(Longmont, CO) – Left Hand Brewing is going to kick off the new year in a big way. Brewery representatives disclosed today that Left Hand 400 Pound Monkey will debut in bottles in January. Moving forward, the beer will be available year-round in six-packs, draft and cask.

“The name comes from our VP of Brewing Ops, Joe Schiraldi, getting frustrated with poor brewing techniques one day,” says VP of Operations, Chris Lennert. “He got roiled up and said ‘any monkey can throw 400 pounds of hops in a kettle!’ We thought it was a good name for our English-style IPA, having a bit of fun along the way.”

While Lennert said that the beer would not be a replacement of any existing beer so to speak, he did confirm that the brewery would be discontinuing one of its current perennial offerings, Deep Cover Brown Ale.

The main hop used in the beer, Boadicea, is a new hop variety that is allegedly the only one in the world that is resistant to aphids, those pesky little mites that wreak havoc on hop crops. Murphy and Son describes Boadicea as having “Light floral characters with excellent bittering.” According to The Shelton Brothers, “Coincidentally or not, the Boadicea hop was named for an [Anglo-Saxon] (Druid?) barbarian queen who resisted the Roman invasion centuries ago.” [ed. note: The hop is used in one of Shelton’s imported beers, Ridgeway Bitter.]

Here is the distribution info passed onto me by one of their sales reps: “CO, TX, OK, KS, NE, AZ, NM, MN, WI, IA, IL, MO, OH, IN, KY, MI, NY, NJ, PA, VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, AL, FL, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.” Another brewery rep mentioned that there are 29 states in the distribution network that would get the beer and that list contains only 26. One of those other states is Massachusetts so I am afraid those states are in a grey area as to whether or not they will get it for now.

The brewery hired Boulder,CO-based Moxie Sozo to handle the artwork for their new labels such as the recent Fade to Black and Warrior IPA. Artist, Nate Dyer, is credited on the Fade to Black label while Charles Bloom is credited on both 400 Pound Monkey and Warrior IPA.