v19 is upon us available now!
For this iteration we’ve chosen to focus on a single ingredient, one which is delicious, divisive, and maybe one of the most esoteric of all hops - Riwaka. I love this hop, ever since I first tasted a beer with it back in 2010 (I think) - it was super fruity, incredibly intense, not too bitter but had a weird, sulphurous aroma which didn’t feel in any way out of place despite the cries of “Off flavour!” from other brewers at the time. Fast forward 15 years, it went through a dry spell around 2012-2019(ish) where there weren’t enough growers growing enough of it to satisfy the global market and it became the kind of white whale of NZ hops. Utterances of “remember when Riwaka was around”, “gosh, this would be good with some Riwaka” etc etc. When it eventually became available commercially again I was very happy, and couldn’t wait to try the newest version - it didn’t disappoint. Full on berries, an incredible peachiness, guava, and a suplhur-y, herbal, almost oregano-like pepperiness which I just find delightful.
So - what’s the beer?
We split this brew, post fermentation and pre dry hop, into 3 separate batches. The first batch was 50% of the liquid and the second and third batch 25% each.
The first batch is dry hopped using Eggers Special, a very unique Riwaka hop variant from New Zealand's Eggers, a niche hop grower specialising in Riwaka. This hop variant is known for it's deeply fruity aroma - pineapple, lime, grapefruit and passion fruit and since this will be the first time we’ve used any Eggers Hops products directly from them the presentation in the dry hop will be a unique experience, one with unknowns.
We’ve then complemented this version with the two smaller brews - one using 100% Riwaka T90 from Freestyle, and one using a small portion of Riwaka T90 and a large hit of Riwaka HopKeif. We staggered the dry hopping so that each beer received the same amount of contact time on the hops, and the same treatment at decanter.
The goal here is to have 3 unique, but very similar beers which we can then blend together into one big v19 beer. This will give us quite a unique perspective on just how differently the many variants of Riwaka translate into a finished product and will answer us some known questions - Are single hop beers informative enough? What happens to a well liked hop when growers experiment in this way? Are flowable hop products impactful enough? Etc etc - and it will likely reveal to us some unknown questions aswell.
We will also be pulling off some single kegs of the 3 beers pre-blending so people can experience each beer individually and these will be available only on draught at Cloudwater venues.
From a production standpoint, it’s all a bit mad, but it’s not often we get to play around with ingredients and processes in this way, so I hope there’s appreciation for it, it’s quite exciting from a very nerdy viewpoint. In the end, if they’re all deemed worthy to stand alone we’ll have 3 delicious beers to try in the taproom, one being a big blend of all the love we have for Riwaka, and we’ll have answers to some interesting questions which may further our understanding and evolution of Double IPA.
Thanks for coming on this journey with us & we can't wait to hear what you think ❤️
