I have been lucky to make some great friends in this wonderful industry that I work in. Had it not been for this industry, for the travel and the festivals, and for a mutual appreciation of the art of brewing, I may have never met some of my dearest friends. Tim Clifford is one of these gentlemen.
As some of you might have noticed, now that we have our own brewery, we have been able to invite our friends to St. Louis to visit, to share some time with us, and also make some wort. My philosophy for collaborations has always been to work with friends, not breweries, so we get to make an excuse to spend time together as people and do what we do best, all of the while learning, experiencing and sharing. So far, we have brewed with Ryan of Angry Orchard, Brad of Jackie O's, Andy, Martin and Kevin of 4 Hands, Doug of Cycle, Corey of 3 Sons, Trevor of de Garde, Jeppe of Evil Twin, and most recently, Tim of Sante Adairius Rustic Ales.
With Tim, we discussed our brew over some drinks while in Vermont. Lots of belly laughs, silly jokes and nonsense later, the decision was made to make two beers instead of one! The second of our collaborations is currently aging in oak and will be released when it is ready, but the first is a West Coast inspired IPA called More X's! More Z's!.
Everyone that knows Tim knows how much he loves his hops. One of his IPA brewing philosophies is actually tattooed on his wrist. Using the core of his philosophy as a starting point, we brewed this Double IPA with a heavy influence of the processes that Tim uses. Compared to our processes with the beers we have brewed under the Shared umbrella, we used a larger amount of hops in the kettle, we allowed Tim to pick the hops and yeast, but we stuck with our whirlpool regimen and chose a malt bill more familiar to us to fully form a collaborative union in this can.
We combined an old school way (one dry hop addition) with a much newer school way (huge dry hop amount) for More X's! More Z's!. We used a simple malt bill to let the Amarillo, Simcoe and Mosaic hops shine and fermented with the clean Chico Ale strain. Being that neither Tim nor I have or use a filter and neither of us use finings in our hoppy beers, More X's! More Z's! pours with a nice haze, to prove that not all hazy IPAs have to be "East Coast"! We then tied this whole thing together with an inside joke printed on the bottom of the can that reads #sexxxyboizzz...
We hope that you enjoy the beer that resulted from several amazing days of a visiting friend. We had a great time completely changing up our hoppy beer brewing and learning some things from one of the best.
We will be tapping More X's! More Z's! at 4 pm on Friday, October 6th at The Side Project Cellar for a little draft preview! Cans will be available to-go starting Saturday at both locations.
Thanks again for reading about one of our beers and hope that you enjoy our first West Coast inspired IPA brewed in collaboration with Tim Clifford of Sante Adairius Rustic Ales!
Cheers,
Cory King
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