Lemon-Hop Stand

Origin Story

Created by Tony Hansen and brewed by our exceptional team in Bellaire, this beer came to be simply out of the need to explore a new hop option (or Hoption as I like to say), called Lemondrop, which was tantalizingly described as having huge lemon flavored attributes. Tony summed it up this way: I wanted to test out a new hop called Lemondrop. I thought it would be cool to try it out in a style other than IPA or Pale ale, to get a sense of how "lemony" the hops are. So, I chose an India Creme Ale as the base for the beer. In the spirit of our other ICA, Electric Mullet, I thought we could call this one Skulletmaster. Cream Ales are very similar to the American light pale lagers. Technically an ale, this style is often fermented at a cooler temperature or cold conditioned like lager beer. Sometimes lager yeast is added during the conditioning process or lager beer is mixed directly with the ale after fermentation and conditioning is complete. This strips away many of the noticeable ale qualities and produces a cleaner flavor, similar to most lager beers. By using a new yeast strain developed by White Labs, which is essentially a pre-blended mixture of lager yeast and ale yeast, the strains work together to create a clean, crisp, light American lager style ale. This allowed us to skip the step of blending two beers together or having to add a separate lager yeast addition near the end of the conditioning.