293: Old Nation’s Travis Fritts Applies German Training and Precision to Hazy IPA

Travis Fritts didn’t set out to brew hazy IPA. In fact, the initial plan for Old Nation was far more conventional—brew traditional American craft beer styles like stout and pale ale, with some European standards like altbier and weizenbock, make the beers good, slap some cool branding on them, and wait for the sales to come. But it was 2015, and craft beer consumers had other ideas.

To survive, Old Nation starting looking at new and evolving styles, while trying to understand (from a technical perspective) how they worked. The project ultimately led to the beer M-43, a hazy IPA that is now a mainstay of Old Nation’s production and which now sees distribution to upwards of twenty states.

In this episode, Fritts recounts that process of reverse engineering as they set out to understand what makes hazy IPA tick, and later touches on his approach to brewing helles. Along the way, he discusses:

• why biotransformation isn’t all that important to the style
• how the lipids in oats provide an important building block for haze stability
• the contribution of London Ale III yeast to mouthfeel
• dialing in the perfect water chemistry
• nailing a pH of 4.4 for longer stability and to underscore fruit flavors in hops
• building just the right “snap” from bitterness
• giving each hazy beer small amounts of eccentricity through smaller left-field hop additions
• helles passing the "sauf test"

And more.

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