(Portsmouth, NH) – The brewers at Smuttynose and Portsmouth have been busy as of late, both in the brewhouse and in the blogosphere. Portsmouth’s Tyler Jones has been updating the blog daily while (it appears that) Head Brewer, Dave Yarrington, has recently got back into it after a long hiatus.

Yarrington recently posted that the Smuttynose Big A IPA will be undergoing a change in its hop profile as a result of the shortage. Big A is easily the most well-respected double IPA brewed in New England that sees any kind of distribution. To put that into context, out of the top 75 DIPAs with the most beer reviews on Beer Advocate, only two are brewed in New England. Suffice it to say that the beer has been somewhat of a godsend to hop lovers located outside of the metro areas (where DIPAs are more readily available from other states).

More information as to how the hops are specifically used is available at the Smuttynose blog. Some of the same hops are still being used; here are the two beers to compare:
2008 edition: Nugget, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Chinook, Sterling
2006 edition: Warrior, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Horizon, Amarillo, Ahtanum

Smuttynose just released its Maibock and the Big A IPA is next up in the Big Beer Series. The release of these beers follow the very successful Baltic Porter (about which Yarrington also discusses in his blog). After just two months, that beer has already risen to the top 5 baltic porters produced.

————————————————————————————————–
Tyler Jones and Tod Mott have also kept busy over at Portsmouth Brewery. They were granted a short reprieve when Moat Mountain Brewing sent them a couple kegs of their Square Tail Stout. As Jones writes, the beer didn’t last past the weekend.

Jones reports that Portsmouth just released its Wheat Wine, a 2007 Great American Beer Festival silver medalist: “We did some dry hopping and oaking that we didn’t do last year. I feel that the oak smoothes out the 11% abv beer and makes the almost toffee sweetness come out even more.” Mott gives a summary of the brewing process in the April newsletter. They also just put on Le Chat Noir, a Belgian-style version of one of their flagships, Black Cat Stout, and some other Belgian beers at the Brewpub.

Portsmouth’s offerings are typically available in growlers (but not always), some of which are also available in a limited number of bottles. Special releases are sometimes as cheap as $4/bottles as was the case with the popular Oatmeal Stout a few weeks ago.