Hard seltzer is exploding in popularity. Reports confirm that it is growing faster than any craft beer style and craft breweries have taken notice, with a large percentage adding hard seltzer to their lineup. One of the largest and best-known craft breweries, Dogfish Head, has jumped forward with its own craft hard seltzer, and it’s unlike anything else on the market. It’s called Hoppy Medium, Dogfish Head’s response to the hard seltzer craze.
What makes Hoppy Medium different? For one, it is brewed using real fruit. You won’t taste fruit flavored extracts in this hard seltzer. It’s real fruit all the way for a natural angle that is often missing from other seltzer. But that isn’t all. Hoppy Medium has another additive not normally associated with hard seltzer: Hops. Yes, that is correct. It’s a hopped hard seltzer, making it one of the first of its kind on the market.
Dogfish Head founder & brewer Sam Calagione says the new product showcases Dogfish Head’s commitment to quality and builds on decades of experience.
“It’s a labor of love any time you work with real fruit, but it’s a labor we’ve committed to since our earliest days with the likes of Aprihop, Festina Pêche and so many more,” says Calagione. “Couple that with our deep understanding of hop extraction techniques gleaned through 18 years of distilling and 25 years of brewing, and you can taste the impact real fruit, real hops and experience have on creating the perfect Hoppy Medium.”
For the first entry in the Hoppy Medium lineup, Dogfish Head has created a recipe using real guava and Citra hops. Several different fruit and hop combinations were tested, but this one was judged the best of the best. It’s spritzy, refreshing, fruity, and hoppy. It’s ideal for a day in the sun and quite different from the other hard seltzer on the market right now.
Guava and Citra hops is only Hoppy Medium flavor available right now, but it won’t be the last. Dogfish Head is hard at work testing and sampling other fruit and hop combinations. It’s only a matter of time until more flavors become reality.
Dogfish Head prides itself as a brewery that creates “off centered beers for off centered people.” Hoppy Medium Real Fruit Hard Seltzer isn’t craft beer, of course, but it does maintain that ‘off centered’ magic that has served this Delaware- based brewery so well for so long. Give it a try if you get the opportunity and relish in the goodness of hops and real fruit, a combo certain to convert many naysayers to the hard seltzer cause.
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