A couple years ago, Pabst’s master brewer, Greg Deuhs, started wondering about that beer. The brand is still owned by Pabst, but that doesn’t mean anyone knows how Ballantine IPA was made. “With all the acquisitions related to Ballantine, none of the records made it to me. All the records you’d expect just aren’t there; no one handed me a couple boxes and said, here are the recipes.” He was still intrigued by it, and researched it the best he could through the fragments of information that still exist. Eventually, he started five-gallon test batches to see how hard it would be to rebuild from memory, educated guesswork, and incomplete records. A couple of months ago, Pabst launched a new-millennium version of Ballantine IPA, and I spoke to Deuhs to find out how he’d reconstructed it.Read the whole post here. If you enjoy it, do all those social media-y things that help share the piece and put it in front of a larger audience.
Incidentally, All About Beer has really stepped up their online game. Great recent posts include:
- An insider's account on judging at the GABF by John Holl.
- A bit of GABF history from Tom Acitelli: moving the fest from Boulder to Denver and the fest's evolving style categories.
Thanks for this, Jeff, I posted an extended comment under the blog entry you referenced.
ReplyDeleteGary
Jeff, thanks for your comment over at AAB. Different ways to look at it...
ReplyDeleteBy the way I'm surprised, but then not really, how few blogs and comments really are addressing the recreation. It is because the product was absent for so long, and time just moves on. Few craft drinkers today knew even the mid-1990's version, in other words. But I'm glad you and some others have taken a careful look at it.
Gary