In response to COVID-19, Other Half Brewing announced All Together – a worldwide, open-sourced beer collaboration aimed to raise awareness and provide relief support for the beer industry. In exchange for the free All Together resources, Other Half is asking participating breweries to donate a portion of proceeds to support hospitality professionals in local communities.
All Together follows in the footsteps of the pioneering efforts of Russian River Brewing Company‘s Sonoma Pride 60-brewery collaboration which raised $1.1 million for the victims of the Sonoma County Wildfires of 2017 and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company‘s Resilience Butte County Proud IPA 1,400-brewery collaboration which raised $8.4 million for the victims of the California Camp Fire of 2018.
Other Half contributed the base recipe, Stout Collective contributed the label artwork, Blue Label Packaging Co. will print the labels at cost, and Craftpeak contributed the website. As of May 4, there were 749 participating breweries representing 48 states and 51 countries.
Excited to help raise awareness in my own way, I decided to brew the All Together homebrew recipe for my third rendition of Mountain IPA and to commemorate batch #10 on my PicoBrew Z1! Despite Other Half designing the recipe to be easy-to-brew with common ingredients, I made three changes based on the ingredients I had on hand – I subbed Mecca Grade Shaniko for Briess Carapils, Yakima Valley Hops Columbus hops for Cascade in the whirlpool/dry hop and fermented with Imperial Yeast A34 Julius. My brewing water profile followed the approximate Tree House Julius starting water profile.
My version of the All Together (Mountain IPA #3) recipe can be found here: https://share.brewfather.app/t0R578zqjO4ysd
Overall, brew day went well but I am still hitting lower-than-expected mash efficiency and brewhouse efficiency. I think the culprit is a combination of inaccurate measurement devices (my hydrometer is 10+ years old) and poor note keeping. I am in the process of upgrading both areas of focus.
The tentative plan is to add one dry hop charge on May 7 and a second dry hop charge on May 11. With the second charge I will spund the fermentor to try to lock in additional dry hop aromatics. On May 14, I will increase the fermentation temperature to 70°F for two days to help increase attenuation before cold crashing to 32°F for two days. I’ll close transfer All Together from fermentor to keg before carbonating to 2.4 volumes. If everything goes according to plan, I should be cracking the first can around Memorial Day Weekend!