Dear Taproom Friend & Baird Beer Enthusiast:
New Baird Beer Website Unveiling:
We are extremely pleased to announce the unveiling of our new Baird Beer website. The site has been designed by our friends at LINC Media who not only are first-class professionals but also top tier human beings. It is a privilege to work in cooperation with them.
The new site, in addition to crisply attractive design, simplicity of navigation and revamped content, sports several new features which include: individual Taproom blogs (including one in English for our Numazu Fishmarket Taproom), a photo gallery where you can view and also upload beer related pictures, and an E-shop where you can order Baird Beer and accessories delivered direct from the brewery (the E-shop will begin handling and processing orders sometime in early December). The site, including the E-shop, is fully bilingual. Please check us out at www.bairdbeer.com and let us know what you think.
Suruga Bay Imperial IPA Debuts as the Eighth Member of the Year-Round Baird Beer Lineup:
Imperial, or Double, IPAs are a stylistic creature of the American craft beer movement. Compared to a standard IPA, an Imperial IPA is higher in original gravity, higher in bittering units (IBUs), higher in alcohol strength and even more profound in the impact of its hop character (flavor, bitterness, and aroma). Origination of this monster IPA style is generally credited to Vinnie Cilurzo, the brilliant Brewmaster/Owner of Russian River Brewing (www.russianriverbrewing.com) in Northern California and former brewer at the now defunct Blind Pig Brewery. His wonderful beer, Pliny the Elder, is the best in this genre that we have ever tasted and it has served as our muse in the creation of Suruga Bay Imperial IPA.
Suruga Bay Imperial IPA (ABV 7.5%; IBU 90):
The first key to a great Double IPA is dryness of character despite the high original gravity. This is accomplished, foremost, through high attenuation by the yeast during fermentation. We aim for an apparent attenuation around 85% which yields relative dryness and alcohol strength. The second key is a fantastic and powerful hop aroma. This we achieve by dry hopping Suruga Bay Imperial IPA with several varieties of pungently strong American hops. We conduct this dry hopping not once but twice, in two separate tanks. Then, at packaging, to ensue a vigorous secondary fermentation and natural carbonation, we krauesen Suruga Bay with a percentage of peak fermentation beer from a different batch.
Suruga Bay Imperial IPA is a wickedly compelling flavor experience. Its hop character is as rich as Japan’s Suruga Bay is deep (it is Japan’s deepest bay and Baird Brewing is located on its inner shore). The greatness of Suruga Bay Imperial IPA resides in a supreme drinkability that pervades in spite of the potency.
Great pubs and restaurants (including all of our Taprooms), as well as fine craft beer retailing liquor shops, all over Japan are now carrying Suruga Bay Imperial IPA. The bottles for this first batch are of the large 633 ml kind but subsequent batches will be bottled in our standard 360 ml size.
Cheers!
Bryan Baird
