Football Season IPA Series

If you had to describe football season in one beer style, what would it be? Would you choose a strong, robust porter, or maybe an easy-drinking and ever-popular pilsner. Three years ago, Rusty Nickel’s management team asked themselves this question, and after a round-table discussion, they landed on an IPA.

Like football, IPAs are very popular, and like a Bills loss, they can leave fans with a bitter taste, but people still love them.

Each season, Head Brewer Dave Johnson and his brew team come up with a base recipe, and they create a preseason, midseason, and postseason recipe off of that base. As fan’s opinion of the team becomes stronger (and frequently more bitter), so does the beer.

“We try to project and keep an eye on how things are progressing,” Dave explained, “and we gauge the bitterness of the beer based upon the mood of the local fans.”

If you were in the tasting room during the football season last year, you might have noticed that the beer in the Football Season IPA Series taste different this year. Dave and the brew team did that on purpose.

“We try to make each year different. So this year’s preseason is not the same as last year’s preseason, which is not the same as the preseason before it,” Dave said. “So it’s a different sports season, it’s a different brew.”

The team brewed last year’s preseason beer with little to no bitterness and named it “Cautiously Optimistic” because the Bills had a whole new team and fans weren’t really sure how the rest of the season would progress.

This year, the brewers decided on a version of the currently popular New England Style IPA. In true Buffalo Bills fan fashion, they called it “Anyone Who Beats New England.” Because anyone from Buffalo knows that they have two favorite teams – the Bills, and whoever beats New England.

Anyone Who Beats New England is dry-hopped and juicy.
Juicier and clearer than most New England IPAs, it has a little more bitterness than last year’s Cautiously Optimistic, while still remaining a relatively easy-drinking brew.

“It’s really a juicer style, it’s all late-hop addition. So it gives you that really nice hop aroma without the bite. It’s a little bitter,” Dave said. “The Bills’ record is not really that great right now, so it seems to be on par with what we were expecting.”

Using that record as a guide, the brew team amped up the bitterness for the next installment in this year’s series. Our Midseason brew “3rd Guy’s the Charm?” picks up where Anyone Who Beats New England left off.

There’s a similar tone shared between the two brews, but coming in at 6.4% ABV, midseason is an American IPA that is stronger and a little more bitter than Anyone Who Beats New England thanks to early addition hops.

It’s the late addition of Falconer’s Flight, Mosaic, and Amarillo hops that give the beer those pine and grapefruit aromas. The White Wheat used in the brew gives this beer a clean finish and a fuller body.

What will this year’s postseason brew taste like? That depends on how the Bills do in the next couple of weeks. But win or lose, at least there will be good beer to enjoy!