Welcome to The Session #145. The topic is “Critique not Criticism.” Expect a roundup with links to other contributions Monday.
What happens when the founder of an internationally known brewery reaches out to a small Colorado brewery, writes that he’ll be in the neighborhood and suggests he’d like to see that brewery’s kit?
The short answer is Mad Colors, the beer to be “critiqued” here, eventually.
But there are questions to consider along the way, such as would this beer even have existed were it not for Instagram? Or when the brewer from Sweden arrives in town do you show him the laundry room where you own the brewing equipment or the place where the beers you sell are made? And how fresh do you really want your hazy IPA?
The cast in this story includes Omnipollo from Stockholm, Sweden, New Image Brewing in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, Lyric Brewing, and Garrett Oliver.
In 2017, Oliver said New England IPA (NEIPA) was the first beer style based around Instagram culture and based around social media. He also called it a fad, and told The Morning Advertiser, “(NEIPA) can be really tasty when it is well made, but it can’t even sit on a shelf for two weeks. It has no shelf life to it at all.”
Oliver has been right many more times in his life than he has been wrong, but in this case he was wrong about the shelf life of the style (still going strong) and the beers themselves (although not always, in the case of the latter).
Henok Fentie and Karl Grandin founded Omnipollo in 2010, but didn’t actually produce their own beer until 2022; instead brewing collaborations and contracting recipes to others. And they used Instagram extensively to create brand awareness, showcasing an endless display of stylish cans filled with hazy IPAs, fruited sours, and pastry stouts. There was plenty of sizzle, although enthusiasts less excited about those styles complained there was not steak.
Long time friends Rich Hampton and Jesse Smolak began homebrewing in earnest during Covid-19. They built a three-vessel, half-barrel system in the laundry room of Hampton’s condominium. “(Hampton) has an engineer’s mind,” Smolak says. “I tell people he’s the brains and I’m the mouth.”
They canned and labeled their beers and began trading with other enthusiasts. Smolak followed popular breweries on Instagram and they followed back. Lyric became part of the haze community, learning who the enthusiasts are at the same time enthusiasts got to know Lyric. They established haze cred before they actually began selling beer last July.
Smolak figures they have about 800-900 core customers, including those in the Denver area who buy their cans or find the beer at a few draft accounts. “I can reply personally when they reach out,” he said. “Otherwise, they only know us through the portal on the screen.”
Which brings us back to Omnipollo. Fentie has a friend in the Northeast who keeps him informed about new beers in the states that are generating interest. He told Fentie to be on the lookout for Lyric beers. At the same time, Fentie had a trip to Colorado planned, to pour Omnipollo beers at the Weldwerks Invitational Festival in Greeley.
He contacted Smolak about visiting Lyric, and that is where New Image Brewing comes in. New Image brews its own thoroughly modern beers as well as quite a bit for other breweries. Now that includes Lyric. By the time Lyric celebrates its first anniversary they will have produced about 100 barrels.
Smolak said NIB founder Brandon Capps has seamlessly “scaled our beer, and translated our small batch passion into a commercial product without losing its identity. I’ve heard from many others that scale is difficult every step of the way. Brandon accelerated the process as a mentor, not as an investor.”
Both Hampton and Smolak work at Granger, an industrial equipment supplier. They may have talked idly over a brew kettle about starting their own brewery, but Smolak says, “No plans, no desires.”
After he heard from Fentie, Smolak checked with Capps about showing Fentie where Lyric beers were actually made. The next thing anybody knew, a collaboration had begun. Texts flew back and forth related to ingredients, process and targets — with Fentie politely typing “your house, your rules” — to create a beer that reflects the influence of all three breweries.
So how is it? Intense. Tropical aroma fills the air the moment the can is breached, so tropical that close your eyes and you simply see orange. It lands on the tongue with the initial pillowy softness you expect from a hazy and a laundry list of tropical, subtropical and southern hemisphere flavors. At 10 percent ABV it is a reminder that alcohol itself adds flavor and, along with the haze, holds other flavors in suspension. Saturated might be the word I am looking for.
There is also alcohol/hop burn at the finish, but this is a beer that enthusiasts who want something 10 percent and unapologetically intense would call crushable.
And that returns us to the third question. Is there a perfect age at which to serve a hazy? I drank Mad Colors two weeks after it was released. Some people who line up to buy Lyric branded beers are happy to drink them the day after they are canned. They want a raw, intense, green experience. Others wait for the beer to mellow, or in some cases to arrive via a trade. These beers have a shelf life well beyond two weeks.
Last September, I took (some would say muled) a can of Can Full of Gas, Lyric’s second release, to Ireland for John Duffy, The Beer Nut. He was not enamored, but gave it a fair critique. On the flip side, the past month I’ve seen check-ins on Untappd, six months after the beer was canned, with scores of 4.5 or higher attached.
Should you care, I prefer Mad Colors to the memory of Can Full of Gas (it was six months ago, after all). But then I also prefer Hype Shift, the newest from Lyric, to Can Full of Gas, at least with a little time in the can. For one thing, I am more interest in checking out the newest hop flavors than saner consumers. And I like intense, although not raw, beers. Sure, there are styles I drink more of, and tonight a clear IPA is on the menu. It’s a collaboration that I learned is available . . . wait for it . . . from Instagram.