Moving microbrews in a new direction
By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com
According to Stan Tremblay, owner and head brewer of Liquid Therapy Brewery and Grill in Nashua, by definition, hops are one of the things that make a beer a beer.
“Beer at its most basic is water, hops, yeast and grain,” Tremblay said.
Tremblay said small breweries have been pushing hops really hard for the past few years, which admittedly has resulted in some very good beer.
“India Pale Ales [IPAs] such as the doubles and the triples [beers with twice or three times as much hops as a standard IPA] we’ve been seeing, have a huge amount of nuance because of the amount of [hops] that’s in there, which can mean a more vibrant beer. You’ve got beer that tastes like tropical fruit. You’ve got beer that tastes like citrus. You’ve got beer that tastes like berries. Even without using adjuncts or fruits, you can still get those flavors to really pop based on how these hops work best.” An expert brewer can extract any number of flavors, depending on how they incorporate hops.
And what are hops?
Hops are the dried flowers of a vine, Tremblay said, that are used to give beer a bitter taste — sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively — and, in the days before pasteurization, to help preserve the beer.
“Think of a pine cone,” he said. “A pine cone has that center hard core that all these little petals are stuck to. All those petals have bits of organic material attached to them. So, depending on what you’re looking to accomplish, you can grow the whole cone in and get a certain vibe or flavor. If you’re looking to enhance that flavor, you can press the hops into pellets where they’ve taken that center vegetal mass out and it’s more the petals and the powder that’s on those petals going in. So you’re not getting as much vegetable flavor, grassy notes, hay notes, etc.”
But recently, brewers like Tremblay have started to explore other varieties of beer, with different, less hoppy flavor profiles.
“There are a lot of manufacturers that are producing lagers again on a regular basis,” he said, “or pale ales again on a regular basis. Things that are a little cheaper, things that you can find, products in the market — locally grown herbs and whatnot — that can be incorporated for Belgian styles, etc.” The most popular styles of extremely hoppy beers recently have used imported hops from New Zealand and Europe. A combination of supply and demand and recent import tariffs have made them prohibitively expensive.
“The last time I was in a beer store doing a tasting,” he said, “I saw beers that had gone up two dollars a four-pack because of these increased prices. It’s scary times, man. I just don’t see people paying $22 for the beer that I’m selling at $18. It’s going to put a pickle in everything right now. We have to branch out and do other things.”
Instead of leaning into bitterness, Tremblay said, many small breweries have been exploring fruity or even savory flavor profiles.
“There are plenty of fruit beers out there now,” he said, “[such as] one that I’m coming up with that’s going to have cranberries and orange for like a mulled orange cranberry style sour. So I’ve got that in the works, and I’ve got plenty of lemon blueberry beers that I’ve made in the past with fresh blueberries. I even made a carrot cake beer once. It was a little earthy, but you know it was still quite good. I’ve got one right now called Nacho Gose [pronounced “go-za”]. One of our claims to fame at our restaurant is our nachos. I take all of those broken chips that we can’t use, put them on a plate. Those all go into the mash. And then I use hops that provide lime notes. And then I age it with pickled jalapeños. So you get a little bit of heat, you get some of that corn note, you get those jalapeño flavors, you get some lime notes, it’s delicious. It’s actually super refreshing.”
Featured photo: Some of Liquid Therapy’s less hoppy brews. Courtesy photo.
