Try a locally brewed, new style of beer: Cold IPA
Would a Cold IPA taste good right now? Who knows, if you’ve never had one.
We’re not describing the temperature of a regular India pale ale. Cold IPA is a new style of beer — basically, a light pilsner that’s heavy on hops like a hazy or New England-style IPA — and two Pittsburgh-breweries are releasing versions.
Verona’s Acclamation Brewing started last week to pour drafts of its Spittin Chiclets, in honor of the tooth-loosening hockey playoff clash between the Penguins and the Islanders. Co-owner Jason Yahnke said, “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be any good since there’s nothing like it to try in Pittsburgh. But it’s pretty good.”
The brewery’s website description says it’s 6% alcohol by volume: “Basic malt bill of Pilsner malt and brown rice. Rakau hops in whirlpool and in both dry hop additions. Lager yeast fermented at the high end of lager temperature. It’s refreshing and clean.”
Four packs of 16.9-ounce hockey-themed cans are available while they last starting Friday for $18 plus tax.
Hitchhiker Brewing Co. also is releasing four-packs of its Cold IPA, called Thirty Two. Its weekly email also explains that it’s “a new beer style that has origins in the Pacific Northwest. A Cold IPA takes a traditional lager grain bill, amps up the ABV and gets a large dry hop. For example, we brewed this beer with pilsner malt and flaked maize, which is a grain bill more indicative of an American lager than an IPA. What is the difference between a Cold IPA and an India Pale Lager? IPLs use moderate hopping rates and grain bills that are more in line with West Coast or New England IPAs.”
Theirs — fermented with German lager yeast and dry hopped with Citra, Mosaic, Amarillo and Motueka hops — is 6.5% ABV and is available Friday for $16 plus tax for four 16-ounce cans.
New Garfield brewery opening for cans to go
Two Frays Brewery at 5113 Penn Ave. in the city’s Garfield neighborhood is opening this week to sell cans of several beers to go.
Mike and Jen Onofray aren’t having guests drink in the tap room quite yet, but from noon to 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday, you can come in to buy or pick up orders of cans placed online via twofraysbrewery.com. They plan to open their doors to sitdown customers in June.
Necromancer Brewing in Ross opened this past weekend to sell cans to go and wound up selling out of beer on Friday. People snapped up all the cans of its Wildwood grisette and a hazy India pale ale called N-E IPA, Ever.
The big building at 2257 Babcock Blvd. has had past lives, including a baby’s and children’s furniture store and a Halloween store. Ben Butler, who also runs Top Hat branding, told the Post-Gazette, “The space is 14,400 square feet, which should easily make it in the top 10 largest Pittsburgh craft breweries by square footage,” so there’ll be plenty of room for people to drink inside when it opens for that. Meanwhile, it will be releasing more cans this week.
Necromancer and its head brewer, Lauren Hughes, and Bloomfield’s Trace Brewing are working with the Pittsburgh Brewery and Taproom Diversity Council to release a collaboration benefit beer called She Knows Beer June 1. Some proceeds will go to SisTersPGH, which serves trans and non-binary people, and other groups. The point is to spotlight and fight discrimination in the industry.