At this very moment, beer fans across Australia are ripping in the third day of the Carwyn Canvent Calendar to find Deeds Brewing Co. “Open December 3rd”. A DIPA, of a very uncharacteristic nature, coming out of our little shop in Glen Iris. One might also say unexpected – and we would tend to agree. Notice the little black mark over the word Hazy?

Let me explain:

Designed to explore the interplay of Simcoe and Cashmere Cryo in a 8.5% Double IPA format, “Open December 3rd” was intended to a moderately hazy with a somewhat moderate dry hop load of 13 g/L. The intermixing of flavours proved interesting and things were looking up, but we went to remove the yeast bite from the liquid via our centrifuge something happened. We removed the yeast bite for sure, but most of the haze as well! The beer still maintained it’s distinct hop profile, but it look as bright as our draught.

A very troubling event given the beer was scheduled to be packaged tomorrow and the label clearly said “hazy” …. Twice!!

Furthermore, in the hope of keeping it fresh, this beer was brewed and planned to be delivered at the last possible minute to our friends at Carwyn Cellars for the 2019 Canvent Calendar.

So, what do you do? You can’t not deliver. You don’t have time to print new labels.

Well you don’t want to false advertise, so there’s really only one thing to do.

Someone draws the short straw, and stands for four hours, by a labeller, making the same mark over and over and over again essentially crossing out the description. Alas, it’s an IPA and we did our best to let you know.

What caused it? Well, haze is a fickle beast. Hard to perfect, hard to maintain, short lived, but damn tasty when you get it right. It may have been the yeast, it may have been the protein content in the grist bill, it could have been the settling time… There are multiple factors involved and though there may be a most likely culprit, its hard to say definitively.

All I can say is we will keep trying.

Since the end of winter, we’ve been looking at knocking out at least 4 new beers a month. Beers we want to drink and we think you want to drink.

From double hazy bois (ok we did release a lot of those in the last couple months) to our White IPA, and our upcoming Bohemian Pilsner and Fruited Kettle Sour for Brewers Feast. We are doing a lot of experimenting and running the gauntlet.

Frankenstein is evidence that experiments can go awry, and with Open December 3rd, we didn’t end up in the exact destination we wanted, but we still enjoyed the journey!

Thanks!

And keep your eyes peeled for Traveller 002 and our last heavy IPA of the year, Fiscal Damage!!

Cheers and Drink Fresh!

Justin