Noonanbach, our collaboration with our friends at Idle Hands Craft Ales of Malden, is finally ready! We’re excited to present this two part, year-long project to the world in support of the Greg Noonan New England Brewer’s Scholarship to the American Brewers Guild in Vermont.
Greg Noonan was an early pioneer of craft beer in the United States and the northeast in particular. You’d be hard-pressed to find any brewery that doesn’t have a dog-eared copy or two of his seminal “New Brewing Lager Beer” on hand. Our since-departed Barrel Master Matt Cohen and Idle Hands’ brewmaster Brett Bauer were back-to-back recipients of the Noonan scholarship, and so the idea to pay it forward was born.
We brewed the first part of this collaboration earlier this year, an Einbeck-style golden bock beer based off a Greg Noonan recipe we called ‘Noonanbock’. We took this full bodied, malt-focused beer and introduced it to oak with a blend of mixed cultures for twelve months of aging. We loved the idea of morphing this classic lager into ‘Noonanbach’, Flanders-style red beer, complete with oak character and gentle acidity.
A few months back we re-created Noonanbock at Idle Hands in Malden so we could present the fresh lager alongside our aged Noonanbach. We launched the beers with an epic party and bottleshare at Hugh O’Neills in Malden this past weekend, and will be taking that show on the road north this week to the Farmhouse Tap and Grill in Burlington, Vermont.
