The post Centennial IPA’s New Look appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

You know a brewery has been around for a while if its Flagship IPA features Centennial hops! These past 10-15 years have given us a great many new hop varieties that are just bursting with flavors and aromas like grapefruit, mango, pineapple and cat pee (yes, cat pee). But back in the late 90s/early 2000s, we didn’t have too many options. You dry hop your pale ales with Cascade and your IPAs with Centennial. Fortunately, Centennial was and is a fabulous hop – a lovely floral bouquet with bright orangey citrus notes that just beg to be featured in an IPA.

When I first started at Founders in 2000, we had an IPA in our lineup (called “IPA”) and it was dry hopped with Centennial hops (of course), but it took a backseat to beers like Pale Ale and Amber Ale when it came to our company’s focus. Once Nate Walser (former Head Brewer) took over the brewing in 2001, one of our first missions was to make our IPA into a beer that our hop-loving friends would want to drink.  We beefed up the recipe and changed the dry hop technique, and it’s basically been the same beer ever since. It became one of our best-selling beers and today sits only behind All Day IPA and Solid Gold in terms of volume production.

There are many different ways to make an IPA, and in fact, there are now even several styles of IPA out there. West Coast IPAs are generally dry and bitter, New England IPAs are more cloying and as un-bitter as a beer with a huge hop load can be. To me, Centennial IPA is an old school classic American IPA with a perfect level of bitterness balanced by just the right amount of malt sweetness. Not to mention that delicious Centennial hop aroma and flavor. It’s a timeless beer that continues to gain appreciation even as other IPA fads come and go.

While we’re talking old school, I wanted to take a second to give a shout out to Dirty Bastard. Much like Centennial IPA, Dirty Bastard came around early on in our history and was a beer that carried us when we didn’t have a real flagship.  We released it at a time when strong Scotch ales were not very common (still aren’t, I guess), but it became a beer that people associated us with.  I’ve had many people tell me it was their very first Founders beer or even the first craft beer that they ever tried. It’s a bit of an iconic beer that I just thought deserved a mention for #FlagshipFebruary. Cheers!

Learn more about the history of Centennial IPA and Dirty Bastard and stay tuned for more #FlagshipFebruary love to come!

The post #FlagshipFebruary – Centennial IPA appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

At that time, Rubaeus was well-known in the taproom and enjoyed both internally and by our customers. A light-bodied raspberry ale that tiptoed on the edge of sweetness – it proved to be a good gateway beer for those whose tastes leaned more towards wine and cider. So, when approach Blushing Monk, Nate and Jeremy took Rubaeus, added four times the number of raspberries, fermented it with a Belgian yeast strain and, boom, there they had it, Rubaeus’ older sibling, Blushing Monk. Of course, we can’t give away all the differences between the two – don’t want to give you all of our secrets.

Nate and Jeremy picked out a Belgian yeast (which needed to be able to tolerate high alcohol nicely) because they thought it needed something else to give it a little bit more character. They thought the esters and phenols would complement the raspberries nicely, which they did being that esters give off a fruity aroma where phenols give off a spicy aroma. Both complemented the fruit perfectly.

More on the yeast strain (can’t talk about this beer without talking about the yeast): it’s an aggressive yeast – and if cross-contaminated in any way – it can ruin the rest of our beers that were in contact with the yeast. Flash-forward to brewing Blushing Monk now – it’s a lot less stressful thanks to our kickass Microbiologist and our whole Quality team. Shout out to them! They’re dedicated to yeast management which makes everyone feel a lot more confident knowing they’re rigorously testing every batch so no problems fly under the radar. According to Jeremy, “We didn’t brew Blushing Monk as much in the beginning because we were all worried about messing up the beer and the brewery. We lost sleep over it.”

In 2006, we decided to package Blushing Monk for the very first time. And we did it by hand, which was a riot, but also a super-tedious process. We had never done that before and haven’t since. We’d do two bottles at a time by hand, cap them with a homebrew capper and stick the label on. It took so long that eventually we had to keg off the rest of the tank and then fill all the bottles from the kegs because we only had one bright tank at the time. Folks (by folks, we mean around 10 people total) were working around the clock. They’d come in for their shift, then tag out roughly 12 hours later and so on. Jason Heystek, our current VP of Planning, Packaging, Inventory and Logistics, still recalls listening to Parliament with his buddy “Wild Bill” at maximum volume during the infamous bottling project and the other tenants who shared the building would complain about the ‘loud music all night long.’ We’ve certainly come a long way.

All in all, Blushing Monk couldn’t happen without the skills of our quality team – we’d be lost without them. So, next time you crack one open, make sure to toast their efforts to make sure that yeast is contained.

Blushing Monk is available throughout the month of February in 4-pack bottles. You can use our beer finder or download our mobile app to search for it near you.

Want even more history? Check it out:

A Brief History of Solid Gold
A Brief History of All Day IPA
A Brief History of KBS
A Brief of History on Why Founders is Called Founders
A Brief History of Dirty Bastard
A Brief History of Centennial IPA

The post A Brief History of Blushing Monk appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

It’s 2003. Craft beer is in its early years – only 376 microbreweries are operating in the country (compare that to 6,372 in 2017! Source: Brewer’s Association) and Founders is one of them. At the time, our brewery was located in a small space in the Brassworks Building in downtown Grand Rapids. The taproom hosted a lot of craft beer enthusiasts and they would often bring friends or family who were not craft beer enthusiasts. So, we needed a beer for those folks.

Our head brewer at the time developed lighter version of our Pale Ale dubbed – get this – Extra Pale Ale. This was the first iteration of what would become Solid Gold. This beer was perfect for the big beer loyalists who didn’t yet have an appreciation for IPAs or stouts.

Extra Pale Ale stayed on the taplist consistently. Around 2007, our current Brewmaster, Jeremy Kosmicki, wanted to adjust the recipe. He thought it would benefit from some corn (ain’t nothing wrong with brewing with corn) in the grain bill as the original recipe contained none. It was dubbed ‘Solid Gold’ because, as Jeremy puts it, “it was a solid, golden ale.” Simple enough.

Since 2007, Solid Gold has been a regular feature in the taproom, serving as a bridge into craft for the big beer drinkers and a lighter option for the craft drinkers. Around 2009 or so, Solid Gold inspired the many recipes that were developed as Jeremy was working out All Day IPA. He wanted it to have the easy-drinkability, but with tons of hop flavor. We think he nailed it.

Anyhow, enough about All Day IPA, back to Solid Gold. A couple of years ago, around 2016/2017, we began talking about launching a light-bodied, easy-drinking lager and recipe experimentations began. Our proven mainstay was headed to distribution! 

Jeremy had developed his lager-brewing skills (our friends at Mahou gave some helpful advice as well) and applied them to his recipe revamp. After a number of iterations, the favorite was selected: a lager with corn and the right hit of lemondrop hops. An easy-drinking, refreshing lager.

We launched Solid Gold as a year-round brand in March 2018 and it’s taken off. While we love to brew big, full-flavored IPAs, barrel-aged stouts, porters and more, we also love a light, drinkable lager and Solid Gold is proof of that.

Learn more about our history here.

The post A Brief History of Solid Gold appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

We were a few years in and the brewery was facing bankruptcy. Our credit cards were maxed out as was our goodwill with investors. We knew we needed to do something or throw in the towel. So, we started brewing beer we wanted to drink (as opposed to what we thought people wanted to drink).

First released in 2002, Dirty Bastard was the brainchild of our head brewer at the time, Nate Walser and his assistant brewer (our current Brewmaster), Jeremy Kosmicki. Atypical, even for the time, Mike and Dave had the name picked out before the recipe was even completed: ‘Fat Bastard.’ It seemed fitting for a big, malty strong Scotch ale. Unfortunately (but not really), due to legal issues (a little movie called ‘Austin Powers’), the name had to change: Dirty Bastard was born.

It was certainly not a popular beer style at the time but it was bold and different enough for us to get some attention. When we debuted Dirty Bastard at the Extreme Beer Fest, the lines stretched on and on and the response was overwhelmingly positive. We knew we had something special.

We often hear that Dirty Bastard is the beer that got people drinking not only our beer, but craft beer as a whole. An 8.3% Scotch ale seems like an unlikely gateway into craft beer, but the malty sweetness made it surprisingly approachable. Plus, at the time, there was really nothing like it – it truly was different.

Dirty Bastard launched our ‘Brewed for Us’ mentality and has remained a lineup mainstay since its inception in 2002. Facing failure allowed us to be reckless and that recklessness allowed to take risks. Dirty Bastard kicked off a change for us and the brewing philosophy that came out of that has since put us on the map.

Learn more about the story of Dirty Bastard below.

Check out more of our history here.

The post A Brief History of Dirty Bastard appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

The building was located on what was known as Monroe Ave on the North end of downtown Grand Rapids. The property developer was petitioning the City to change the name of Monroe to ‘Canal Street’ in an effort to rebrand the area. It only made sense considering Monroe Ave. was at one point in history referred to as ‘Canal St.’ as it runs the course of the Grand River which snakes through downtown GR.

We decided to move into the building (first tenants, in fact) largely due to the fact that 1) it was a sweet old building and 2) the tax abatements the City granted us for moving into a ‘renaissance zone.’ The history spoke to us and we incorporated our brewery as ‘Canal Street Brewing Co.’ Next came the branding for our beer – we thought it needed something a bit punchier than ‘Canal Street Brewing Co.’ So, Mike and Dave headed to the library and scoured the historical records for classic Grand Rapids brewing lore.

As it turned out, Grand Rapids had quite the brewing culture prior to Prohibition (not unlike many American cities). Mike and Dave found records of a variety of brewery names from ‘Furniture City’ to ‘Grand Rapids Brewing Co.’, but they ultimately decided on a simpler term: ‘Founders.’ They wanted to pay homage to the original brewers who “founded” the brewing tradition in the city. ‘Founders Ales and Lagers’ was born.

After a couple years of branding our beer as ‘Founders’ but having the name ‘Canal Street Brewing Co.,’ we realized our consumers were a bit confused. They’d head to the store looking for Canal St. only to leave empty-handed because our branding was so ‘Founders’-heavy (check out the photos). We decided to change the name around the year 2000 and from that point on have been known as ‘Founders Brewing Co.’ Interestingly, our incorporated name is still ‘Canal Street Brewing Co.’ and serves as a reminder of where we started and the history that inspired us so much.

The imagery on that classic packaging? It depicts mid-19th century brewers from Grand Rapids!

Learn more about Founders’ history here.

The post A Brief History On Why Founders is Called Founders appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

20+ recipes later, he landed on a perfect, low-ABV IPA. Although, it wasn’t quite an IPA – it was more of a hoppy pale ale. A ‘session IPA,’ if you will. Because you could drink a few and not be absolutely sloshed, he dubbed it ‘Endurance Ale.’ It was an immediate hit in our taproom.

We decided to package Endurance Ale in 2011 and, as the first bottles were getting ready to ship out, we ran into a bit of rights issue. The name ‘Endurance Ale’ had to go, so we reached out to our fans to help us to choose its new name and label artwork. Having served as the descriptor on the original Endurance Ale label, ‘All Day IPA‘ was born as was the memorable label artwork depicting a Woody wagon rolling down a two-track. All Day IPA was official and beer fans loved it.

By 2013, we were in the midst of another expansion – this time to install our first ever canning line! We had debated whether or not to can our beer for a while and, after the runaway success of All Day IPA, we knew the future of this beer – and our brewery – could very well be in the hands of this session IPA.

in August 2013, we successfully launched our first 12-pack cans of All Day IPA. We thought we knew what we were in for. We didn’t. All Day IPA took off and, less than a year later, we were axing the 12-pack cans and introducing the 15-pack but – get this – at the same price point as other craft 12-pack cans. That’s right, we were giving our consumers what they wanted: 15 beers for the price of 12.

The 15-pack cans of All Day IPA set a trend not only within our brewery, but also within the industry as a whole. In 2017, we launched Centennial IPA and our entire seasonal lineup in 15-pack cans and introduced yet another package type for All Day IPA: the 19.2oz can.

All Day currently makes up over 50% of our volume and can be found in all 50 states and 29 countries. It was at the forefront of the session IPA movement and helped propel our brewery to international reaches.

What began as an endeavor by our Brewmaster to fill a niche that hadn’t been filled in craft has turned into our largest and, arguably, most well-known brand. It’s the beer that introduces most people to our brewery and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Learn more here:

Want even more history? Check it out:

A Brief History of Centennial IPA
A Brief History of KBS
Vinepair: The Oral History of All Day IPA

The post A Brief History of All Day IPA appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

As many of you know, Mike and Dave opened the doors to Founders in downtown Grand Rapids in 1997. They launched the brewery with some pretty unremarkable beers (anyone remember Noble Lager? how about Red Eye Amber Ale?) as Mike and Dave thought that’s what people wanted. They agreed that they should have an IPA as part of the lineup, and an IPA was created. It was pretty unremarkable and bland. Nothing really stood out, but it did the job, which I guess at that time was to simply say “oh yeah, here’s our IPA.”

I started on the bottling line in 2000/2001 or so. At that time, my good friend, Nate Walser, had taken over brewing and the beer Founders was producing started to change for the better.

A mutual friend of ours (who shall remain nameless) had a huge birthday party every year and, being the nice guys we were, Nate and I offered up a free keg of Founders’ IPA (it was not called Centennial then). Our friend passed on it. A FREE keg. So, Nate made it his mission to revamp the IPA recipe to not only make it good enough for our buddy to want a free keg of it, but to make the best damn IPA in the world.

First things first – get some more body and depth in that beer with a revamped malt bill. We also switched up our yeast strain at the time, which impacted the flavor quite a bit. The biggest impact to the beer was the way in which we started dry-hopping it. Not only did we add more hops, but we started adding them a bit earlier in the process while the beer was still fermenting. This really opened up and intensified the aromatics while producing a distinctive hop character. It was beautiful. Centennial IPA was born.

 In the years since, Centennial IPA has become a staple in our lineup and one of the highest-regarded single-hop IPAs out there. It was even considered the standard IPA by BJCP standards for years. Suffice to say, it’s come a long way from the IPA we couldn’t even give away.

Cheers!

The post A Brief History of Centennial IPA appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.

Back in 2001 (17 years ago?!), Founders was located in small, rented space in a building called the Brassworks building in downtown Grand Rapids. I had just moved up from packaging to brewing (Nate Walser was our head brewer at the time) and were brewing beers like Dirty Bastard, Breakfast Stout, Red’s Rye and Centennial IPA. One day, our pal Tom Griffin offered us a couple of bourbon barrels and Nate and I thought, “Why the hell not? Let’s throw some Breakfast Stout in ’em and see how it turns out.”

The result was good but we thought we could do better. So, back to the drawing board. Next, we created an imperialized version of Breakfast Stout through basically upping the malt bill, the coffee and the chocolate.

When we pulled this batch out we knew we had something special.

So, we put Kentucky Breakfast Stout on draft in our taproom – this must’ve been around 2003 (a couple of experimental batches before we landed on the best one). The response was, well, it was good. Not overwhelmingly positive like it would eventually become, but good. People really liked it, but it was expensive and that deterred a lot of our customers. This was the time where craft beer was still really, really small and there were not a lot of breweries doing anything like this. So, there was also that factor – people just didn’t know that they liked bourbon-barrel aged stouts (yet). We were there to show them they did, in fact, like them.

We bottled a small run and put them up for sale in our taproom coolers. The few cases we had took quite a while to sell. Again, expensive and unfamiliar. But, we loved making it, so year after year, we continued to do so. And year after year, its popularity grew.

Fast-forward to 2006, and Kentucky Breakfast Stout had become a household name as a “unicorn” in the craft beer forums. People would anticipate the annual release – always, to this day, during the ides of March – and would come from all around the Midwest to our location on Grandville Ave. to try to snag some. At that time, we only sold it out of the taproom and it became a regular occurrence to see lines form outside of the taproom on the release day.

It was around this time we had to change the name officially from “Kentucky Breakfast Stout” to “KBS.” You know, legally. Hence the current branding. Apparently, if something isn’t made in Kentucky you can’t imply that it is on your packaging.

A line here and there was no problem for our taproom to manage, but it was probably around 2010/2011, where we realized we were out of our element, so to speak. We had about 300 cases of KBS bottles to sell on release day and there was a line of easily close to (if not more than) 1,000 fans wrapped around our building. The limit was one case. The numbers didn’t add up. There would be a LOT of devastated fans. And there were. So, we agreed to change the process going forward and it was the year following where we adopted a ticketing system.

It was shortly after this where we launched KBS Week and turned the release into a week-long celebration in our hometown of Grand Rapids, MI. Participating bars and restaurants get an opportunity to tap kegs of KBS ahead of the taproom release party.

We never really intended for KBS to become the behemoth it is today. In fact, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to brew, so it would make our lives a lot easier if it had been a flop 17 years ago. Joking aside, it is humbling to see how the craft beer community elevated this beer to the status it is today and the fact that we can now bring it to our fans all around the world makes it even more special.

Cheers!

The post A Brief History of KBS appeared first on Founders Brewing Company.