Recently I had the privilege of doing a collaboration brew with Elan Walsky and Bruce McPhee at Coalition Brewing in Portland, Oregon. We brewed a 100% Briess 10BBL batch of a Cascadian Dark Ale/Black IPA/American-style Dark Ale (or whatever you want to refer to it as this week) on their newish JVNW brewhouse. Like most brewers, we got an early start and got mashed in before caffeine. I’ll have the brew recipe posted on our website but can tell you that we were not shy on the hops as it takes a LOT of them to shine through on this style of beer. As this CDA made generous use of Apollo hops the beer was named Apollo Creed and they had Rocky on the big screen punching it out for the tapping party! The final product had a nice dryness and a nice creamy mouthfeel with only a minor amount of roasted malt flavor from the use of our Midnight Wheat malt (550L) which is a great malt to use when you’re looking for color but none of that acrid/bitter/husky flavors. Thanks a mil to Elan and Bruce for letting me be a part of a wonderful beer!
