It seems to me that it kind of depends on the dog, really. If the dog is stubborn and unwilling to change its ways, sure. I mean, I'm getting old. I've been brewing professionally for over 24 years and for most of my career, I would consider myself a "traditional" brewer.. Old Dog. But, one of the reasons that I just LOVE brewing is that it affords me many opportunities to learn new tricks. To grow. To change.

As an example, I was driving back to good ol' Osky from an event in Okoboji when my cell phone rang. So, I picked up the call (Hands-Free, of course) and lo and behold, it was my buddy Andy. Now, I've been in this industry for a while and know some things, but Andy has been brewing A LOT longer than me. And he's like a great oracle of brewing and beer knowledge! Shoot...he even teaches beer and brewing at a college level, for goodness sake!

We had a great conversation, as per usual. Towards the end of our chat, we started discussing new ingredients that we've been using in our beers. A major topic of conversation concerned a company called Abstrax.

Abstrax is known for terpenes. I gave a quick overview of terpenes in my previous blog post. Feel free to take a gander! For breweries, these terpenes can provide hop and now even fruit flavors. They're pourable. They're easy to use. And the flavors and aromas really pack a punch! So, we had 2 old (brewing) dogs discussing some cutting-edge brewing ingredient technology. When really, a few years ago, we both would have "poo-poo'd" the idea of ever using anything like Abstrax! Brave new world, or something.

You can taste and smell these Abstrax flavors in our newly released beers, too! Check out NoCoast's Midwest IPA v2.0 (Hops) and Fruit Patch Raspberry Hibiscus! (Raspberry). Bow-wow-WOW!