- DryHop brewer Brant Dubovick and a glass of the Moritat collaboration High Plus Tight
Since reviewing DryHop during its opening week in June 2013, I’ve drank many a memorable beer there—among them My Mirrors Are Black, a Cuban-style coffee stout with guava; Elektra, on Oktoberfest; Half Stepper, a rye IPA; the South Loop Brewing collaboration Milkstachio, a milk stout with pistachio and cacao nibs; Moustache & a Supernova, a biere de Noel; the Devil Jumped Up!, a Belgian-style IPA; and I, O’Brien of the Black Horsemen, an oatmeal-cookie brown ale. In other words, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to write about DryHop again.
I caught the first whiff of my glass of High Plus Tight from six feet away—always a good sign. Dubovick says he treated the water with calcium sulfate (basically gypsum) to bring out the beer’s hop aroma, and though I haven’t the foggiest idea how this works—nanoscale elves, I assume—it certainly seems to work. High Plus Tight smells so powerfully of tropical fruit—mostly passion fruit, pineapple, and mango—that my dazzled brain almost perceived it as color. Once my senses adjusted to this blaze of olfactory data, I could also pick up raspberry, pine, white pepper, and sourdough toast.
- Dubovick and DryHop brewer Adrian Vidaurre during “grain out” for a forthcoming India brown ale
Lastly, DryHop has a barleywine on the way in late February or early March called Hell With the Lid On, named in homage to Dubovick’s previous home—old industrial Pittsburgh was famously described in 1868 by historian James Parton as “Hell with the lid taken off.” (Dubovick brewed it for an event in Pittsburgh, but most of it will stay here.) It’s cold aging now to soften its alcohol heat, but it’s already a formidable beer, with flavors of apricot and caramel roughed up with a touch of smoked malt and a kick of American hops. You’ve been warned!
