All Work and No Play is a fitting description of brewery work come the summer months, as is the insanity slowly building during that time period. All breweries feel it. Happy to be busy now that winter is over, but come mid-December, we are all secretly, desperately awaiting a small reprieve.

I got my first taste of this intensity when I was first on the brew deck and being trained by a wonderful brewer by the name of Dan Hall. He painstakingly got me from, “I brewed a nice lager in my garage once” to semi-capable shift brewer at a medium sized commercial facility in a matter of months. I’m pretty sure there were days when he spoke to me more than his wife. Late night calls interrupting dinner. . . I’m sure she was thrilled.

Right about that time, I stopped calling him; he announced that he was departing. Not too long after, Dan and his business partner Steve started the Tallboy and Moose brewpub in Thornbury, now a mainstay for all the locals.

We agreed that one day, in the future, we would collaborate on something fun.

Well the future is now and we are finally brewing our beer to celebrate this long friendship!

All Work and No Play is a hazy Double IPA sitting at 8.5%.

Pale malt, wheat malt, Rolled Oats, Flaked Wheat, and Flaked Barley give us a broad range of opportunity to produce a thick and stable haze. Bumping it up is dash of dextrose, and a dash of lactose to ensure a creamy light finish.

Now that the work is finished, let’s look at the play.

Dry Hopped excessively at 40g/L, we see a combination of Amarillo, Vic Secret, and Simcoe which will provide a floral citrus nose, with hints of that classic simcoe pine and tropical fruits. It’s ridiculousness in a 440mL can and our largest dry hop to date.

Due to be released in mid-October, keep your eyes peeled for the launch at Tallboy!

Drink Fresh.

Justin