It's with great pleasure that we announce the release of River
Monster into four-packs.
River Monster - it's been a river of beers. River Monster,
although it didn't go by that name originally, was the first beer we ever
brewed. It was an extract brew, back in 2009, that was a red ale with a lot of
cascade hops added at the end of the boil and also another round during
dry-hopping. Simple beer, but pretty solid, showcasing the beauty of cascades.
We called the beer Red River
Red, and we actually served
this beer in one of the home brew tents during the 2nd annual Shreveport BREW.
Somewhat inspired by Bear Republic's Rocket Red Ale, we liked the play between
the sweet malty notes and the assertive hop bill.
Over the years and with the shift to all-grain brewing very early
on, this OG beer moved in many different directions. When we decided we were
going to cross over from home brewers to an actual brewery, Red River Red
shifted to a traditional Irish Red recipe for a period of time. We thought we
needed something more mainstream, but we soon became bored with this iteration
of the beer and went back to our hoppy predilections.
In the end, we arrived at something that provided the malty
backbone that could stand up well to the hops we wanted to throw at this beer.
Oh, and we’d upped the alcohol too....because hops and booze go together. They
do. Just ask them.
River Monster would evolve for several more years, but it got its
name on our first trip to the Ruston Artoberfest in 2012. We were discussing
possible beer names and going over stories of local history on the ride over,
and one of us brought up a story that appeared in the late Eric Brock's book Shreveport. This was a story about a man who
happened to live on Cross Lake in the 1960’s who bought a hippopotamus from a
traveling circus. Apparently he didn't have the hippo very well contained, and
it escaped into the lake. Sometime after that, two men happened to spot the
beast while they were fishing one day, and Shreveport immediately had a local
Locness Monster of its own. We tried the name River
Monster out that night on our Red Ale at Artoberfest and we never
looked back.
As far as what the beer is now and what you'll experience...welp,
three words. Malty. Hoppy. Boozy. Probably the worst beer description by a
brewery of all time.
Here's what you'll get :
Malts - we use six different malts to get the color, complexity,
and sweetness we like in this beer. We're shooting for something near a Wee
Heavy or Barley Wine in the malt character. Sweet, complex, and a lot of it to
get the gravity up.
Hops - we're going full west coast IPA hops on River Monster -
Mosaic, Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial and good old Magnum for efficient
but rounded bittering.
Water and Yeast - we're striving for a balance on these two
critical factors that expresses both the malt character and richness in the
beer. We're not using minerality or yeast that will dry out the beer and bring
forth assertive bitterness. We want a big, rich highly aromatic but balanced
beer. House ale yeast and balanced chloride to sulfate minerals achieve
this.
Flavor - See above italics and/or come and try for yourself. It's
been 8 years in the making to bring River Monster into a bottle near you.
Oh and wear your hippo suit if you
come by on May 19th for the release. What, you don’t have a hippo
suit in your closet? Guess we can’t hang then on May 19th….
