It’s only taken us 6 years, but hey we have core beers now!  Of course, we may have had core beers this entire time, but now we’re actually putting it in writing, so it must be true… Believe everything you read! So what is a core beer anyway? A core beer to us is one that we brew year round. It should always be on tap, in cans, and out for distribution. The irony is that as of this article, they aren’t all in cans, but do not fear come back next week and they will be!

King’s Kolsch: 4.8% Kolsch
The Dutchess: 5.5% West Coast IPA
Hudson Haze: 6% New England IPA
Frog King: 6% Amber

Kolsch
Our Kolsch is Clear, Clean, Crisp, and refreshing! It has a slight fruitiness to it, and a rounded body. It’s very nice!
The Kolsch has always been a staple of our menu – no matter what it was called. At first we called it Trub City, then moved on to Poughkeepsie KSA, and now we’ve finally settled on King’s Kolsch. The recipe has also changed as a chameleon doing back flips does… You see when a new brewery starts yeast is always an issue. How do you keep multiple yeast strains alive when making different styles of beer? Well, you don’t unless you’re producing a lot of beer. What new breweries do is utilize one yeast strain, but manipulate what temperature you’re fermenting at to give the desired result. So for Kolsch we would take our house yeast strain and ferment it at a very cold temperature. The result was a beer that was clean, but would throw off a decent amount of sulfur, and
a lot of people relate sulfur to lager beers.

Well we have graduated from that imperfect method of producing a Kolsch, and now are using a dedicated German Kolsch Yeast strain to only make this beer. Yes, this beer is special! So please next time you’re around enjoy an authentic Kolsch, because it is so much better than all the other imitators in the neighborhood…

The Dutchess
This beer is special to me in sooo many ways. For starters I really learned how to make beer in California. Yes, I started homebrewing with my father in High School (CT), but I really started not only homebrewing in California, but also brewing professionally. Thus making a really good West Coast IPA is a must! What makes this extra special though is that it’s a New York Farm Beer. So I’m literally making a West Coast IPA with New York State grown ingredients… Crazy right?

No matter what brewery I’ve worked at over the years I’ve always made a good West Coast IPA, and won several awards as well: California State Fair, Tap NY, and New York State Gubernatorial Cup. No matter what name I called it in the past The Dutchess is a staple, and since this is my go to beer, I’m always going to have a version of it around! I hope you enjoy the style as much as I do.

Hudson Haze
I have no idea how many versions of hazy IPA I’ve made in my life… Hundreds… I think the thing that stands out to me is I want to be different. There are a lot of people who come to the brewery and ask for a very popular hazy IPA in the area, that I will not name, and then I have to remind them that we actually brew all of our OWN beer… A brewery brewing their own beer… so strange… AND we want to be different. What’s the point of every brewery’s beer tasting the same? That sounds boring. So Hudson Haze is different. Hudson Haze is a New York Farm beer that is drier than the average hazy beer, and has a tad more bitterness as well. Of course, the hops pop in the aroma, and the citrus flavor is spot on, but Hudson Haze charts its’ own path. It’s not trying to be that beer, it is its’ own beer. So please treat it with respect and say it by its’ own name! Hudson Haze please!

Frog King
Amber beers, and in general red colored beers have always been something I’ve excelled at. The 3 GABF medals I’ve won have all been amber/red in color. The trick to making a great Amber is that you want to try and make the beer as dry as possible. You do this by mashing at a very low temperature or using some sort of adjunct to thin it out.  I prefer to add just a tiny bit of Rye to mine. The rye has a bit of spiciness to it that people perceive as dry. The thing to really keep in mind though is that no matter how dry you get your Amber, it will always be malty sweet. In essence, you will fail. The sheer amount of crystal malts used will always impart this sweetness, even when the beer is actually very dry.  So making an Amber is like a dance. You dance knowing full well that the best you can hope for is that when you do miss a step you quickly move on to the next turn. In the end you hope that all that matters is that the dance looked fluid, not whether you missed a step here or there. Of course someone will always scrutinize that one missed step, but it looked darn good to me! If I’m not drinking The Dutchess, I’m probably drinking Frog King!

I hope you enjoyed a little brain Chunder on our core beer. As always,
#EnjoyLife and #DrinkGreatBeer #LikeAKing