Time to get stoked! At the 2018 GABF fall members meeting hops rub everyone participated in creating the hops blend for the 2019 Pink Boots Collaboration Brew Day. Membership voted on their favorite; now the experts at Yakima Chief Hops are creating and packaging this exclusive blend. Just like last year, Yakima Chief Hops will donate $3 from every pound sold to Pink Boots Society. Don’t delay! Order your hops by December 3rd. Hooray for great partners!

Cheers to Natasha Peiskar, Head Brewer at Last Best Brewing & Distilling in Calgary, Canada, who, with the help of Barbara McDonald (Dean & Co. Brewing, La Junta, Colorado) and Sam Olson (Fourpenny House, La Mesa, California), created the winning blend. This year it will be:

• 3 parts Loral
• 2 parts Glacier
• 1 part Mosaic
• 1 part Simcoe
• 1 part Sabro

Aroma notes: Stone Fruit, Tropical, Dank, allowing you to go a lot of different directions with your style choice.

Want to participate in the 2019 Collaboration Brew Day? All the information you need can be found on the Pink Boots website.

Read On to Learn How Natasha Created the Winning Blend!

Pink Boots Society: Natasha, for those who weren’t at the hops rub, what transpired?

Natasha Peiskar: In the beginning,  everyone individually assessed the hop plugs provided by YCH. Each person in attendance had 5 coins with which to vote for the individual hops that they liked. I am not entirely sure, but we assessed at least 15 varietals.

From there we were invited to start creating blends with the top 6 voted hop varietals: Glacier, Cashmere, Mosaic, Loral, Sabro and Simcoe. Those who participated in blending put forth their creation for final voting in which each member was given one coin to vote in the final blend.

PB: You created the blend with the help of Barbara and Sam. Were you paired up, did you know each other?

NP: Actually the pairing up just happened naturally. As everyone was going through the hops assessment, conversations broke out and fast friendships were formed. I’m definitely thankful for Barb and Sam’s feedback in order to create the final blend we put forth for voting.

We started out with the individual hop plugs and I was looking for varieties with great stone fruit (apricot, peach), tropical (pineapple, passionfruit), bright citrus and then a little dank to balance it all out; secondarily, I was really interested in the new varieties that were on the table and wanted to work those in. Once the varieties were voted in I got to working on a blend. My first 2 blends were tossers, just a real hot mess of too much going on.

Instead of the blend being bright and balanced the aromas were dull and muddled. Nothing really shone through, it just seemed like the varietals were competing against each other instead of being complementary. Just as I got to one I thought I liked, Sam noted that she got green pepper (and then that’s all I could smell). This is where Barb was really helpful. She and I worked to tweak that last blend by upping the Loral and Glacier and decreasing the Mosaic to get to our final blend.

PB: Did you have a beer style in mind for this blend?

NP: As far as a beer style goes, that wasn’t something I was really targeting. I was looking for a very versatile blend that would work well in a hoppy blonde, but still hold its own in a DDH style or even a dry hopped sour.

About Natasha Peiskar:

Natasha is the Head Brewer at Last Best Brewing & Distilling in Calgary, Canada. She previously worked at Tool Shed Brewing and Bomber Brewing. Prior to brewing she was the Brand Manager for National Beer Hall (as part of Concorde Group) in Alberta, managing the beer lists for four (4) restaurants (60-72 taps/location), beer education, events, brand and general PR. She also spent a year as the Alberta rep for Copper & Theory, representing brands including Upright, Ninkasi, Gigantic, and Breakside.

Natasha achieved her Advanced Cicerone status in 2018. She is only the 8th person in Canada to do so. (Congrats, Natasha!)

The Pink Boots Society is excited to announce and introduce the three ladies that have been selected by the PBS Scholarship Selection Committee (SSC) to receive a scholarship to the 2018 YCH HOPS Hop and Brew School ®. Hailing from Florida, Texas and Kansas, these three women are in various stages of their brewing careers.

Morgan Banning represents the early career brewer of the group, a homebrewer who is in the process of working through the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg Brewing Arts program. After a few years of homebrewing she made the decision to set aside her Master’s degree in early childhood education saying, “I moved away from education with the dream of professional brewing for two reasons, I love brewing and I love that the nature of brewing is constantly evolving.”

Making her way through the Brewing Arts program has included completing an internship with Green Bench Brewery where they wasted no time immersing her in the daily work. Morgan says, “I was given a tour of the facility and immediately set to work. Each day at the brewery brought new challenges and with it new discoveries.” She has also completed the hops-focused component of the program but feels this is an area where she has a weaker understanding and is looking forward to instruction from global award winning brewers this course will provide.

Also hailing from the education world is Libby Brennan, who the PBS SSC noted, “demonstrates an evolving role in the beer industry and would use this course to build upon her own knowledge and spread it to others.”

Two years ago Libby took her first job in the industry, working at St. Elmo Brewing Company as a manager and event planner and has since gone on to brew two beers there. She is looking forward to the knowledge she will gain personally from being physically immersed in “a mecca of hop production” to help her complete her Cicerone certification and also sharing that knowledge. “As a manager with a staff who has a literal thirst for beer knowledge, I would be able to integrate the lessons of the course into our monthly trainings,” she says.

Briana Burrows, assistant brewer at The Big Rip Brewing Company, represents the most experienced brewing professional of these women. She started there as a once-a-week bartender in November of 2016 in what she says, “was the first step in changing my life forever, and for the better.”

A year later the assistant brewer quit unexpectedly and Briana took the initiative to further her career, expressing interest in helping out on the brew house floor. The owners decided to start training her and after being a part-time trainee for a month she officially became the assistant brewer. Knowing there is much to learn as she continues her career, she is looking forward to the hops and brewing knowledge this course will provide which she says, “will, in turn, help me present new ideas to the brewery. Learning more about beer and brewing on a regular basis is very important to me as a brewer and I believe taking this course will show the owners of the brewery that I’m serious about brewing, recipe formation, and also willing to help push our brewery into the future.”

YCH HOPS Hop and Brew School ® is a two-day onsite course in Yakima, WA that will cover topics including new trends in hop breeding, hop chemistry and brewing techniques. Guest speakers include award-winning brewers from across the United States speaking on hop usage, recipe formulation and brewing methods. Local hop farmers will also be in attendance to address the numerous growing aspects of hops from yields and aroma characteristics to new, up and coming proprietary varieties. The course includes a ranch tour, where attendees will experience the hop fields and witness hop picking, drying and baling, as well as a guided tour of YCH headquarters, where they will observe the receiving and warehousing of the hops.

Gasseling Ranches, a fourth generation hip farm in Wapato, WA is sponsoring one of the scholarship and has been operating for over 100 years. They produce many varieties for YCH including Mosaic, Simcoe, and Citra, and are fully committed to being a sustainably operated farm with the Green ChiefⓇ certification.

In addition to attending the course, each of the ladies will receive a pair of pink steel-toe rubber boots when she fulfills the Pay It Forward requirement associated with the scholarship.

We are so excited about Pink Boots Brew this year! Thanks to the generous folks at YCH Hops, we have an amazing and unique blend of hops chosen by our members for this year’s Pink Boots Brew (formerly Big Boots Brew).  Read the YCH Hops blog for the background story AND learn what hops the blend contains. At the end there’s a link to order hops for your brew this year. Make sure to order your hop blend by February 1st!

PINK BOOTS BLEND RELEASED

by Cait Schut / Communications and Outreach Manager 
December 20, 2017 / News & Events