Throughout Surly’s history, we’ve encouraged non-brewing employees to try their hand at making beer. Accountants, marketers, production staff, forklift drivers and more have donned the safety glasses and created ales, lagers, sours, and stouts.
For My Last Grain Cell, it took a whole village.
“Our entire front of house management team wanted to brew a beer,” said Taproom Manager Todd Zallaps about our new rice lager. “This is the end result.”
While there’s strength in numbers, Zallaps was the only one who’d brewed a beer before. Fortunately, our Brooklyn Center brewers were willing and able to walk them through the beer-making process, from recipe creation to resource allocation to mash-in.
“Travis (Hochsprung, BC Senior Brewer) and Sam (Goertz, BC Shift Brewer) did an incredible job explaining things to us,” said Katherine Sundseth, Surly’s Restaurant Manager. “We can see our Minneapolis crew brewing through the Beer Hall glass every day, but getting to watch it unfold up close like this was a real experience”
As for the beer style, “We kicked around 8-10 different style options, and agreed that a rice lager was the right fit for the season,” said Zallaps.
“We wanted a nice, easy drinker with spring around the corner,” said Sundseth. “My Last Grain Cell turned out to be exactly that. In theory, you could do a keg stand with it.”
“One of the exciting things for us is that we used Lemon Drop hops for it, instead of the Sorachi Ace hops that most rice lagers use,” said Josh “JAWSH” Lemke, Head Brewer at BC. “It imparts some citrus/green tea notes while the beer itself is still crisp and clear.”
My Last Grain Cell is on draft in the Beer Hall and in Surly Pizza Upstairs. Get this collab before it’s gone!
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