Historians use “BCE” to refer to those years before the common era, but in the New England craft beer world, we mark our bygone times with a different label: “BHT.” This refers to any and all beer happenings before 2003 — in other words, Before Heady Topper.
That unfiltered and unpasteurized liquid-gold double IPA, brewed by The Alchemist in Waterbury, VT, changed the brewing game. The American craft beer movement is a few decades old now, but Heady Topper — with its complex and intensely aromatic blend of six hops varieties — is a peerless potion: a virtually flawless hop-forward beer.
Despite the monstrous demand, or perhaps because of it, Heady Topper is always in frustratingly short supply, and devotees hold out for fresh batches like kids at a Harry Potter book release. But as of this past fall, there’s an IPA local to Western Mass that I think rivals the quality of Heady Topper. (Plus, it’s much easier to get your hands on.)
It’s featured in the upcoming March/April issue of Draft magazine. It’s the only brewery in Massachusetts to make Beer Advocate’s “Class of 2015” best new breweries list. It’s Building 8 Brewing in Florence, opened in September by Meghan and O’Brian Tomalin, with head brewer Mike Yates.
The lone beer made there, simply called “the IPA,” is — dare I say it? — the best local IPA I tried last year, and one of the best I’ve ever had, period.
Now, columnists tend to fixate on all things trendy, and sometimes the hype machine gets away from us. But I’m digging in my heels on this one, because Building 8’s West Coast style IPA takes all the right pages from the Heady Topper playbook.
It’s sold in a 16-ounce tallboy, and it tastes best when sipped fresh from the can. It’s brewed with a powerhouse combo of six hops varieties (in this case: Cascade, Mosaic, Columbus, Citra, Simcoe, and Chinook). And it’s not only dry-hopped but also “hop burst,” which means most of the hops are added during the last few minutes of brewing, to pack an even stronger aromatic punch.
It’s potent, but at 6.5 percent ABV (alcohol by volume), it doesn’t take half an evening to drink, like Heady Topper does. It tastes full with the whole spectrum of flavors that the hop flower can provide — bitter, herby, spicy, and citrusy, to name a few — without going overboard on sharpness or bitterness. It’s just delightful.
O’Brian Tomalin, who owns Sierra Grille in Northampton, wants Building 8 to be the area’s premier hop-centric brewery. So far, demand has surpassed expectations. He says he had planned to open the brewery’s tasting room on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday of Christmas week, but on that Tuesday, 36 visitors each bought a whole case — that’s 24 cans — and the brewery sold out by the end of the day.
With such robust sales, he said, “we’re starting to hassle the bank.” Right now, Building 8 has just one fermenter on a 15-barrel system, which can put out 100 cases each canning session. The team will need to add two more in order to keep up with current demand while also following through on their plan to introduce either a session IPA or a double IPA this spring.
You can get this IPA on draft at Sierra Grille and occasionally at the High Horse in Amherst. A few more area restaurants serve cans, including Galaxy and Coco in Easthampton and Hope & Olive and Magpie in Greenfield. But Building 8 mostly sells at retail locations — so far, at about 30 stores in the Valley. “But we need to scale up in order to make this work,” O’Brian said. “Table & Vine, Cooper’s Corner, River Valley Co-op, Atkins in Amherst — places that can move 10 cases a week — are selling out in 36 hours.”
Why is this IPA so damn good? No single reason. But it’s hard to imagine that any brewer in the area other than Mike Yates could have made it. Yates is a veteran of the local craft beer scene, having worked with Amherst Brewing Company and Northampton Brewery, and he is also head brewer at White Lion Brewery in Springfield.
“Mike likes to drink the same type of IPA that we do,” Meghan Tomalin says. “And he has such a good track record. He was a great match for us.”
Yates says the recipe is a work in progress. “I wanted to make a beer for me, the one I’d most want to drink myself,” he said. “I think you’ll hear that a lot from brewers.”
“I knew it would be successful,” he added. “I just didn’t know it would be as crazy as this. People are clamoring for this beer.”•
