From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast

S3 Episode 6: Introducing Allagash Hop Water

• Allagash Brewing Company

Share episode

Are you looking for a zero carb, zero calorie, zero alcohol, carbonated drink that combines the best of hoppy aromatics with the refreshment of a classic seltzer? First, wow, that's a specific thing to look for. And second, you're in luck, because, we now make exactly that: Allagash Hop Water.

In this episode you'll hear from Zach and Matthew of our Quality team, who were behind the creation of our extremely tasty new sparkling citrus hop water. Available right now!

Brett:

This is from Maine with Love, an Allagash Brewing podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, and things that generally make us happy. And I'm going to add to that list, instead of just beer, we're going to talk about hop water too. We're talking about hop water. That's the purpose of this episode. And visiting, joining us graciously. Sitting near me at a table, Zach Boda, our quality manager, Matthew Davis, our quality specialist, me, Brett Willis, and Liz Wilson, our marketing manager. We've got a full house. I'm excited. Good morning. Yeah. Good morning. Yeah. Good morning. We're going to start... in an incredibly unexpected place with my secret question to Zach, which is, how do you deal with the plumbing aspect of installing an outdoor shower? Oh, the plumbing aspect? Yeah, like how difficult? You don't have to get all into the specifics, but like, is it hard? Depends on how finished your basement is. Gotcha. And how close you have access to water. Okay. Pretty easy. Really? For the two houses I've been in. But if you have copper pipes, can you do the PEX pipes to the copper? You got to stick with copper? Oh, yeah. You can do whatever you want. Go back and forth. You son of a gun. They make it easy now. I need to make sure that my wife does not hear this episode. There's no reason why I can't install an outdoor shower. We'll get emails with plumbers saying, don't do that. Don't do that. It's so far so good, though, huh? Yeah, it's holding up. That's awesome. Liz, do you want to do that? I'll ask the other

Liz:

one. I've got a question for you, Brett.

Brett:

All right, Matthew. This is a really interestingly worded one. What is one of the... I wrote it, by the way, so I don't know why I worded it this way. What is one of the most memorable views you've beheld while traveling? Oh, wow.

Matthew:

That's a good question.

Brett:

Thank you.

Matthew:

Um... I would say most recently traveling in Norway, the fjords in Norway. We went there a few years ago, and we went up to this little village at the top of one of the fjords and just turned a corner, and it was just like, bam, laid out right in front of us. It was incredible.

Brett:

How high are they

Matthew:

above the water? So the little village, I mean, this was just like a 10-minute drive up from the water. But it just was like the perfect vantage point. It was just me, my partner Hope, and her sister Lily there and just like exploded in front of us. It was amazing. That's so cool. Yeah. Super cool. I love it. It wasn't like a literal explosion. The fjords,

Brett:

they explode in the winter. Yeah. Liz, do you want to go?

Liz:

Okay, Brett. All right. So you have been on a journey to– Listen to the, what is the top hundred?

Brett:

Rolling Stone.

Liz:

Rolling Stone top hundred. It's

Brett:

500 officially, but I'm only listening to the top hundred. The top hundred albums of all time as voted by Rolling Stone.

Liz:

What are you currently listening to? Oh

Brett:

man, I just finished Led Zeppelin IV. Which it's a fun. That's the fun part is like, you know, a lot of the songs, but it's crazy hearing them all in one album. It's like, oh, that's where all these came from. So that was pretty cool. And then I just started the band's the band. is the next one that comes up. But Stevie Wonder also, pretty awesome talking book, I believe it was called. And then the other one that stood out is Frank Ocean. Frank Ocean's album Blonde. I'd never listened to Frank Ocean before. That was really cool. He's in the top 100. Oh, yeah. He was like number 80-something or whatever. Beyonce had like five in a row. It was a lot of Beyonce at one point. As she should. Oh, absolutely. Incredible. It's been really fun.

Liz:

What number are you on?

Brett:

60-something. Maybe like 58, honestly. I'm making my way through. It's been fun. Thank you. Liz, this one's kind of a general question. You've flown recently. How was that? How was your experience with America's Skyways? What?

Liz:

I would say varied. Yeah, I've actually flown quite a bit in the last couple months and it's gone from, I will say nothing has been disastrous from a like delayed missed flight. I would say some were more comfortable than others.

Brett:

Yes,

Liz:

yes. I, yeah, I flew down to, I had a flight down the South Carolina that went pretty well flew out to Kansas that we landed in like super high winds in a very small plane and I'm talking like 70 mile per hour winds in kind of a tin can so I think we landed on one wheel like I'm pretty sure that was the situation and I just didn't have the I just didn't want to ask to confirm my suspicion and then I flew to and from Philly which was a short flight and I always appreciate that they did take my check on bag and then I got grumpy that I had to wait in Portland for a Czech duffel bag that had like two things in it. But, you know, I can't complain.

Brett:

All right. All right. Not too bad. That's good to hear.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

All right. To the topic at hand, this is kind of for both of you, Zach and Matthew. What is hop water? Hop water. Simple. You know, you look at beer and beer is water, hops, yeast, and what else? Barley. Barley, barley's in there. So basically you just remove yeast and barley, you get hop water. That's it. Yeah, I mean, it is pretty much. But, I mean, spices, we could say spices in there because we have some additions, right? Oh, yeah, so what's our hop water? Well, actually, no, I want to start. I did not mean to get into that. Let's do, yeah, the general. Is it carbonated? Because it just says hop water.

Matthew:

That's a good question. It is carbonated. That's right. Yeah. It's sparkly. Which I think is one of my favorite parts about it. I love a cold carbonated beverage of all kinds, and this bright effervescent hop water is tasting pretty good.

Brett:

Because it's a little more carbonated than our beer currently. We do, yeah. We aren't scared to carb it a little bit higher. There's very little risk associated. So we get it nice and spritzy. Mm-hmm. Apparently, we were on the marketing team. We've been talking about this. Like there was an article going around that was talking about carbonation and just how kind of divisive it is, where there are certain people who love like really hard, intense carbonation. And there are other people who don't want carbonation at all. And it kind of depends on the occasion.

Liz:

Yeah. And I feel like there's like a real spectrum of carbonation. like the literal bubbles in certain like seltzers and like I care for some of them much more than others, which is really, it's funny because I picture them as big and little bubbles. Like I think a polar, like something on that level is like bigger bubbles and like, you know, I think, oh gosh, there's a water, fizzy water event that is like super small bubbles. Yeah. Just, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

Brett:

Yeah. Talking the size of bubbles is pretty divisive in brewing as well. I don't think there's really a great way to measure it. I think perception comes from just how many suspended solids there are in the beverage itself. So when you have that polar seltzer, there's like nothing in it. The bubbles explode. They're rushing at a solution. There's nothing else there. suspended in the liquid to kind of

Matthew:

keep the bubbles at bay. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's funny. There's another podcast that I listen to in addition to this one, of course. No, no, you don't. Yeah, that's a lie. Okay, yes. But it's called Off Menu, and their first question is still or sparkling water. And it's so interesting to hear people how divisive they can be. And people are passionate about their opinion of which one they like better. Because, yeah, it has a huge, huge impact.

Brett:

Yeah.

Matthew:

And I think like also the way that water and cider, for example, like the CO2 comes out of solution a lot more quickly than it does with beer. So like, for example, for this hop water, because I am a big carbonation fan, I'm just going to be drinking straight. Oh, excuse me. I'm going to be drinking straight out of the can because I want to maintain all that carbonation in there. And I think that has a big impact.

Brett:

Totally. That's awesome. How does one hop the water in the process of making this? Like, is it as simple as... I guess, what's the process of making this on our end? Yeah, on our end, we steep hops in pretty hot water. I think we're at about 195, not boiling temperatures. We want to sterilize the hot material. We don't want to get a lot of bitterness out of it. That's not what we were looking for when we produced this hop water. Sure. We actually use a really low alpha hop variety, Crystal, which we use in Allagash White quite a bit too. It's only 2.5% alpha acids. So not a lot of isomerization can happen. But yeah, we steep it for about 20 minutes, and then we chill it down. I feel like it's worth us saying because we're already talking about it. We're making a hop water. I put that lower on the list, and I don't know why, but... Liz, you want to talk about it? I don't

Liz:

know. Yeah. You know, why are we making a hop water is maybe the better question to sort of chat through. Yeah. I think, well, I think there's a lot of people at the brewery who are passionate about carbonated beverages, so that doesn't hurt. But we keep getting asked in our tasting room for, you know, non-alcoholic. options. And so, you know, we've done a lot of exploring internally, certainly on the NA beer front, but also on the hop water front. And so, you know, when looking at all those options, you know, hop water was something that we could do, you know, fairly quickly. I know the team's been working on it for a while now and give our tasting room guests another option to enjoy while in our tasting room. And we do have, you know, we have non-alcoholic options, you know, like a lemon Yeah. Yeah, we will be releasing it in just a few weeks. Depends on when you hear this. The end of June. A

Brett:

week from when we were recording this, but June 27th, I think, is the goal. Yeah,

Liz:

in our tasting room. So it's been a fun project, and that is what I would have to contribute to that question. But Brett, anything you want to add?

Brett:

So Hopwaters, the interesting thing to me is that they are an incredibly small company. like segment of the beer general sort of like uh whole pie but it's also one of the faster growing segments so i feel like it's the sort of thing where when this first comes out the majority of people listening to it might not have honestly even heard of a hop water and then like a year from now they're going to be like oh of course hop water like i love that next to a seltzer next to my whatever next to my barley water or whatever is the new thing that comes out after that

Liz:

yeah i guess i Could you describe the flavor and the taste of our hop water?

Brett:

Yeah, because I'm going to just a quick note first. Zach has been the person who's been heading up the hop water project kind of from the get-go. So this is to a certain extent your baby that you've been shepherding along, and you've done a wonderful job because it's tasting freaking awesome. Oh, awesome. Yeah. I'm glad you like it. Yeah. Definitely. A lot of us are very excited about it. Yeah. So yeah, I guess at the beginning, you asked the question earlier, what is hop water? We kind of had to ask ourselves that same question. So step one was going out into the world and talking to other brewers who we knew were producing hop water, sampling a bunch of different hop waters, and just trying to understand what was out there, what we liked about those, what we didn't prefer, et cetera, and then come up with an idea of what we might want to do and what we want ours to taste like. So for us, sometimes the hop waters, you can use a bunch of different hop products, right? We just talked about steeping hops in the kettle, and that's T90 pellets, really traditional. However, there's so many hop products out there right now. There's pelletized hops that have more and more vegetative matter removed, so you're really just getting high oil production. You can use that. But again, like I told you earlier, while it might be really flavor active, flavor intense, if you're heating that up, you're also going to get a lot of isomerization, a lot of bitterness coming from those higher oil hops. So we knew kind of off the bat we wanted to avoid that. There are also so many different extracts you can use. But again, some flavors... we're not very fond of can come out of those extracts as well. Mostly like waxy, vegetal flavors, some harshness where you can't get past that to get to the wonderfulness of the hot material that's underneath it. So we kind of settled on a blend. We wanted to taste hops. We didn't want it to be super bitter. So we came up with adding hops in a variety of ways in addition to steeping hops in the kettle, we're also using a hops extract on the cold side as well. Citra. Oh, that's where this, okay, that's where the citra comes in because I know we were using that as well, but okay, cool. What flavor component would you say that's adding? Like what are the notes that you'd find in citra? There's, through the tasting room, it's hard because when you're producing it, you're so biased to all the flavors and you're like, I want to taste that. I definitely taste that. But when we tasted with our, hospitality staff, it was... Pine was probably the biggest descriptor. Pine, lemon. But you get just citrus in general, I think, is really popping from that second hop addition. That's cool. And we add spices, too. Where do those come into play? Yeah, so those are getting added on the hot side as well. So they're getting steeped like tea along with the crystal hops. Again, multiple purposes. We want to... heat up the spices to extract that flavor, extract the aroma, but also we want to sterilize that material. You know, hop water, unlike beer, you know, there's no alcohol in solution, right? That's a huge layer of protection for brewers is that you don't have to worry as much about as many things trying to spoil your beer because there is alcohol in solution. So a lot of things can't survive. But That is not true with hop water, so you have to take extra steps to be careful. And I'm guessing you talked a lot with those brewers about that particular aspect of making hop water. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. That's cool. Well, you know, that's why we have you here, the quality. I mean, that's so important to it. Yeah, I mean, I guess for Matthew, how do you ensure quality? quality in something like this?

Matthew:

Well, I would say it has just started with doing all the work that we've done so far to make sure that the beverage that we're packaging today, which is very exciting, is exactly where we want it to be, which I think it definitely is. And then from there is just consistency from that point on. So we did a trial batch earlier on just to test out all the process. We got a description on that from our internal panel of employees who tasted that sample and described the aroma, the appearance, the taste, the mouthfeel. And then we're going to use that baseline for each batch that we make subsequently. So the hop water that we're packaging today is going to go on panel sometime next week. And then we'll have that same panel, taste it, make sure that it's consistent with the description that we came up with from a previous batch. And then we'll do that with every subsequent batch. If it doesn't match up, if something goes off, you know, if this batch is too bitter or the aroma isn't quite where we want it, we'll reevaluate the process, see where we went wrong, and make changes to make sure it's consistent.

Brett:

When does one drink hop water? I feel like that's been kind of like the internal, the interesting question because it's such a new thing. I don't think it's been like established as like, oh, that's when you have this. That's the occasion.

Liz:

Yeah, where do you see yourself enjoying? Exactly. Hop

Brett:

water. Oh, man. I would drink hop water throughout the day. Zach's just been crushing it for the last couple of months. We've been talking about it. I got my flask here. Not flask, my hydro flask. It's got CO2 water in it. I just like the bubbles. I'm pro-bubbles, I suppose. And pro-flavor. We're not drinking beer all throughout the day. One wouldn't want to be drinking beer all throughout the day. Hop water is nice. It scratches that itch where... To me, it's got a lot of interesting flavor. You don't really have to overthink it. It tastes like a complex beverage that an adult would enjoy. But again, there's nothing coming along with it. There's no calories at all. There's no alcohol. There's nothing. Go for it. No gluten. You don't like gluten? There's no gluten in it. That's good. For me, it's just... a refreshing drink during the day or later on watching the game or something.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah, my answer was going to be at work. Yeah, it was going to be my answer. Yeah. I mean, I already drink polar seltzer. I have a soda stream at home. I bubble at home as well because I like that cold carbonated beverage. Yeah. But I love the taste of beer. And I love that complexity. And I think also with that little bit of, That little bit of bitterness that is there, it's a little bit more, less of a mindless drinking experience as just carbonated water. It's like it kind of satisfies more than just carbonated water, even a flavored carbonated water would. It kind of, yeah, it makes you appreciate it a little bit more. And it is easy to drink. You can drink it kind of. It kind of reminds me of Allagash White in that way, that it's a very complex beverage. There's a lot. to look at if you want to take your time if you want to pour it into a glass and experience it that way it kind of rewards that experience or if you want to drink it out of the can on the beach it also is perfect for that so

Brett:

Speaking of pouring into glass, like I, the thing that I love about, one of the things I love about the hop water is it has like a vaguely green tint, like, like just a hair of a green tint that I feel like makes it really appetizing to me where I'm like, Oh yeah, that's the, that's the ingredient right there. Like it's so faint, but I also think there's an aspect of this being a really cool way for people to kind of experience hops, like, you know, IPAs and double IPAs, like those are all out there, but they're kind of like this blast, uh, at least at this, stage of so many different hops and so many different flavors that this is kind of a way to almost experience it in a little bit more pure setting where we get to experience it because we smell it all the time. When we're brewing a beer, you're going to have big buckets full of hops and you get to just take a whiff of those and you get to know what that smells like. And it's really nice. It's really pleasant. And it's sort of like, yeah. So I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing how people react to that of like, Oh, I do like hops. In fact, it doesn't just mean bitterness or whatever else.

Liz:

Where are you going to drink?

Brett:

I'm not going to drink it. No, I think I honestly work has been the thing that, because kind of in what you had said was about having it on tap or having it in the tasting room was all those other options we have are not made by us. You know, it's like a lemonade made by someone else. And I think that is what makes me the most excited is us kind of like spreading our wings a little bit more to see this is a non-alcoholic thing. And we are not just about brewing. We're about making sort of beverages that are very good. You know, it doesn't matter what they are. We just have really skilled, really smart people who can make something outside of beer that also tastes awesome. And so I think that I'm excited to have that. at work, you know, to be able to enjoy, you know, because we have tasting panels. We have small opportunities to taste our beer at work and kind of appreciate it amongst the staff. But I think, like, purely just enjoying something without having to be analyzing it is a very different experience. So I'm looking forward to that. Just have a hop water at the desk.

Liz:

Are we putting it on tap some? I feel like we're going to need the amount of

Brett:

staff going through this. We might have to up the brews.

Liz:

How about you,

Brett:

Liz?

Liz:

Well, I'm a... I like sort of sit in the middle of the bubble camps, I suppose. But it is, I don't know, 90 degrees out. You're Switzerland

Brett:

of the bubble world.

Liz:

But if it's really hot out, that's when I want a carbonated beverage. And it is, in fact, very hot out in Maine right now. It's extremely hot right now. So on a day like today would be something where I would grab for a hot water. So, yeah, but it's good. It's got like... Like hints of, yeah, kind of like we were saying, Zach, it's like not overly bitter. And I'm not someone that like loves that intense bitter flavor. And it's got a little bit of citrusy-ness that's really nice. So it's very thirst quenching flavor. and just sort of interesting to drink. Uh, so I've enjoyed trying them out along the way. It's been fun.

Matthew:

Yeah. Yeah. And the other places, I mean, it's, I try and be a good person and have a glass of water in between beers when I'm having a couple of beers and it's a little weird to go from beer to water, but I'll tell you, like when you crack a can of this hop water open, you get that burst

Liz:

of that

Matthew:

aroma and that citrus coming out of the can, which is incredible, you know? And so it is like, it satisfies that same craving. So it's a little bit less of a, and it's nice. I mean, zero calories, I think is a pretty big benefit. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. A hundred percent. I think the industry term for that is speed bump. Yes. Or that's what we've been calling, or we've literally heard people say that.

Liz:

So I don't know if that's an industry term. Maybe, maybe it is. It's an Allagash term.

Brett:

Maybe we're just making that up. Um, but yeah, a hundred percent. So there are, We mentioned spices, but there's also something else in it. What is the other thing? So, yeah, the other thing, going back to the beginning is, you know, we were trying all these hopwaters, right? Like, what are they about? How do we make Allagash hopwater stand out? Right. Do we have any tricks up our sleeves? And, yeah, we do. We have some... We have some tricks. I thought you were going to say we don't. I was going to be really disappointed. And we don't. It's over. It's just hops. No, we were inspired at the beginning by Allagash White. We're talking about all these occasions when we would have a hop water. What do we have around Allagash that... Could make the hop water a little bit different and add a complex layer. There's a couple spices that we use in Allagash White. Coriander and orange peel. So we said, hey, it would be really cool if we could incorporate a little bit of Allagash White, which is so much of who we are here at Allagash. It's ingrained in us. Day in, day out. It's Allagash White, Allagash White, right? It's like, oh, this is sitting right in front of us. Let's see what it's like if we add some of this orange peel and add some very small amount of coriander to the brew. You know, coriander having a lot of these similar compounds to what hops can contribute flavor-wise. So we began steeping that along with the crystal hops in the kettle and kind of found a rate that we liked, played with a bunch of different orange peel, whether it was bitter curacao or sweet, frozen, zest, whatever. We experimented with it all, and I think we landed on something that's really nice. Because coriander is always an interesting one for me, too, where it's like, what does this add? And I think the... like the most illuminating experience I had with it was if you crack it and you just smell the seed, it's like lime. It's like, it's, it's not exactly lime, but it's so citrusy in a way that's so surprising coming from a seed that like, I don't know, it adds this really nice, you know, along with the hops thinking of that citrus sort of like, you know, lemon lime citrus flavor. It just adds this other layer of it that it's, in a Hallmark Allagash style is balanced. It's hard to put your finger on, but it's just really nice and easy to enjoy. So like that. It's very dependent on the source of the coriander, too. So we actually source a very heavy citrus variety. It's nice. So you know it when you're walking through the old brew house when they're grinding spices, and you can just smell that coriander. It's so good. It's limey, like you said. It's lemon. So it works really well in the hot water. But, you know, we've, as brewers and doing research, you know, you need to have multiple sources if something were to happen to our supply. Yeah. You know, where we'd be out of luck if we only had one source. So we play with different varieties of coriander quite a bit. Huh. And the flavor can range drastically towards savory if you're... Savory? Yeah. Like poultry? No, I guess when I think of, you know, think of like a curry, right? Sure, yeah. It leans more that way. I think more vegetal like cilantro because it is cilantro, right? So we stay clear of that for our brews. But it's just to say that it can range quite a bit and we do some spice teas annually. Nice. to make sure that our supply is on point.

Liz:

You learn something new every day. I know. That's why I like working here. I just have so

Brett:

many subject matter experts to learn things from. It's

Liz:

awesome. So I think, you know, coming out June 27th.

Brett:

Pending quality. We want to make sure it's perfect. If it's there, it's tasting perfect and it's

Liz:

perfectly good. Look for it the end of the month of June in our tasting room on Draft and

Brett:

It will not be on draft. Just in cans. Just in cans. Just in cans. Six packs of 12-ounce cans.

Liz:

And right now, it's brewery only, but we'd never say never. You

Brett:

never know.

Liz:

So come and give it a try.

Matthew:

All right. Thanks, Matthew

Brett:

and Zach. Awesome. Thank you. That was awesome. Thank you.

Liz:

Heck yeah, water.

Brett:

This has been an Allagash Brewing Company production. If you have something you'd like us to talk about or a question for our team, just send us an email at podcast at allagash.com. As always, thanks for listening.