Gigantic Brewing To Release "Geezers Need Excitement" Chocolate IPA for Belmont Station's 16th Anniversary
Gigantic Brewing of Portland is one of the Northwest’s hottest new craft breweries. Not even a year old, the brewery founded by brewmasters Ben Love (formerly of Hopworks and Pelican) and Van Havig (formerly of Rock Bottom) is turning heads and wowing palates all across Cascadia and beyond. Belmont Station is Portland’s premier craft beer destination featuring more than 1,400 bottled beers and an extensive tap selection in their Bier Cafe. The two businesses are teaming up to release a special craft brew for Belmont’s 16th Anniversary. “Geezers Need Excitement” Chocolate IPA will be unleashed on Saturday March 15, 2013 to the delight of thirsty beer lovers. Here’s the scoop from brewmaster Ben Love:
Bottles of Geezers will be released this coming Friday 15th at Belmont Station when they open. There will be a special draft tapping of Geezers at 5pm that day, along with other Gigantic beers.
We will tap Geezers at Gigantic on Saturday 16th.
We bottled 120 cases.
Geezers was the brainchild of Carl Singmaster. He had tried some hop dusted chocolates, really enjoyed them and wanted to see if it could be reproduced in a beer.
For the beer, Van and I decided to make it a golden, rather than adding chocolate malt or debittered roasted malts. We wanted it to look like any IPA, but surprise people with the chocolate aroma and flavor. It’s hopped with Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal and Simcoe. To add the chocolate flavor we “dry nibbed” the beer. We got in touch with Holly at Mana Chocolates www.manachocolate.com and told her what we were up to. She brought us custom roasted cocoa nibs from Peru and Venezuela. That’s where we learned the nuance there can exist in nibs. The Peru was very citrusy and bridged the gap in chocolate aroma to the Venezuela, which had that very nice, fine, high end chocolate aroma. We also added some of the cocoa nib husks, which have an aroma similar to powdered cocoa.
The resulting beer is very nice and highly drinkable, with both citrusy hop and chocolatey cocoa nib aroma and flavor. It’s slightly beyond golden in color, because it picked up some color from the cocoa nibs.
It is best imbibed at around 45-50F. When it’s too cold, the chocolate aroma is really masked. You have to warm the beer to “open it up”.
About The Author
Angelo
Angelo grew up in Maine and is proud to call New England his original home. Cascadia is now his home. He fell in love with great beer in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. He has been a correspondent for the Portland Tribune's Guest on Tap column, LivePDX.com, and has been featured in publications such as Beer Northwest and PDX Magazine. Angelo also has a great interest in independent music, and has been a booker and organizer for shows around the Portland under the name Pop Tomorrow! Angelo garnered much knowledge regarding beer from his experiences homebrewing, working at Belmont Station, Pyramid Brewing, Upright Brewing, By the Bottle, Beer Revolution, Olde Depot Public House, Falling Sky Brewing, Cascade Brewing, and from many many knowledgeable, passionate, and loving people along the way. It is Angelo's mission to bring "infotainment" and "edumation" to the readers of this website. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to contribute, please contact me at angelo@brewpublic.com
A beer named after a Streets song? Genius.