Drake’s brewmaster, John Gillooly, looks back on his career to talk about a new Dark Rye beer called Low Rye’der. This draft only, limited release, will be available at all our locations, while supplies last.
I started my brewing career as an intern at Redhook in October of 1995, and was hired full-time in December. In the spring of 1996, I was put on a two-man development team, under brewer Scott Donham (are you still brewing Scott?) to develop a new product, Redhook Dark Rye. Redhook already made a rye beer (Redhook Rye) that was a staff favorite, so we were looking forward to developing a complimentary brew.
We got really deep into sourcing interesting malt, and found malted rye that was both roasted and caramelized, which is not so special now, but quite obscure in the 90s. Then we pilot brewed some fascinating beers, only to have management step in and tell us we couldn’t buy any new ingredients for the beer. So fine, we worked with our existing malt inventory and put together a really excellent beer.
Labels were developed and a broad release was planned. This was all quite exciting for me. Not even a year into my career, and I was part of creating a beer that would be sold nationally! But, at some point, sales decided this wasn’t a beer they could get behind (but you made labels!). The project turned into Redhook Nut Brown ale, a recipe on which I was the primary developmental brewer.
I could never get that Dark Rye out of my head though. I homebrewed a couple of times to meh results. Then 4 years later, in 2000, I was running my own brewpub in Sonoma (Siena Red) and made a Dark Rye. At that point, I still remembered the Redhook recipe reasonably well, and I was able to make something that reminded me of that beer. It created a little buzz at the pub too, and that was great.
I didn’t get another opportunity to commercially brew a Dark Rye again until 2012, when as Cellar Manager at Drake’s, I brewed Occurye. By then I lost track of the Redhook recipe, but tried to duplicate it from memory. The beer was fine, but I didn’t really like the hopping or yeast character. The hops were too earthy and I used our house California ale yeast strain, which is quite neutral (Redhook used an English strain, as did I at Siena Red). Anyway, it was a perfectly good beer, but was ultimately unsatisfying.
So here we go again! In collaboration with our friends from Sanctum Brewing (Daniella worked super hard brewing this beer with me!), I brought back the Dark Rye and called it Low Rye’der. This time I abandoned any notion of giving a shit about the Redhook recipe, and just brewed a beer I thought would be good.
I doubled the amount of rye from the Redhook recipe (that much I remembered). Then added some depth with light caramel malt, and got some extra color through the addition of de-bittered black malt. I went quite modern with the hops this time. The brew features a blend of Mosaic and Styrian Dragon hops, with a bit of Cascade underpinning it. I’m pretty excited all around about this beer, and proud to present it.
– John Gillooly, Drake’s Brewmaster
