Epic Beer

Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Company and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery sit down for a chat while brewing the second installment of their collaborative brew PortaMarillo using two native New Zealand ingredients, tamarillo's and pohutakawa wood chips, at Luke's brewery in Auckland, NZ.

My friend Luke Nicholas, the founder and brewer for New Zealand’s Epic Beer, was in town on Monday for a couple of days, before flying to Delaware to do a collaboration brew with Sam Calagione at Dogfish Head. I met up with him at 21st Amendment for a quick drink and to try two of his new beers.

The first, a stout, was also a collaboration between the Thornbridge Brewery in the UK. Rich and chocolately, it was a very nice stout. The second, Oaked Aged Armageddon IPA, is Luke’s regular IPA, but aged on lightly toasted oak. It uses all American hops: Cascade, Centennial, Columbus and Simcoe. At 66 IBUs it’s a big, hoppy, floral IPA. But for New Zealand — whose mainstream lagers are even lighter than our mainstream lagers — it’s so huge it’s … well, epic. But the toasted oak adds a nice dimension that’s subtle but a welcome addition.

Luke and Zambo.

Also, new head 21A head brewer Zambo was just tapping their most recent creation, a Belgian-style IPA, similar to the Belgian Pale Ale they did last year, but hoppier, of course.

Me and Luke outside 21A.

From Brookston Beer Bulletin

Leading Kiwi brewer, Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing fame is about to embark on his third international collaborative brew, this time with one of the biggest craft beer players in the USA, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head.

Dogfish Head is among the fastest growing breweries in the USA, sharing Epic’s philosophy of producing full-flavoured, robust brews for passionate lovers of craft beer. Its motto, ‘Off-centered ales for off-centered people,” has been a winning one. Starting out in 1995 making 10 gallons of beer at a time, Dogfish Head has grown into a 110 person company, selling beer in 28 states and three countries.

Similar to Nicholas’ profile here in New Zealand, Calagione is somewhat of a local hero in the craft beer industry in The States, making for a well-aligned collaborative brew partnership.

The project will take an even greater significance when the beer is entered into the BrewNZ Beer Awards this August under the Festive Brew category.

A Festive Brew is a beer that has never been brewed or made commercially available before. This year’s theme, ‘Let's go Native’ stipulates the beer must include one or more uniquely Kiwi ingredients.

Nicholas has a history of off-shore collaborations in brewing.

In March 2009 he brewed a batch of his Epic Pale Ale at Everard’s Brewery in Leicester, UK for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival.

In April 2009 he teamed up with Thornbridge Brewery in the Peak District, UK, where he brewed a batch of Thornbridge Epic Halcyon IPA with fellow kiwi brewer Kelly Ryan. The result saw the beer rank 10th best beer in the UK for 2010 by website RateBeer.com.

In February this year, the pair reunited when Kelly came to New Zealand to brew the Epic Thornbridge Stout. At release, the beer was so popular it had to go out on allocation as demand was nearly tripled the amount brewed.

Epic Brewing is now being exported into Australia and the USA and consistently ranks in the top five selling craft beers in New Zealand.

Ageing beer in barrels to expand flavour is a trend that has exploded in the US and is now gaining pace in the Southern Hemisphere. Luke Nicholas from Epic Beer dropped by when we were in Melbourne recently to share a massive new Epic Beer from New Zealand – Oaked Aged Armageddon IPA.

Beermen.TV

Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning.

“I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told Luke Nicholas after tasting the beer for the first time since they brewed it in February. He liked what was in his glass, but his experience with brown malt — a key ingredient in the recipe and one Nicholas had not used before — told him it wasn’t time to bottle the beer. Nicholas reassured him that what he was tasting had been bottled weeks before so he could bring some to Chicago. The rest was still maturing.

That’s what’s called collaboration.

The theme for the 39th gathering of the Session today is collaboration — Mario Rubio is this month’s host and will have the recap — and I expect various bloggers to come at it from many directions. Let’s just hope we don’t hear the story of Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale too many times.

I’ll try to keep it simple. Nicholas is founder and chief bottle washer at Epic Brewing in New Zealand. Ryan, also a native of New Zealand, is brewery manager at the Thornbridge Brewery in England. They met last year when Nicholas was in England and ended up brewing a collaboration that melded, although that might not be the right word, Epic IPA and Thornbridge Halycon.

Since Ryan would be in New Zealand in February for his brother’s wedding they decided to brew another beer, in this case a stout, a style Nicholas had never made. This was also his first experience with brown malt and two English hop varieties, Target and Bambling Cross.

“I woke up excited to go to the brewery,” Ryan said. “(The process) energizes you. A mass of information goes back and forth.”

The resulting beer is plenty stout, 6.8% abv with 54 bittering units, and even at a young age in early April full of textured flavors, smooth but complex. Half the batch has been packaged and hit the market last week. Half is aging in American oak barrels that previously held Epic Armageddon IPA and likely will be released at the end of August.

Both Nicholas and Ryan judged in the World Beer Cup in Chicago in April, and they spent plenty of time together during the following days at the Craft Brewers Conference. Information flowed freely, but not necessarily the way it would formulating a recipe or standing over a mash tun in the brewery. Nicholas calls what happens during brewing collaborations a cross pollination of ideas, and it is breeds better brewing.

Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer. They also make for good stories in print and cyberspace for those who haven’t already heard them a thousand times. When they start to seem old remember the stories may be repetitive, the experiences are not.

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The photo above was taken at CBC. Luke (on the left) is mugging for one camera, Kelly for another, and that object between them is an unlabeled bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout they are about to open. Clearly a historic moment. You might find pictures documenting the brew day more informative. Details about the beer itself are here.