The First Black Hops Beeres We Ever Brewed: Beers 13 To 20

13.30 Cal Medium Strength Ale (3% California Common)

This beer followed an interesting trajectory and was actually where we were at the end of part 2, the pink haze. As the story goes, we were asked to serve beer at the wedding of our partners Byron and Kim in 2015. 

We successfully produced our own portable 4 tap bar system for under grand, and the wedding party requested Beach House and Gold Coast Pale Ale (which we were already brewing), as well as cider and medium strength options.

We sorted through their first two requests, but we didn’t have cider or medium strength at the time. For the cider, Govs got creative and suggested we pair it with some fresh raspberries at the Fruit Beach House to provide a cider-like option, 

which led to the birth of the beer Powder beeres Mist Saison (which was the #10 beer on our previous list)

This left us with the task of brewing our first medium bodied beer. 

One of the beers we all enjoyed during this time was an OG craft beer from the U.S. called Anchor Steam. this was a relatively unknown beer beeres at the time and is probably still a common California beer.

It was so popular at weddings that when we launched Dark Hops HQ in 2016, we actually launched this beer in our core lineup.

As was the case with Beach House, while we love the beer, the craft beer market isn’t as keen on it as we are. Nonetheless, our core lineup still needed a viable medium bodied beer, 

so we tweaked the recipe and style and Thirty Calorie Medium became Thirty Calorie West Coast Pale Ale.

Once again, the beer was great, but this time we found the name inappropriate because people mistakenly thought it contained 30 calories – which, when you think about it, isn’t much!

So, it became a third time beeres lucky and stayed our core product when we changed the name to a strong and simple mid-range pale ale.

14. I💗 Beer (brewed with 4 Red Hearts)

I Heart Beer was our first beer produced in collaboration with another brewery. We brewed it with the legends Wade and Rob at 4 Hearts. This beer is a stout brewed with weyerman sinamar and centennial hops.

When referring to the naming of the beer, we added 💗 from Four Hearts, but we also like to say that we like to drink the beer because it’s a way to be “out of step” 

with the love of IPAs and pale ales in the craft beer world (of course, we like to drink pale ales too). 

We think it would be cool if it were a black beer too.
4 Hearts of Beer was started by Eddie’s cousin, Wade Curtis, who provided us beeres with great support early on and a good system for 

contract brewing batches of early dark hops. We did track a batch of I💗 to boil a few more times after the first batch (in fact, we’re brewing again now).