“Is your cat making too much noise all the time? Is your cat constantly stomping around, driving you crazy? Is your cat clawing at your furnitures? Think there’s no answer? You’re so stupid! Kitten Mittens… You’ll be smitten.” – Charlie Kelly, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Releasing today at Daft Brewing – Kitten Mittens, our sour New England IPA.
Some of you may remember Kitten Mittens from the YGK Craft Beer Fest and MacKinnon Brothers Back to the Farm. For those of you who didn’t have a chance to try it, we are excited to be able to offer to you what is the staff’s favourite amongst all our delicious offerings.
Owner Adam Rondeau was quite pleased with how the beer turned out, stating “This is the best beer Ryan will ever make, I give it a 5 out of 10.”
Originally one of brewmaster Ryan’s award winning homebrew recipes, the sour New England IPA (NE IPA) won Gold Medal and Best of Show at both the Because Beer Competition and the Short Finger Hop Shop IPA Competition in 2017. This beer is a hybrid of the juicy New England style IPA and a fruity sour beer. The result is a hazy, super citrusy, and tropical beer that bursts with the flavours of grapefruit and peach juice.
This recipe requires a delicate balance between pH of the beer and bitterness from the hops to avoid astringency and create a smooth finish. Water chemistry is very important here, with a heavy amount of calcium chloride used to give it a full body that is typical of the NE IPA style. Just like our regular NE IPA, Bingpot, the grain bill contains lots of oats to give it haze which carries all that juicy hop character. In fact, there is no fruit added to this beer. All of that juiciness comes right from the hops.
Kitten Mittens is more than just a sour version of Bingpot. Though they both use the same variety of hops (Citra, Amarillo, and El Dorado), the lower pH of the sour has a significant impact on your perception of the hops, making them taste like two completely different beers. They are interesting to compare side by side to see if you can pick out the differences and similarities between the two.
“I really like it. Very citrusy, very juicy,” Nathan, one of Daft’s bartenders, said when asked for his thoughts, “It’s very approachable for an IPA, it doesn’t have any of that bitterness that people expect.”
Kitten Mittens captures what we aim to be as a brewery at Daft Brewing, trendy and innovative. If our owners were to pick one beer to be our flagship, this would be it.
“It’s good. I don’t know…what do you want from me?” Ryan’s wife, Lindsay, responded aggressively when asked to offer her opinion.
Kitten Mittens is available from the Daft Brewing bottle shop starting today. Make sure to be one of the fortunate to get their paws on one as this beer is sure to be swatted off the shelves soon.
Try Kitten Mittens today, you’ll be smitten.