Beer News (March 24 –March 30)

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Sunday’s beer news, delivered Monday morning.

Remember that recent BWJ article in which I discussed using dried, neutral ale yeast to hit your cell count when you didn’t have time to make a starter? Well, some confirmation that co-fermentation works with two of the strains I mentioned comes from a new product from White Labs — a blend of WLP001 (their neutral ale yeast) and WLP002 (their most popular English yeast).

In other news, a brewery is brewing a beer using American hops. So what, you say? Tons of breweries do this. Not exactly. What we think of as “American” hops — Cascade, Columbus, Amarillo, Simcoe, etc. — are varieties derived from European hops (Humulus lupulus lupulus). They were bred in the US, but from varieties that trace back to European stock. The Crazy Mountain Brewrey has made beer from hops of the subspecies Humulus lupulus neomexicanus, a native of North America.

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