Wednesday, January 4, 2017

'America's Best IPA' brewer enters expansion phase

The winnah!
Some brewers who win industry awards might get a bit puffed up. A Finger Lakes brewery that won a major magazine award for one of its products in 2016 is simply expanding.

The Prison City Pub & Brewery of Auburn is expanding into the basement space below the pub, which will give it 1,000 square feet more to use as a barrel-aging room and provide space for more fermenters while it looks for a second location to build a larger brewhouse.

Owner Dawn Hearn Schulz told Ale Street News, “This will tide us over while we look for a new location. We’re really looking to service our own taps better.”

Prison City brewer Ben Maeso's Mass Riot IPA (6.3% abv) was named the "Best American IPA" by Paste magazine, which chronicles drink, food, lifestyle, fashion, etc. In making that determination the magazine explained:

"We went through a mind-boggling 247 American IPAs this summer to get to Prison City Pub & Brewery’s Mass Riot. In terms of profile, Mass Riot is a huge, massively tropical, unabashedly juicy hop bomb. Orange juice hits hard, as does pineapple juice and grapefruit candy. Resinous flavors on the back end help rein things in only the slightest bit, but this is definitely a juicy IPA first and foremost, and a moderately sweet one as well. One tasting sheet dubs it 'Caribbean pale ale' for its tropical flavors, while another refers to it as 'The Big Juicy.'

"In the finals, it was particularly beloved despite having a little bit of age on it, with one taster writing 'Rich and fruity, cantaloupe and citrus, a beautiful combination.' Likewise full in terms of mouthfeel, it seems significantly bigger than its 6.3% ABV, with a body that goes on for days. It’s truly a decadent IPA, and we can’t wait until Prison City is producing a much larger amount of beer so we can taste it more often. In the meantime, we’d settle for just one more taste. The best in America."
• Go here to visit Dowd's New York Wines Notebook
• Go here to visit Notes On Napkins
• Go here to visit the Capital Region Brew Trail

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