Experimentation leads to a boost in the Mid-West’s collective hop IQ.

Cincinnati craft brewery, Rhinegeist, has announced a new addition to its core lineup of beers. Knowledge Imperial IPA will ship this week, to be available for sale for all seasons in 4-packs of 12 oz cans.

Rhinegeist is no stranger to pale ales, and the brewing staff there has flirted with several kinds of DIPAs over the past several years. When the brewery first released its now-regular offering, Saber Tooth Tiger, lines stretched blocks in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine district for a chance to take a couple of bombers home. In 2016 Rhinegeist began its Experimental Double IPA Series, which sparked what co-founder Bryant Goulding called “a brewed essay on the expression of hops.” Out of that hop project emerged Knowledge.

Goulding said, “We played with hops we had never brewed with before, in combinations we had not yet explored, and pushed in different directions with yeast and dry hopping treatments. We learned a few things along the way: namely that we love to experiment and we want to keep this project rolling, but also that we specifically enjoyed one version (Exp. DIPA #004) that we felt was distinct enough from the rest of our portfolio to warrant life as a year round brand.”

Knowledge is an intensely hoppy Imperial IPA that expresses the deep pine and citrus tones that put American hops on the map. Columbus, Chinook, Simcoe & Centennial play a melody that fires on all pine & citrus cylinders.

The hops combined in Knowledge each play an important role:

Columbus is a high oil content hop with aggressive tones of black pepper and licorice.

Centennial is one of the most citrus forward hops grown, and when Rhinegeist selects it, they look for bright and pungent lime zest character.

Chinook is known for grapefruit notes & spice. It’s like biting into the rind of a grapefruit: refreshing, brisk, yet with some nice ruby red notes.

Simcoe – passionfruit, berry, dank, earthiness. The bass tones of Simcoe are deep and satisfying and provide a dank structure to the beer.

Since IPA is one of the styles the folks at Rhinegeist enjoy the most and since hops are so integral to the IPA’s flavor, they travel out to Yakima, Washington each year to select the lots of hops that will ultimately end up in their beer.

Goulding added, ” The act of experimentation is the lightning that runs through our pipes at the brewery. We’ve got new hops coming in from experimental fields in Yakima (ones without names) and there are endless yeast angles to play. And every now and again, there’s a great beer out there lurking behind the next experiment.”

The fact that Rhinegeist’s freshest entrant into the hoppy branch of its craft beer family tree will ship in cans helps to ensure its freshness, something every hophead will appreciate.