Every Tuesday we release a new draught beer here at Drake’s. It’s a nice chance to play around with new ingredients – an experimental hop variety, or some new malt maybe, and to give everyone a chance to formulate and execute a recipe. This Tuesday we released what I think is a particularly interesting beer – “Wandering Possum” (we had a wandering possum in our warehouse see below).
At its heart this beer is a pretty basic pale ale – 2-row malt, a little wheat for softness, some lightly malted oats for a touch of extra body and sweetness. Hops are primarily Cascade – the key hop in Sierra Nevada’s pale ale. You know, kind of “west coast classic”. So why bother? It’s the hop profile. Along with the Cascades are 4 other hops – Bavaria Mandarina, Huell Melon, Hallertauer Blanc, and Lemondrop (a stupid name we don’t accept – we still like to call this beer EXP01210). Why those 4? They are all daughter hops of Cascade. To me, this entire beer is a study in Cascade DNA. So if you grab a pint, yeah, it’s a west coast pale for sure, but the hops really have a story to tell.
Don’t fret, no ‘possums were harmed in the making of this beer.
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