I (Adam) grew up in England, just West of London. When I left the UK in 2004, the craft beer revolution that in now gripping the country hadn’t even developed its green shoots. The US was way ahead in craft beer at the time.
Fast forward 13 years, and the UK is catching up fast. Led by a number of great breweries, British beer is now pioneering – and fun to experience when we go home to visit. One brewery that’s been leading the way in the UK has been Siren Craft Brew. Based in Berkshire, very close to where I grew up, I’ve always had their beers when back home visiting. And they make excellent beer – and it’s not just me saying that, they have been recognized as one of the best breweries in the world by Ratebeer.
The last time we were in the UK, grace and I visited Siren. We met their founder Darron, and their brewmaster, Kyle and toured their brewery. We found as breweries we had a lot of commonalities in approach, and their beers of course tasted awesome! Kyle was from the Pacific Northwest, growing up in Kirkland and having previously brewed with Double Mountain. So it was a strange coincidence – that I used to live near Siren, and Kyle in Washington, yet we both have similar roles at breweries thousands of miles from where we grew up. Small world!
So fast forward to September, and Kyle let us know he was coming into town to select hops in Yakima during the harvest season and luckily we were able to brew a collaboration together while he was in town.
We decided to brew a beer using our “northeast” hazy IPA strain. For the malt profile, we played homage to both of our brewing styles – we use a lot of Pilsner malt in our hazy IPAs, and Siren have used British malted oats in a lot of their similar beers so we also used those. We’ve never used malted oats (usually flaked oats and wheat is what we use) so it was great for us to try too. To make the mouthfeel full and juicy, we added lactose. Both Siren and ourselves brew a number of coffee beers, so we wanted to incorporate coffee into the beer. We brought in really fruity Kenyan bean from our friends at Kuma coffee to play a central role in the beer. We added coffee at the end of the boil, and after dry hop to give it a nice boost. We want the hops and coffee to be in harmony, so playing with the fruity coffee (which Kuma had grapefruit, pineapple, and cherry as leading descriptors) we leant into this flavor profile with a lot of Galaxy hops, supported with Mosaic and Moteuka.
Our good friend Justin Leveque did a magnificent job on the label, bringing both of our logos into latte art – a big shout out to him for his work too.
Home from Home IPA will be released on Saturday, October 7. We will have 16oz four pack cans available in the taproom only, and we plan to get a limited amount of draft around the Pacific Northwest too.
Cheers, Adam