Enlightened Brewing continues its Rough Draught series of pilot beers with a new trio of space-themed IPAs created from the same wort.
The new brews will be released at the Cosmic Beer Launch at the Bay View taproom, 2020 S. Allis St., on Friday, Sept. 3.
“We geek out about space all the time, so this set came together as space themed beers using as much space ‘matter’ as possible,” says co-owner and founder Tommy Vandervort with a laugh. “They were all fermented with a yeast by Omega called Cosmic Punch and then each tank was dry-hopped differently with Falconers Flight, Apollo and Galaxy (hops).
“This is the first time we haven't added hops in the boil for any beer and the first time in the RDS that we used the same yeast for all three beers.”
The beers are Miss Baker, "Richard," a juicy IPA (5.8% ABV), dry hopped with Falconers Flight; Ham the Chimp, "Jeff" hazy IPA (6.3%), dry hopped with Apollo; and Albert II, "Elon" hazy IPA (6.6%), dry hopped with Galaxy.
“They turned OUT! We're really excited about them and planned to keep them in our back pocket for a later release but they're so tasty we just had to get these bad boys to the launch pad and light that rocket.”
The beers in each installment of the series are made from the same wort.
“The Rough Draught Series (RDS) utilizes the old and the new: our new 10-barrel brewhouse from the Louis Allis building meeting with three of our 3.5-barrel fermenters from the Lincoln Warehouse which we brought over,” co-owner and brewer James Larson told me when the second batch was released this summer. “Each turn on the RDS is three unique beers made from the same ‘mother wort’.
“We can make more wort then we need on one turn of our 10-barrel brewhouse so we only needed to take four tanks out of the smaller 1st Street brewery. We could still run the smaller tanks the same way as we were before, filling three of them at a time and keeping one tank free to move beer around. We already had the infrastructure in place to get them all piped in so it was pretty simple.”
The first trio of Rough Draught brews – three hazy IPAs called Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns – was launched in May and batch two – two saions and a CBD blond ale – arrived in July.
Vandervort and Larson say that the next installments will be different.
“We've got a few other ideas like lagers for October, and a collab with two other breweries where we each take a tank of wort and give it our own spin,” says Vandervort.
And, who knows, maybe I’ll collaborate on one with them, too.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
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