Firestone Walker Releases Easy Jack As Year-Round Release
17 Mar 2015 --- Firestone Walker Brewing Company launched Easy Jack last year as a different kind of session IPA, one with surprising complexity fostered by a rare selection of newer hop varieties from around the world.
But the brewery learned the hard way what “rare” really meant when it launched Easy Jack as a summer seasonal—and then promptly ran out of the hops by mid-summer, spelling an early end to Easy Jack.
Now Firestone Walker is doubling down and re-launching Easy Jack in 2015 as a year-round release, and adding cans to the mix along the way.
The difference this time is that Brewmaster Matt Brynildson went the extra 5,000 miles to make sure he doesn’t run out of those crucial Easy Jack hops.
Indeed, during last September’s harvest season, Brynildson traveled to Germany and spent several days in the Hallertau region, the birthplace of hops dating back more than 1,000 years. There, he hung out at small family hop farms and worked with the farmers to secure an ample supply of Mandarina Bavaria and Hull Melon—two backbone hops for Easy Jack.
Brynildson said that Firestone Walker is the first American craft brewery to put such emphasis and weight behind these new German hop varieties.
“Mandarina and Melon are entirely unique, and there’s nothing grown in the U.S. that’s anything like them,” he said. “They have this classy European swagger. I first experienced a beer brewed with Mandarina in Germany a few years ago, and I knew immediately that I wanted to make it a centerpiece of our own session IPA. This trip was all about making sure we could continue to do that.”
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