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!

Pyramid sampler full of memories, great taste

I headed out of the newsroom Monday afternoon in search of a story. A noon Wednesday deadline for this column loomed and I had to hit my beat. I decided to run my traps, hitting a couple of Joplin watering holes known for their early, late-afternoon business. I talked to a bartender here, chatted up a veteran sitting at the bar there. No luck. Sometimes I can just walk into a bar, have a beer and run into an interesting story. There was no time for that kind of casual newsgathering on Monday afternoon. It was late and I needed a story to tell.

Pryamid prevails

I stopped in at Macadoodles on my way home in search of an idea … and a 12-pack. When you write a column called “The Booze Beat,” sometimes that’s all it takes to find a good tale to tell. I walked the shelves looking for alcoholic inspiration. Ed Hardy wine? No. Ed Hardy beer? I’d been nursing a six-pack of Ed Hardy — aka Christian Audigier’s designer lager — for more than a week. No inspiration there, either. Then, I spied a 12-bottle sample pack from Pyramid Breweries in Seattle, Wa. I grabbed a box and headed home to research my column and relive a few Seattle memories. I lived there for almost a decade and came to love the Pyramid brands. The Spring variety pack of ales was an easy choice: It included three bottles each of the Haywire Hefewiezen (an unfiltered wheat beer), Audacious Apricot Ale, Thunderhead India Pale Ale and a new addition to the seasonal sampler, Fling Pale Ale.

Good wheat

The Haywire Hefe’s product information contends it’s “the standard by which all other wheat beers are judged.” By wheat beer standards it’s a good brew, but no better than KC’s Boulevard Wheat. When it comes to judging wheat beers, I’m a big Widmer Brothers fan. Portland-brewed Widmer is a thick, chewy wheat ale with a slightly bitter taste.
I remember drinking Widmer in Seattle long before it was available in bottles — let alone owned by Budweiser, now InBev. Widmer’s Hefe was the first beer in which I ever squeezed a lemon. It’s funny to me how a sip of a memorable beer or a familiar smell in the air can take you back to a place in time. Ah, memories. It rates 5.1 percent alcohol by volume (ABV).

IPA

I poured a Thunderhead India Pale Ale into a frozen pilsner glass, took a sip and remembered a day when I would have grimaced at its bitterness. Now, I can really savor a great sweetness provided by the malts used and the bitter character imparted by hops. The IPA is well-balanced and not so bitter as to put off a new drinker. (6.7 percent ABV.)
Fling Pale Ale

Less bitter than the IPA is Pyramid’s new Fling Pale Ale. Light and cooper colored, it’s light and easy to drink. It’s good starter pale. I’m not a big pale ale fan, but this one I can drink. Fling would be a good beer for a summer patio party. It’s malty and slightly bitter with a mild aftertaste that holds up to that wood- or charcoal-grilled flavor. (5.2 percent ABV.)

Audacious Apricot

I have loved Pyramid’s apricot for a long time. Now called “Audacious Apricot,” it’s a good beer for any occasion.  It’s good with light meals; the apricot flavor isn’t overpowering and enhances the meal. The flavored wheat beer is great hot-weather drinking and is best served ice-cold. (5.1 percent ABV.)

The Pyramid Spring Variety Pack set me back around $17. It’s worth the price and a party pleaser. I suspect it’s available around town in most establishments. The Pyramid Web site, http://www.pyramidbrew.com, offers a lot of product information and company history. For beer buffs, Pyramid has a great story … and good beer. 

Cheers!