As a brewery that’s committed to continual innovation, we’re always looking for unique ways to bring styles of beer to life. So In August of last year, after several tests and sensory panels, we made a strategic decision to change the yeast we use in our core New England IPA, Tropic Flare.
To be perfectly transparent, this decision was made for two key reasons, one to address that during the pandemic our product mix (and subsequently our product costing) adjusted so heavily to cans. The second, to decrease the time in tank and alleviate some of our capacity constraints. Shortening the cycle time on Tropic Flare would allow us to continue to supply our distributors and keep stores stocked, which was much more favorable than the alternative, retiring the brand altogether.
When running the tests, the short-term results were incredible. However, over time we began to notice something we didn’t love. While the beer aged fine, the haze that everyone has come to love, flocculated out and the beer went clear.
The last thing we wanted to do was to change one of our most popular beers, but at the end of the day, we were forced between a rock and a hard place. Given that it passed sensory, we felt confident the quality of the product would remain unchanged, and we were wrong. So today, I’m happy to share we’ve made the change back.
Welcome back you hazy thing, you. As of mid-February, we have found other avenues to aid in our capacity constraints and we heard you loud and clear. We reverted back to the original recipe. It was never our intent to change the quality of the product as we stand behind our products and a New England style IPA should be hazy. As a huge fan of Tropic Flare, I am excited to get it back to the same hazy, juicy, pineapple-y forward IPA Tropic Flare is known for. Keep an eye out for your old favorite in stores and on draft in the taproom.
Cheers,
Evan
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