To mark the launch of Candy, our biggest dry-hopped Double IPA to date, it seemed fitting that this month’s blog should focus on big, hoppy beers.
Big Body. Big Flavour. Easy Drinking.
With Candy we set out to nail a style, a beer big on flavour and body, that drinks easily and manages to combine all its elements in harmony, thus creating an enjoyable, easy drinking and balanced beer.
Double IPA
The IPA style has many variants these days. Session IPAs (lower in alcohol), West Coast IPAs (more bitter and resinous), New England IPAs (and plenty more). Double IPA as a style is generally attributed to Vince Cilurzo while brewing at Blind Pig. He later went on to have some decent success brewing the style at Russian River.
As with many styles in modern brewing it is quite loose and open to interpretation. However, it typically has a higher alcohol content and hop intensity, hence the moniker Double. All our Double IPAs are in reality Double New England IPAs. We look to focus on fruity, tropical hop aromas with lower perceived bitterness. And as always, great drinkability and balance.
3 Hop Drop
We’ve used three of our favourite hops: Mosaic, Cashmere and Sabro for a massive 35 grams per litre dry hop. With every beer we brew we’re always dialling in our hop combinations. It’s the art and science and what works can change depending on each year’s harvest. We don’t always have the opportunity to test these combinations before we brew a big beer like this but plenty of experience with these styles has given us a pretty good idea of what works. Fortunately on this occasion, we feel we’ve got it spot on.
More to Come!
We’ve never stopped brewing this style ever since Joe joined us back in September 2020. And we don’t see any reason to do so. Our La Leche Double IPA we launched last month (more from that series coming soon) has been our fastest selling beer to date and we’ve been overwhelmed with the feedback. While we don’t have another brew of Candy in the schedule just yet we will certainly be continuing to experiment and fine tune these big hoppy DIPAs that we love to drink.
We hope you enjoy a can or glass at wherever you get your Double IPA fix. And as always, we love to hear from you and any feedback on the beers and what we’re doing here at Oso.
Cheers!