|BACKGROUND|

Back in early April, the rep for the distributor that carries New Belgium dropped off a bottle of a new hemp beer that the brewery was touting. The Hemperor, self-proclaimed as an “HPA” and “The world’s dankest ale”, brewed with hemp hearts, was slated for every cannabis enthusiast’s favorite “holiday” – 4/20. My interest was piqued.

Not that using hemp seeds is a particularly groundbreaking idea. Uinta has been using them in Dubhe for years and Humboldt uses them in almost every one of their beers. But aside from a couple beers, such as the collaborative Smells Like Freedom from DC Brau and Oskar Blues, not many breweries make explicitly “weed” beers. Sure, you’ve got the whole Undercover Shut-Down and Waldo’s from Lagunitas, and “dank” is a common term when describing certain flavors and aromas in lots of particularly pungent IPAs, but attempting to cross the two worlds can prove to be dangerous waters for professional breweries.

In fact, just this year alone, a handful of breweries in Florida got slammed with cease & desists from the good ol’ TTB over using cannabis terpenes in batches of beer, also brewed in celebration of the infamous date. This stems from the issue that special ingredients and non-approved extracts need to be run by the TTB and FDA and granted approval for use in beers. Beyond that, in relation to hemp and hemp products, breweries can be required to submit their beers to lab analysis to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they do not contain any psychoactive substances, THC or CBD, a.k.a. the fun stuff in ganja that encourages poor life choices like combining Spaghetti-O’s (with meatballs), Mac’n’cheese, and beans & weiners in one giant pot.

Point being, New Belgium tried to make a beer that was super heady. In my opinion, they almost succeeded. Between the few of us who split the 12 oz. bottle, none of us were able to finish our tasters. Common consensus was that it taste like old bong water randalled through gym socks. Needless to say, I was non-plussed by the offering. No sooner did the words “I could brew a better weed beer” leave my mouth before a challenge was issued from a coworker. So, I settled down and cranked out a recipe.

At its base, the IPA is simple enough. Very little modification from the usual wheelhouse recipe that is interchangeable for slight tweaking. However, I knew I had to include hemp hearts, because that’s the easiest addition and it was an ingredient that I was very familiar with. They have a nice nutty flavor to them, which I figured is predominately what they’d impart to the beer aside from light credibility.

Even the selection of hops was relatively easy. Having worked a good deal with Cashmere hops (and brewing a pretty dank single hop DIPA for the 5th anniversary at the gastropub I work at with them), I knew they were on the table. Add in one of the new cool hops on the block, Enigma, and a little old skool action from Columbus and we were in business. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to go van deepah.

I decided that I needed that skunky quality that good dro has and I had only one idea on exactly how to get it: durian. Much like bleu cheese, durian is incredibly polarizing. Due to its overtly pungent aroma, it’s banned in hotels and on trains in Thailand. Many people describe its odor as “turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock”. I get that. For me, the flavor ends up with a little of the flinty funk of a good bleu, a little caramelized onion, but a ton of cashew nuttiness. However, there’s very little information about using it in beer. I even found an event from almost 3 years on facebook for brewing a durian IPA, hosted by Magpie Brewing Co. in Seoul, Korea. I reached out to them and they replied back with the unfortunate news that the workshop had been canceled due to lack of attendance, but offered up some advice:

I got some tips from our beer educator! He said he wanted to use a lot of hops like Amarillo, Moteuka, Mosaic and do dry hopping to emphasize the unique tropical fruit flavours of durian. He also recommended to put the durian in vodka for about two days for disinfection. Also, it would be good to add durian pulp in secondary fermentation 🙂

If anything, there’s an opposite reaction – a wives’ tale level rumor that eating durian and drinking alcohol could actually kill you (which is false, btw). Even then, the most I had found was Mob Craft had made a durian cashew lager called Don Durio’s. I also managed to find two other posters on reddit’s /r/homebrewing who had mentioned experiementing with durian – one user had made a durian wine and one had made a durian cider. The results were… mixed, to say the least. For the 2 year vintage durian wine, phiIIips rated his project a “2/10 — Would not brew again”, and when I contacted him james4765’s reply was:

“It’s… a bit rough. Without the custardy sweetness and mouthfeel of durian, it’s really oniony. After a few months it mellows out some, and maybe with backsweetening it would be better, but it stank.”

I was almost done, but I still needed to push the envelope. Taking a page out of the books of our thwarted brethren in the FLA, I needed the terps. I also reached out to as many of the breweries listed in the articles about terpene IPAs as possible. Many didn’t get back to me and of the few that did, many either said that they never made the beer or were, seemingly, intentionally obtuse and difficult about it. That was frustrating, to say the least, especially when articles featured direct interviews with the brewers talking about the beers. However, on my own, I ended up talking to two different companies that made terpenes for the market. The first was True Terpenes, who, while not cannabis-sourced, sold a myriad of terpenes in various different volumes. Kennedy was pleasant to work with, even though they couldn’t offer me much in the way of advice, but did put me in contact with a few customers who had used their products. However, the origins of the terpenes and the fact that I was only willing to spend the money on a few specific ones to make a blend ultimately led me to look elsewhere. That’s when I stumbled upon Medical Terpenes.

Sammy was easily my sherpa on this journey into the whimsical world of laughing grass-based flavor compounds. After talking with them for over a week, even going into detailed discussions about blending volumes, strain choices, and prior experience of use, I was sold. The customer service was top-notch, and the prices were great, but the specific selection by the strain of their terpenes truly sealed the deal for me. Even then, they threw in an extra 1 mL of terpenes on top of what I had ordered. So, suffice it to say, if you’re going to go down this route in pursuit of the most diggity-dank bud brew you can make, I highly recommend their services.

I had played around with the terpenes when they arrived in the mail, as one is to do with new toys, and it yielded some awesome results. I had a bottle of Ommegang’s Sour Pale ale hanging out in my fridge, which was the perfect vehicle for the experiment. I added about a drop to the glass before pouring the beer in and the results were amazing. Essentially, the beer turned into a super dryhopped, citrusy and piney sour. I was officially hype to use my newly found power for questionable purposes.

With all the pieces in my hand, it was time to summon my weed Exodia.

Them Digits

Batch Size: 5.5 gallons

Mash Temp: 152 F for 60 min.

Boil Time: 60 min.

Batch Efficiency: 67%

Original Gravity: 1.057 // 14.0 P (1.065 // 15.9 P with sugar added)

Final Gravity: 1.010 // 2.6 P

Estimated ABV: 7.2%

IBUs: 48 IBU

Color: 14.5 EBC // 7.4 SRM

Recipe

Malts

10# Pearl Malt | 58%

2# White Wheat | 12%

2# Golden Naked Oats | 12%

2# Hemp Hearts | 12%

1# Turbinado Sugar (added in primary) | 6%

Hops

.75 oz. Calypso @ 60 min. | 33 IBU

1 oz. Cashmere @ 10 min. | 10 IBU

1 oz. Enigma @ 1 min. | 3 IBU

1 oz. Columbus @ 1 min. | 2 IBU

2 oz. Enigma @ hop steep, 10 min. @ 170F | 0 IBU

1 oz. Columbus @ hop steep, 10 min. @ 170F | 0 IBU

1 oz. Cashmere @ hop steep, 10 min. @ 170F | 0 IBU

1 oz. Enigma @ dryhop, 3 days contact | 0 IBU

1 oz. Columbus @ dryhop, 3 days contact | 0 IBU

2 oz. Cashmere @ dryhop, 3 days contact | 0 IBU

Yeast

2x packet of Safale US-04, fermented @ 70F

Spices and Stuff

2# Durian @ primary

1 mL Medical Terpenes True OG cannabis terpenes @ primary

1 mL Medical Terpenes Sour Diesel terpenes @ bottling

Water Shit

4 mL 88% Lactic Acid

1 tsp CaCl

|BREW LOG|

I had initially planned to do this batch on the tail end of the previous two beers, but it was such an oppressively hot day that we just bailed and I had sealed the already measured out grains in a 5 gallon bucket. We brewed two weeks later while bottling during the mash.

Only thing that would have been any different from a “normal” mash was that I had added the hemp seeds to the mash. I ended up getting a two pound bag of pre-shelled hemp hearts on Amazon, listing no sugar or carbs to speak of, which meant that I was planning that they’d contribute mostly just flavor and no fermentables.

I brought 5 gallons of water (with the chemicals added) up to 164F while I was milling the grains and starting to thaw out the durian. I had opted to buy two frozen packages of pre-pulled and seeded durian fruit from one of my local Asian markets. It worked out very nicely, as with the durian’s semi-pudding like consistency, I only had to palpate the bag to really break it up and get a smooth enough texture to squeeze out the bag like piping icing for a cake. It was relatively decent tasting, as far as durian goes, and I was perfectly fine for not having to break open one or two of those spiny bastards and do more work than necessary.

Mash temp came pretty well on target, clocking in almost 152F on the dot. pH was also just a hair under the 5.4 mark. After 60 minutes, I collected roughly 2 gallons of first runnings and batch sparged with another 5 gallons, stirring to ensure a good mix and then letting the tun rest for 15 minutes to rebuild the grain bed before vorlaufing and collecting the second runnings.

At this point, I’m not sure I have anymore euphemisms or colorful metaphors to really jazz up a boil that isn’t anything truly crazy. I added the 60 minute addition of Calypso, which was chosen really because it was the only higher AA% hop I had on hand that I was willing to sacrifice for bittering, as I’ve been out of hop extract for a while, and then it was the typical round of playing the waiting game. 20 minute addition of Cashmere, the flame out addition of Columbus and Enigma, and then it was back to the ol’ chill, steep, and finish chilling. I crashed the beer down to 68F and then it was time to rack into the fermenter. Hydrometer reading came in at 1.056 (1.057, adjusted), where I could also notice a nice little ring of all the hop oils floating atop the wort in the graduated cylinder.

As is my typical choice for using fruits, I had already emptied my packets of durian fruit into the sanitized fermenter and, after convincing my dad to try it, the… aroma, was certainly filling up the basement. The wort was racked on top the pulp and while the brew was in transit, I decided to add the first mL of cannabis terpenes. I figured that, best case scenario, I got some biotransformative properties out of it, worst case, nothing special happens and it’s gonna be dank. I made sure the wort got relatively aerated during the transfer, as I wasn’t going to taint my beautiful carb stone with the demon fruit. All that was left was to pitch the yeast slurry I had rehydrated from the two packets and let it ride.

After about a week and a half, the airlock showed no activity with a gravity reading coming in at 1.008 (1.010, adjusted), which was pretty much where I was shooting for. At the same point, by my math, the beer was only coming in around 6% abv, which was on the lower side of what I wanted for a true IPA (in before the No True Scottsman argument). To this point, I had my dad do up a light syrup with a pound of turbinado/sugar in the raw, chill it, and add it to the beer, pushing it up an extra .008 points and an extra percent alcohol to land squarely in the 7% bracket. I also gave the command and the 4 oz. depth charge of hoppy goodness was dropped in anticipation of the ensuing bottling 3 days later.

On that fateful day, it was most certainly an adventure. I made a simple syrup solution using 1 cup of water and 4.3 oz. (2/3 cup by volume) of sucrose/table sugar for making a simple syrup on the stove and then cooled it down. That was the easy part. Upon opening the carboy, I was greeted with the ever so familiar aroma of fresh clipped grass, ctirus, and dead skunk on the road. This was some funky, skunky, good good. However, as it urns out, a lot of the more fibrous parts of the durian had separated during fermentation, which combined with yeast rafts and some lingering dryhop pellets, yielded a particularly messy racking into the bottling bucket. Even putting a little bit of cheese cloth over the head of the siphon was a futile effort in the face of trying to keep as much shit as possible out of the bucket.

At this time, I opted to add the second mL of cannabis terpenes because I’m not about wasting and I honestly couldn’t say I planned on making another beer with the terpenes. Want not, waste not and all, so in it went what I was racking over. Eventually, I managed to get a hair over 5 gallons into the bottling bucket, which then necessitated using a sanitized hand strainer to get as much residual hop plant matter and durian schmutz out of the beer as possible. A final hydromete reading clocked us in back at 1.008 (1.010, adjusted). After a few minutes, I admitted my defeat, despite my best efforts getting a large majority of the particulate matter out. Some light stirring with a sanitized stirrer to ensure that the priming solution was even distributed and then the bottling commenced. Afterwards, it was time to label and then another few weeks for the beer to bottle condition.

|TASTING NOTES|

Well, to put it bluntly (ha), I succeed in my goal. This is, arguably, the best weed beer I’ve ever had.

The beer pours a beautiful gold color with a rocky white head. After a few weeks in the cold, the beer is almost brilliantly clear, despite adding no clarifying agents during the boil or pectic enzyme after the fact. I chalk this up to the fact that US-04 is highly flocculant. Admittedly, I was trying to make a hazy floccboi, but the hindsight is that it’s not a good choice to use the US-04 if that’s your goal, despite it being an English yeast strain.

The bouquet is probably the crowning achievement of the beer. It’s smells like some real fucking dank, skunky weed. There’s a hint of an almost asphalt-y, geueze-like gasoline flair, with some nice hints of citrus laying in, but for the most part I get just a super pungent durian funk and a massive nose of, what I assume, backstage of a Snoop Dogg show would smell like. Pungent is a fun word, let’s go with that.

The carbonation is perfect, It’s still got the nice, light quality of a traditional West Coast IPA with a medium mouthfeel. It does stop shy of being that thick NEIPA, where it’s almost chewy, but I also kinda feel like that might be overkill if I had actually gotten that. No real astringency or tannic qualities, so to speak, and the beer is not overly drying or cloying.

The taste follows the nose very well. The light malt back bone helps balance out a surprisingly sharp bitterness, which I can only assume is attributable to the use of the cannabis terpenes. Not that it’s an unpleasant bitterness, but it does linger a little. The durian layers in a slight nuttiness, which doubles down on what comes through from the malts and hemp hearts. The funky flavor also comes out a lot more while the beer warms up too. Upon exhaling after taking a few sips, it tastes like having recently smoked a joint. It’s relatively well balanced, despite being intensely flavorful.

I’d call this an overwhelming success. Even a few people that I’ve shared this with who don’t care for durian said they enjoyed the beer and also had people who enjoy the flavor of durian really like it. While I was pouring this at a homebrew club event, I had an Asian couple actually get excited because they’d never had a durian beer before and loved the way that the flavors layered into the beer. I think if I brewed it again, I’d maybe dial back on the durian a smidge, as it’s pretty prominent, and I’d maybe only add the 1 mL of terpenes, as I had initially planned, but those might be the only tweaks I’d make. I’d give the beer 4/5 fire emojis because this is some pretty loud IPA.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, New Belgium.

[Author’s Note: at the time of writing this, I’ve discovered that an Australian brewery, Foreigner Brewing Company, has recently made some waves by doing a durian saison for Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular, to some lackluster fanfare. When I had brewed this back in mid-May, googling “Durian beer” yielded little results.]