Single-Hop Beers to Be Released Each Month Educate IPA Fans on Its Signature Spice

(Brooklyn, NY) — Brooklyn-based Sixpoint Brewery today announced the “Spice of Life” monthly series of single-hop small-batch beers to highlight the flavors of different hop strains. The beers are made as a single batch at its Red Hook, Brooklyn, facility and therefore are limited to very small quantities. The first beer in the series is made with Chinook hops and is available exclusively at select locations in different markets. The grain recipe for forthcoming Spice of Life beers will remain the same, with unique hop strains swapped in each month. As a result, the customer will be able to ascertain the influential character of different hop strains through a “controlled recipe experiment.”

“By maintaining the same exact grain bill, and only using one type of hop for an IPA, and rotating that hop strain throughout the year—well, that’s a recipe for fun!” remarked Shane Welch, the brewery’s Founder and President. “Since the hop is the featured component of this beer, every month that we rotate the hop strain the customer is going to have the spotlight shone right on this key ingredient. It is indeed the ‘spice of life’ for beer.”

Hops are a perennial herb and a quintessential flavoring agent in beer production, lending its bitterness to balance out the sweetness of malted grain. However, its flavor doesn’t end with just “bitter.” Brewers can choose from a selection of hops grown all around the world from any number of distinct strains of the wide-ranging plant.

“Chinook hops have a very signature flavor,” said Sixpoint’s head brewer Ian McConnell after brewing the first “Spice of Life” batch. “It’s sometimes described as oniony, grassy, and mineral-like.”

The brewery looks forward to future hop varietals in the series, which will include Cascade (grapefruit), Warrior (pungent) and Centennial (citrus, floral). The Sixpoint Brewers will also be working with more exotic hop strains, like Nelson Sauvin and Apollo. The flavors of each will be more evident to those looking to sharpen their hop palate thanks to the “Spice of Life” series’ static pale ale base ingredients.

“We wanted to highlight hops and all their wonderful variety for our fans and customers,” Welch remarked. “The history of hop cultivation is linked indispensably with beer production. Hops have natural antimicrobial properties, so when the first beers were made with hops in lieu of other bitter herbs and grasses, they were less inclined to spoil. They are a fascinating plant in their own right, and we felt them worthy of their own series.” Several varieties of hops, whose vines climb and twist around poles as they grow, have been growing on the roof of Sixpoint’s Red Hook brewery since last spring.

The Spice of Life beers will be served on draft only over the course of the next calendar year. They will be available at designated bars and restaurants in each market, which include but are not limited to franny’s in Brooklyn, Barcade in Jersey City, Dive Bar and Armsbey Abbey in Worcester, Massachusetts, and bars in the Philadelphia-metro area.

About Sixpoint Brewery:

Sixpoint Brewery was born out of an 800 square foot garage in Brooklyn, New York City in 2004 by homebrewer Shane Welch, who had amassed over 1000 individual homebrew recipes. The brewery’s name is derived from the ancient six-pointed brewers’ star, which had symbolically adorned the walls and equipment of ancient breweries since at least the Medieval period. Sixpoint’s motto is “Beer is Culture” to highlight the human trajectory—the earliest human civilizations were founded upon the cultivation of cereal grains for making beer. Sixpoint aims to perpetually inspire the art, creativity, and community generated through beer by acknowledging the history of the craft, while forging ahead to inspire culture in a modern setting.