106: Mitch Steele of New Realm Brewing on Designing Characterful IPAs, Pilsners, and Hard Seltzers

If you brew IPA, you’ve probably read Mitch Steele’s book on the subject. His storied brewing career has taken him from from positions as Brewmaster at Anheuser-Busch and Stone to his newest venture as Brewmaster at Atlanta’s New Realm Brewing. This latest chapter has posed one of the biggest creative challenges he’s faced—designing an entire beer program from scratch. In this episode, Steele discusses creating beers to style that still contain unique character, explores the structure of their hoppy lager, admits to goofing on their first IPA releases and discuses how they made recipe and brand changes to satisfy their customers, cracks the code on hazy IPA and discusses the ways they’ve designed and brewed that style, delves into the resurgence and reinvention of West Coast IPA, shares their innovation process from small scale evaluation brews on up, and talks about their latest tests in the hard seltzer space with what works and what doesn’t.

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