wings for a reunion, of sorts.
A couple of weeks ago, I spied a new tap handle on the draft rail there and was stoked. Long Hammer India Pale Ale from Redhook Ales, a longtime Seattle craft brewer, had finally made it to Joplin on draft. I decided to get reacquainted with Redhook, a long-lost friend. I asked my bartender at Wild Wings how Long Hammer was going over and she said it was gaining in popularity.
One of the first craft beers for which I ever developed a taste was Long Hammer’s craft cousin, Redhook Extra Special Bitter — ESB for short. I’ve seen ESB around town in bottles for years and I’m finding it more and more on draft during my travels. I often grab a six pack or order a pint when it’s available.

Long Hammer is available on draft in Joplin at Buffalo Wild Wings, Just Us Bar and Grill, Caldone's and Tropicana Bar and Grill.

I called Redhook and set up an interview with Greg Deuhs, resident brew master, and Kim Brusco, a lead brewer at the company’s Woodinville, Wash., brewery. If anyone could help me share the good news about Redhook’s “Liquid Goodness,” as the company promotes it, it would be the guys who make it.
I asked Kim how he thought Redhook’s Long Hammer, a clean and balanced IPA brewed since 1984, is doing around the country where hoppy craft beers are not as well known — or accepted — as they are in the Northwest and Northeast.
“We’re doing well all over the country,” Kim said of their crisp, golden brew. “The thing about Long Hammer, compared to other IPAs, is it’s approachable. It’s clean. It’s 6.5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) and 44 (bitterness units), but it’s a very drinkable IPA, compared to the real big overly-hopped IPAs.”
While I haven’t spotted ESB on tap around town, it is available in bottles at many package and grocery stores where craft ales and lagers are sold. Not as bitter as Long Hammer, ESB is a great amber-colored ale. It put Redhook on the map in 1987 and continues to win important beer awards today. When I developed a taste for ESB it wasn’t yet available in bottles. Like many Seattle and Portland brews of the day, it was a keg-only product.
“It’s our oldest brand,” Kim told me. “It’s a drinkable, approachable beer. It’s got a lot of flavor; nothing over the top. It’s typical for an English bitter. It’s not overly hoppy or overly malty. It’s just got some good flavors that meld together real well.”
Getting bitter
Bitterness units, BUs for short, are the way brewers measure the bitterness of beers. Mass-production lagers  such as Budweiser come in between 5 and 25 BUs. English-style bitters, such as Redhook’s ESB, come in at 28 BUs and higher. Hoppier and more bitter ales, such as Redhook’s Big Ballard Imperial IPA, comes in at 73 BUs. Some extreme beers — often called double or triple IPAs — reach more than 100 on the BU scale. Talk about bitter-beer face.
Kim, a self described “hop-head” and fan of the bitterest beers, told me he thinks people are starting to burn out on overly-hopped beers. Hops are the leafy, green botanical added to beers during or after brewing, which gives them a bitter character and sometimes skunky aroma.
“I drink the hoppiest beers,” Kim said. “I still like one from time to time, but really, Long Hammer is my favorite IPA. I can drink a few pints of it and get the hops I want.”
Long Hammer, he said, is dry hopped after the heated brewing process is complete. That, he said, is the secret to Long Hammer’s balanced flavor profile.
“I think because of the way we do it here, it comes though as a floral aroma, opposed to an overly bitter hop flavor,” he said. “Where some people might be turned off by a beer that has a very large addition of hops (during brewing) that gives the beer aroma, it also gives a real hop flavor. That doesn’t exist with Long Hammer because we dry hop it cold.”
Greg Deuhs, who directs brewing at Redhook in Seattle, said he thinks the key to craft beers’ acceptance around the country has been education. That education, in some cases, has been long in coming to the Midwest.
“The great American beer revolution started in the early 1980s and has been slowly progressing through the country,” the brew house veteran said. “What started in certain pockets of the country, like the West Coast and California and parts of the East and Midwest, is now becoming mainstreamed elsewhere in the country. It’s just taking time to get there.”
Affordable luxury
Beer tourism, Greg said, is helping craft beer grow in popularity around the United States.
“People who travel (to the American Northwest) and Europe come back home and the seeds get planted,” he said. “Ten or 15 years ago, Redhook was considered an assertive beer, especially to somebody from the Midwest. They hadn’t ever seen a micro, but now it’s just like other things; like good coffee, there’s more exposure and more people get turned on to it.”
Greg said that the ESB of today is considered by many a mainstream craft beer, where years ago, when it debuted, it was thought to be an extreme beer. Consumers’ tastes have changed, he said.
Craft beers, Greg contends, are an affordable luxury and more people are giving them a try.
David Pryor, a sales manager at Missouri Eagle in Joplin, the area’s Anheuser-Busch distributor, told me craft beers are growing in acceptance around the area.
“There are a lot more people trying the import and craft beer segment,” David said. “Especially this time of year. The fall season lends itself to more flavorful beers — the ales and porters and those types of beers. They are a little higher alcohol, which people enjoy. We’re seeing a lot of people buy a craft six pack and still buy the 12-pack of Bud Light, too. Everybody ought to go have one. You know, something to change it up a little for a special occasion.”
Anytime I buy a six pack of craft beer, it’s a special occasion.

Cheers!