A beer several years in the making; The Hemperor HPA from New Belgium Brewing will be released in April.
We have just started seeing New Belgium here in Puerto Rico distributed locally by V. Suarez & Co., so I am waiting to hear if this beer will also reach our shores
Get your beer glasses ready for an exciting new beer that will give a new meaning to hoppy beers. New Belgium Brewery have created what they are calling a new style of IPA; The Hemperor HPA.
With hoppy beers being so popular, New Belgium’s brwewers were looking for different hop varieties and the complexities and flavors that new strains can bring. That’s when they started looking at hemp and they found a unique way to recreate hemp terpene flavors in a beer, which complement the inclusion of hop flavors and hemp hearts (seeds) in a brand new, delicious beer.
From New Belgium:
“As Colorado brewers we have long pondered the possibilities of blending hops with hemp. We expected the two elements would work well together so we set about researching the potential.
As research evolved, it quickly became apparent that the Federal government would not allow us to brew with whole hemp flower because parts of the hemp plant (which contains little to no THC) is still classified as a Schedule 1 drug. To be clear, there is no THC or CBD in this beer.
The federal government said we could still use hemp hearts (which are the meat of the hemp seed minus its shell) but we needed to find a workaround if we wanted those floral hemp terpenes – the key flavor attributes of the hemp plant that deliver the citrus, piney and dank flavors you’re smelling now.
Our next step was to identify those hemp terpenes and then find natural plant materials that would best emulate them.
That recipe is the secret sauce, so without getting too specific, we can tell you that we looked at things like orange peel, grapefruit and pine sap as examples. We feel our brewers nailed it, as you can tell by what’s in the glass in front of you.”
The Hemperor HPA is a medium bodied, light golden beer with an aroma of Herbal cannabis (does not contain THC), that has a sweet flavor and a mild bitter finish
The Story Behind the Beer
