Hold on to your shorts. We’ve got a new beer on tap starting RIGHT NOW! Hawk’s Vengeance. 

This beer is a Belgian Double India Pale Ale. This is the second beer in our Hawk Presents Series. For those of you who don’t know about Jen ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins here is a picture. Jen has been here for a while now and rocks as a server (she’s a pretty cool person too). 

Anyway, Jen won this year’s PIMP MY BREWHOUSE Competition and her prize was to design a beer, name it, and brew it with us. She was all fired up to brew a Double IPA and while we were brewing it The Hawk sustained a second degree burn from the hop back, hence the name 2nd Degree Double IPA.

It was a standing joke that Jen was drinking throught the beer to “ease her pain” but I think the truth is that she told so many people; we sold through it so fast we’ve decided to make a whole series of beers in her honor. They’ll all be super hoppy and super strong. 

Now in case you haven’t gotten the irony here Hawk is about 80 pounds soaking wet with her clothes on, she LOVES hops, and you know us…any excuse to use this currently scarce commodity. My boss good naturedly yelled at me for using so much of the Sweet Green Love in this one beer, but I think it’s worth it. You will too.

For you beer nerds out there like me here is a bit about the style Belgian Double IPA:

Most modern beer styles originated with European traditions. We tend to carefully study European beer styles and produce them as authentically as possible, especially beers that are or were hard to find. Craft Brewers have embraced Belgian style beers for years because of their unique brewing history, and complex flavors. We replicate classics like Dubbel, Tripel, and Saison. There are times when we will make a traditional style our own, usually by adding lots of American hops and elevating the alcohol content.

American Pale Ale is a style that evolved in this way. Hoppy Belgian style beers are changing the direction of influence. With the explosion in popularity of big hop bombs in America, European brewers began taking cues for beer style from the U.S. Craft Beer Community! Belgian brewers are brewing hoppy pale colored ales like Chouffe & Urthel. Several small Belgian breweries are even making 100+ IBU beers: Urthel Hop it, Struise Mikkeller (130IBUs), and picobrewery Alvinne’s Gaspar (115 IBUs) just to name a few.

Based on our love for all things Belgian and all things hoppy, we’ve brewed a hugely flavorful beer. Hawk’s Vengeance. This beer is truly multi-cultural with hops from the U.S., German Pale Ale Malt, and spicy Belgian yeast. Its’ flavor is a train wreck on your tongue, the kind you have to slow down the car to watch! The beer is only lightly filtered, so there’s  some yeast left which gives the beer a just a touch of haze to go with its’ deep copper color. At 81 IBUs the beer has plenty of bitterness and hop flavor but it’s so strong and alcoholic that the hops are balanced out. Alcohol by volume is 9.7%! The nose is super complex with huge aromas of tropical fruit. You’ll smell pineapple, banana, and a touch of orange oil. The aromas are from Centennial hops, and all of the high alcohols. Served in a footed ale glass.

While Belgian IPA is still very much a style in development, this beer is set to rock.

Color:  Copper

Body:  Medium

Flavor:  Complex. Fruity and very, very hoppy

Overall Character:  A huge, extremely hoppy beer brewed using American hops and spicy Belgian yeast. An American original.

OG:  1.088

IBUs:  81

ABV:  9.7%