Lil' Wheezy

Origin Story

Lil Wheezy was our first true experimentation with Falconers Flight hops. This beer is the continuation of a reoccurring theme in Elk Rapids, in which the brewers have begun maximizing on malt usage and mash efficiency, by creating a second "side" batch of beer from the final runnings of a single batch that had an incredibly large malt bill (Aww Jeah, Anni Ale, Publican Porter). You may recall that the term "runnings" refers to the stages that the brewer methodically takes to fill the brew kettle with hot wort from the mash tun. During each runnings stage, the brewer will take a sample of the wort to measure the specific gravity, to determine how much sugar is being extracted at that exact time of the sparge (filling of the kettle). Typically, the kettle is visually broken up into thirds, and as the wort fills the kettle another portion of the way, the brewer will take their sample for measurement. Hence when we record these numbers, we label them as our first, second and third runnings, which are also referred to as the final runnings. When we brew these beers that have such a large malt bill (over 2700lbs in ER and over 600lbs in Bellaire) we have to fill our mash tun twice in order to extract only the most intense wort that has the highest concentration of sugars for the flavors we want in that beer. Twice as much grain would mean two times the amount of usable runnings to fill one kettle. Therefore, the brewers have decided to still extract the final runnings of each mash and simply transfer them to a separate process kettle that we have in ER, so we can still utilize the valuable wort extracted from all of the grain being used. However, as you fill your kettle and rinse your mash to ensure you obtain all the extractable sugars, the potency of each running goes down as the kettle gets more full. Meaning that your first and second runnings have the highest density of sugars and the third or final runnings are composed of whatever usable sugars still remained in the mash. This ends up creating a common theme in all of the beers that we have created using just the final runnings from large "parent" batches. They all end up being fairly light bodied and tend to have low malt characteristics, especially in overall sweetness compared to the style it originated from. Possibly the biggest contribution from the malt at this point is color. These lighter versions of the "parent" beer still provide the brewer with some very usable benefits. Whether allowing them to easily manipulate it with non traditional brewing ingredients to showcase those flavor additions with ease, or they can be used to serve as a relatively clean template for exploring the benefits of hops never used before. Lil Wheezy, which was the final runnings from the Wizard: Barleywine (originally started out as Lil Wizzy, but thankfully morphed into the name we are now using for it), provided the perfect opportunity for the brewers to see exactly what Falconers Flight had to offer for all possible hop contributions in a beer. Created by blending some of the Northwest's most premier hop varieties including the highly acclaimed Citra, Simcoe, and Sorachi Ace along with experimental hops and numerous other NW varieties. Most descriptions of this hop draw attention to it's superior aromatic qualities, imparting distinct tropical, citrus, floral, lemon and grapefruit tones. When applied to a beer with a wort composed entirely of final runnings, as well as being the only hop variety exclusively used, the Falconers take center stage to showcase their entire range of benefits from aroma to flavoring to bittering capabilities.