Three can releases on the same day? Well, isn’t Off Color Brewing motivated! Explore the Predator family at Mousetrap or swing by for carryout. Aqua Predator and Le Predateur will be pouring on draft ($6) with Very Busy Predator in cans ($6). And they have a Mixed Predator 4-pack for $10 (carryout only). Read all about today’s releases below!
Table of Contents
Very Busy Predator
Farmhouse Ale mix fermented
with white wine yeast
$10 / 16oz 4-pack
6.5% abv
Very Busy Predator continues our fermentation study with traditional strains of beer yeast mix fermented with the white wine yeast Torulaspora delbrueckii. Starting with their ester expressive farmhouse ale yeast strain and supplementing with Torulaspora yeast creates a fruit salad of esters featuring flavors of elderflower, apricot, and pear all from fermentation (no botanicals or fruit was harmed in the making of this beer). Mid palate of bread crumb and a Chardonnay dry finish. Mousetrap Exclusive.
Aqua Predator
Farmhouse Ale mix fermented
with white wine yeast
$10 / 16oz 4-pack
6.5% abv
Aqua Predator is their annual wet hopped saison made with their friends at Hop Head Farms over in Michigan. Hops are only harvested once a year and, once picked, they need to be immediately processed and carefully dried or they overheat, wilt, and burn off all the oils that make them so aromatic, distinctive, and intriguing. One day a year though, brewers and hop farmers can celebrate the new harvest by making a beer with the freshly picked hops. Timing is crucial and the beer needs to be made within hours of the hops being pulled from the vine. In the very early morning farmers at Hop Head Farms pick the hops, load them in a rental car, and hightail it to Chicago where Off Color Brewing have wort ready and waiting for them in the kettle. Off Color Brewing recirculates this hot wort through the fresh hops in an open topped wine tank that becomes their improvised “hopback” for the day and crack a beer for the very tired and beleaguered farmer. It’s a lot of stress and effort, but you pull delicate, nuanced flavors and aromas that are only present for a very short window speaking to the ephemerality of life or OMG THERES SO MUCH PINEAPPLE AND A LITTLE STRAWBERRY IN THESE THIS YEAR depending on who’s writing the flavor notes.
Available at Mousetrap with very limited local distribution and even more limited distro outside of Illinois.
Le Predateur
French Saison
$10 / 16oz 4-pack
6.5% abv
Off Color Brewing’s lion friend spent a year abroad during college in (wait for it) Lyon. Le Predateur is brewed with imported French malts and fermented with a French saison yeast as a nod to that insufferable, overwrought French persona he came back with for the next few months. Rustic, peppery phenols and rotund fruit notes are coupled with Nelson Sauvin hopping. Despite being from New Zealand, Nelson Sauvin lend the similarly lush, tropical fruit and minerality of their namesake, Bordeaux native Sauvignon Blanc grapes. Supposedly, there is some sort of connection between France and wine…
Available at Mousetrap with wide local distribution and just a smidge going to Michigan and beyond.
Terry Bunch
