Beer
Headzo Returns: Origin Story
One of our favorite high octane beers aged in Bourbon and Port barrels has returned for the fall and winter sipping season. Headzo is our counter punch to The Void. Both are now brewed and released every other year, and they’re worth the wait.
In advance of this year’s release, we asked our brew team to sit down and draft a few words about the 2020 batch of Headzo. Travis Camacho, Drake’s Barrel Program Manager, will walk you through the ingredients, aging process, and a few tasting notes. Then John Gillooly, Drake’s faithfull Brewmaster, will tell the beer’s origin story and discuss the difficult task of brewing high alcohol by volume beers.
2020 RELEASE NOTES
By Travis Camacho, Drake’s Barrel Program Manager
This year’s batch of Headzo is the fourth version, and the strongest at 18.5% ABV. The base beer is simple, with a dash of brown malt and caramalt, because the real magic happens in the Bourbon and Port barrels. The high alcohol content enables us to age the beer for an extended amount of time, becoming heavily oxidized, building up melanoidins, and pulling everything out of the oak. This extended aging process transforms the beer into something that falls in between a barleywine and whiskey, and in fact, is reminiscent of a blend of the two.
When describing Headzo, I often compare this beer to Port, and in reality, Headzo probably has more in common with Port than beer. It’s carbonated very low, and I suggest you drink it at room temperature, or at the very most, “red wine temperature.” Headzo is great as a nightcap or an after-dinner digestif. Pour it into small snifters, sip, and enjoy the hints of raisins, plums, and caramel.
THE ORIGIN OF HEADZO
By John Gillooly, Drake’s Bremaster
In 2013, I was at the Craft Brewers Conference in Washington DC, and I stumbled across a beer called “Class of ‘88.” It was a collaboration between a few different breweries that opened in 1988, and brewed to celebrate their respective 25th anniversaries. I thought Drake’s was about that old, so when I got back, I confirmed the following year was our 25th anniversary. I knew I had to do something spectacular to celebrate. I had to brew a 25% ABV beer.
When I brought this to my team, I was met with a lot of skepticism, if not outright incredulity. That was fair! Yeast doesn’t like to ferment at that high of alcohol content. Think about the fermented beverages you know, strong beers (Barleywines, Triple IPAs, Imperial Stouts) rarely range above 12-13% ABV. Wine seldom goes over 15%.
Pushing yeast beyond that requires a good amount of work in the cellars, and a lot of attention to detail. In general, techniques for making these beers aren’t generally well-known. Fortunately, this wasn’t my first rodeo.
In the Spring of 2002, I joined Dogfish Head to move the brewery from its original location in Lewes, DE, to Milton, DE, and then run it. I was about 6 or 7 months into my stint, when Sam told me it was time to brew World Wide Stout. If you’re not familiar with the beer, it’s an incredibly strong super Imperial Stout (18% ABV), released every November.
They had tried a number of methods to get this beer to that strength, and Sam said it was always a struggle. I looked at their old brew logs and got a good idea of what was working, and what wasn’t. I tore into the 2002 version of World Wide Stout, with what I thought was an improved technique, based on the same foundation of constantly adding different sugars while the beer fermented.
I had great success. The beer hit 18% and the yeast was still chugging along, so Sam had me push it. He wanted to catch Utopias by Sam Adams. Dogfish Head and Sam Adams had actually been going back and forth over the previous few years for Strongest Beer in America. Utopias had taken that title from Sam, and he wanted it back.
Well, I tried. I was shooting for 25%, but at 23% it was done. It tasted amazing out of the tank, but the yeast just wasn’t going to do anything more. But we REALLY wanted that 25%, so I fed it one more time. The yeast didn’t touch that feeding. All it did was make the beer sweet. I was always sad about that.
In my time at Dogfish Head, I brewed two more batches of World Wide Stout, as well as Raison D’Extra and 120 Minute IPA. As of 2004, I was responsible for 5 of the 10 strongest beers ever brewed. So that was in my brain a little when we went after Headzo, that lost quest for 25%, but mostly it was 25% for 25 years. I wanted to use all of my knowledge and experience, plus the really smart people around me, to get a beer in at 25% ABV!
Well, yeast has its own plans. Despite all of our coaxing and cajoling, it just didn’t want to give us 25%. At least, unlike my first World Wide Stout batch, I didn’t over-feed it and make a sugary mess. To be fair, I might have tried, but my team stopped me because they’re awesome, and I can be an idiot. So instead of overfeeding it, we shoved it into Wild Turkey barrels for a year. Then in 2014, we celebrated Drake’s 25th anniversary with an amazingly strong and complex beer. We’ve been brewing it off and on ever since.