Our First FoBAB Medal: What It Means to Us, and FOR YOU.

Hello River Rascals,

This past weekend capped off a pretty great award season for Riverlands Brewing Co.  After bringing home medals at the US Beer Open and the Great American Beer Festival, we even more recently took home a Bronze at the Festival of Wood & Barrel Aged Beer (FoBAB) for our latest barrel aged imperial stout release, Tranquil 2025.

Tranquil 2025, Bronze Medal Winner at the Festival of Wood & Barrel Aged Beers in Chicago, Illinois. On sale now at brewery in St. Charles!

Each of the medals we've won means something special, but this FoBAB medal might be my favorite of all.  I remember first attending the festival back 10 years ago in 2015.  The highlight that year for me was getting multiple pours of Goose Island Bourbon County Vanilla Rye, which I believe had just been released the year prior and was tasting amazing a year later.  I want to say one of the big winners that year was Spiteful Brewing’s Malevolence Chocolate Caliente, which was one of my favorites of the day as well as being my intro to spicy stouts. 

At this point 10 years ago, I was an avid homebrewer, but not in my wildest dreams would I have guessed I'd be there one day seeing my beer poured.  Even then, 10 years ago, I knew FoBAB was special, and that some of the best breweries not only in Chicagoland, but also nationwide, bring their best of the best beers.  These were the beers that brewers poured their love and creativity into, beers that sat in casks, often for years, waiting for their special moment to shine and be enjoyed.  There were so many amazing beers I tried that day, and FoBAB is like that year after year. 

Fast forward 10 years and my Saturday session of FoBAB ended much the same way as that first one a decade prior, having more beer at a brewery that I definitely didn't need given all the stout I tried at the fest, followed by a rough Sunday.  The two key differences were that the brewery I was at this time was my own, and that we were celebrating a Bronze medal win, our first ever award at FoBAB.  So many breweries I have so much respect and admiration for have won medals at this fest, both this year and in years prior, and many of them have influenced my own beer.  Thanks to all my friends in the industry who have enabled us to reach a level where winning a medal in this festival is even possible. 

And…thank you, River Rascals, for enthusiastically buying the beer we produce that enables us to keep this train rolling. 

Assistant Brewer Brianna Levi and Head Brewer/Co-Founder Eric Bramwell at FoBAB 2025.

As Black Friday approaches, we look forward to the true start of Stout Season heralded in by the Bourbon County annual lineup.  We've made Black Friday a tradition at Riverlands as well, releasing some of the stouts we are most proud of.  In addition to still having Tranquil 2025 still in stock, we'll be releasing Lord of the Riverlands, a beer aged 2 years in 1792 Bourbon casks, in addition to American Medium Toasted Oak inserts by our friends at Creative Oak.  The star of the show is that we conditioned this stout on two pounds of coconut, both toasted and raw, per gallon of liquid.  This will by far be the most coconut forward stout we've done, a rich and decadent stout to fit the season.

We can't wait for you to try Lord of the Riverlands, available both on tap and in 500ml bottles to-go at noon on 11/28, as we continue our line of, now, award-winning barrel aged beers. Cheers, and we hope to see you at our brewery in St. Charles this holiday season.

Eric Bramwell
Head Brewer/Co-Owner
Riverlands Brewing Company

A "New School" Approach to the West Coast IPA

Head Brewer/Co-Founder Eric Bramwell

Today's Brewer's Corner is all about one of our favorite styles of beer: West Coast IPA.

What that means today though can be different things to different people. Some think piney, resinous hops with a solid malt backbone. Others think it's dry and intensely bitter. Neither of these are wrong, but the direction we're leaning is what we've seen recently coming out of California which is a "new school" West Coast IPA.

What exactly is a New School WC IPA, or "California Style IPA"? We are essentially taking some of the things we love about our hazies, but upping the bitterness and drying everything out. Our take on the modern West Coast IPA is creating the perfect vessel to deliver hops to your taste buds. We don't want malt based flavors or residual sugar getting in the way of those hop flavors and aromatics.

That's not to say these beers will be overly bitter, resiney pine bombs. We take a similar approach that we do for our hazies for our hopping. A restrained, but present bitterness, and a heavy focus on late addition kettle hops as well as huge amounts of dry hops in the fermenter.

The beer that results from this approach will be a golden colored hoppy delight. Bitter enough to cleanse your palette and keep you ready for the next sip. Fruit forward hop flavors without necessarily coming across as juicy. Little residual sweetness getting in the way of maximum hop flavor. A clean, crisp fermenting yeast that doesn't create much in the way of flavor or aromatics on its own, letting the hops do all the heavy lifting.

So this brings us to Hornet's Bite, the first of what we'd consider our approach to this style of West Coast IPA. We brewed this beer once before, but tried a different yeast that didn't pan out the way we'd hoped. This latest batch is dialed in the way we plan to move forward for the style as a whole. Hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Mosaic hops, this beer will have notes of white grape, citrus, blueberry, with a background herbal note and just enough bitterness to keep it refreshing. We REALLY like how this batch came out and we hope you will too.

While we will continue to brew and improve our haze game, we're very excited to further explore this version of West Coast IPA. Expect to see more of these on our taps and out in distribution. There's a wide world of hops out there, and this is another wonderful style to explore them.

Cheers!
Eric Bramwell
Head Brewer/Co-founder
Riverlands Brewing Company