Hood River, Oregon – Full Sail Brewing Company is proud to announce the newest beer in their Brewer’s Share line up, “Cölesch,” a Kölsch style beer developed and brewed by Full Sail brewer, Cole Hackbarth. Cole was inspired to brew an easy drinking, light, dry beer as an alternative to the big malt and high hop styles that tend to be brewed this time of year. To put a distinct American spin on this traditional German style, Cole used the new and hard to find Citra hop variety. He single hopped with the Citra for bittering and aroma, and then used a Citra dry-hop during fermentation to add even more hop flavor and aroma. The malt bill includes German Vienna malt and wheat in addition to the pale malt. Both an ale and lager yeast strains were used during a cooler than normal fermentation. ABV 5.6% IBU 41

You are invited to swing by and raise a toast with brewer Cole Hackbarth and the Full Sail Crew to “Meet the Brewer and the Beer” at the Full Sail Tasting Room and Pub in Hood River, on Thursday, December 3rd from 5:00 to 6:30PM or at Full Sail at Riverplace in Portland, Monday, December 7th from 5:00 – 6:30PM. www.fullsailbrewing.com

Full Sail's Chris Haveman

Ever since Full Sail Brewing Company turned 21 years old, they have been involving their production brewers in a cool project called Brewers Share. This unique approach to brewing allows for creative input as well as the production of small batches of specialty styles and one-offs. These draft only brews puts the control into the hands of those who, at most large scale breweries, often don’t have this sort of creative say. According to Full Sail’s Brewmaster Jamie Emmerson, “Brewer’s Share is a great way for our brewers to show off their skills. Since we launched the program last year we have had a wide variety of fantastic beers including a Malt Liquor, a Dark Summer Weizen, an Alt, an IBA, an ESB and now a sour Berliner Weiss. As an independent company it’s great to have the freedom to brew these special beers and as an employee-owned company you can bet you have an owner’s passionate involvement every step of the way. At Full Sail we believe it is always good to know who makes your beer and we take that belief one step further with each Brewer’s Share.”

The next Brewers Share release will correspond with American Craft Beer Week, a nationwide celebration of artisan brewing. This round’s selection of Berliner Weiss (aka Weiße) is a recipe of Full Sail brewer Chris Haveman appropriately dubbed Chris’s Summer D-Light. According to Haveman, “(Summer D-Light) was inspired by my love of summer. When I found out that my beer was going to be brewed at the beginning of summer, I immediately thought of the perfect style, a Berliner Weiss. This is an easy drinking unfiltered beer made with 50% wheat malt, a tiny amount of hersbruker hops and a touch of lactic acid to give it a refreshing tartness.” Served straight this style has a sour tartness with a dry finish. A German tradition is to offer a splash of sweet woodruff syrup, called Waldmeister, for a fresh herbal character and a bright green color or sweet red raspberry syrup to provide a striking red beer with raspberry overtones. The syrups help to mellow to the sharpness and acidity of the beer, so be sure to ask for “Red” or “Green”! ABV 4%. IBU 9.

After the Barleywine and Big Beer Festival at Lucky Lab on Quimby, a stout homebrew demo at F.H. Steinbarts, and an Incredible Belgian Beer Tasting at Block 15, if there’s anything left of your liver after this upcoming weekend in Oregon, than we’d love to tell you about an exciting new release coming up Monday.  Full Sail brewer and overall rockin’ dude Kyle Larsen is unveiling his Brewers Share concoction known as Kyle’s Broken Paddle IBA.  A letter to Brewpublic gave us a little more detail on what the beer is all about:

Ok, I finally got a date for the release of my beer. It will release at the Pilsner Room on Monday the 9th @ 5:00 and in Hood River on Monday the 16th @ 5:00. My actual tasting description is as follows (I’m actually drinking it so this should be somewhat accurate).

Full Sail brewer Kyle Larsen

One of Brewpublic’s favorite brewers, Kyle Larsen of Full Sail Brewing, has been working diligently to produce the latest in the brewery’s series of Brewer’s Share beers.  The Brewer’s Share series is a on-tap only series of beers crafted by Full Sail’s team of production brewers and began during the summer of 2008 to celebrate the brewery’s 21st anniversary.

Larsen informed us that his brew of choice is Kyle’s Broken Paddle Black IPA.  The beer began as a Black Rye IPA and earned its name, according to Larsen, “because John (Harris, Full Sail brewmaster) actually broke the super heavy duty mash paddle trying to stir the stuck mash of the now non-existent Black Rye IPA.” After three test batches and some tweaking, the beer is a whole new animal.
Here’s what Larsen calls a “theoretical” description of the forthcoming brew: