I’ll never brew a beer you can already buy. I remember saying that to Nick Rutherford (chef/owner of The Porter Beer Bar) long before opening a brewery actually seemed like a feasible goal. That was the whole point of even brewing for me. I actually never cared for the physical process of brewing. Lots of people brew with friends because it’s fun – I’ve had fun hanging out with other people brewing, but I always brewed by myself and worked on other things while it was happening. I brewed because I loved thinking about the process, what was next, and always wanted to drink something new.

We opened without an IPA. For a brewery of our size, that rarely happens. We released our seasonal Transmigration of Souls shortly after, but I always wanted to establish us as a brewery that doesn’t just brew your standard IPA, pale, etc., so we had a flagship sour plum beer. If any of you are like me (and based on sales numbers, many of you are), I drink far more Atalanta than any other beer. That doesn’t mean I don’t actually want an IPA though, and I want one available regularly. Of course, there are a lot of good IPAs regularly available, but like I said upfront, I’ll never brew a beer you can already buy and that market is cornered.

Here’s a dirty little secret: you’ve probably never had the best smelling IPA your favorite brewery has made, even though they make it regularly. IPAs smell and oftentimes taste best before they’re made pretty enough for sale. That doesn’t mean they drink very well. Suspended hop particles have a nasty bitter character, and lots of yeast in suspension just feels dirty in your mouth. Unfortunately, clearing the beer of ugly solids generally also clears the beer of lots of the hop oils latched onto those ugly solids. Even the massive olfactory assault of a beer like Transmigration of Souls is just a shadow of the ugly version you never get.

Where do you go from there? If you’ve been drinking our beers regularly, you’ve probably noticed that our current seasonal IPA, Life.Death.Life.Truth., is hazier than our previous IPAs, but certainly nothing extreme. The world is a funny place, and sometimes answers that seem obvious actually get ignored for many years. What if you just tried to limit the negative mouthfeel effects of a very unclear IPA, but let it stay as close as possible to that unbelievable state that’s generally only enjoyed by the brewers? There have been a few small New England breweries that have taken that approach in the last couple years (Tree House, Trillium, Tired Hands, to name a few), and that shift has influenced us. It’s a simple, yet paradigm shifting approach to brewing IPAs, giving much more weight to the flavor and aroma experience than to the visual experience. It seems obvious, so why doesn’t everybody do it?

Backlash. Yes, we’ll probably get some kegs sent back to us because someone didn’t expect an IPA to look like this. It may even be a lot of kegs, returned before anyone even tries the beer (this will happen less if you tell your bartenders you want this beer and know what to expect). Because of GA laws, we don’t have the luxury of those NE breweries of selling at the brewery to make sure that everyone knows what they’re getting into. We send the beer out and hope for the best, and we’re sending our beer out into the world where clear IPAs are the standard, and beers that look like The Rites are flawed.

We could have easily done an IPA that you would have really liked, that tasted familiar, that would have looked like you expected an IPA to look. We didn’t open that brewery though. I would’ve just kept playing trumpet instead of opening that brewery. We opened a brewery to make the best beer you’ve ever had, and you can’t do that by brewing what everyone else is already brewing. We do that by brewing The Rites.

Don’t look back.

-Jason Pellett
Brewmaster/president