Recipe: Last Road

As part of our second-annual Homebrew Summer program, various San Diego County breweries have teamed with amateur brewers to produce their homespun recipes on their commercial systems, then tap the resultant beers in their tasting rooms. On top of that, the homebrewers involved are sharing their recipes so you can recreate them from the comfort of home.

Today’s homebrewer-to-homebrewer contribution comes from a pair of friends who are both members of San Diego’s famous QUAFF (Quality Ale & Fermentation Fraternity) homerew club. One of them, Chris Banker, recently joined the pro ranks as head of production at Barrel & Stave Brewing. He selected a cold-IPA recipe called Last Road, which was submitted by his longtime beer bud, Eli Palma, and brewed that up at Barrel & Stave’s brewhouse inside Vista’s recently opened Colab Public House collective, where it will debut this Friday, August 19 at 4 p.m. This is Palma’s third recipe to be brewed as part of Homebrew Summer in the past two years.

Check back to San Diego Beer News throughout the summer for more recipes as well as release dates for other pro-am beers. It’s shaping up to be a great summer for homebrewers and beer fans alike, and we’re glad to have you along for the ride!

I chose to collaborate with Eli on his Last Road cold IPA both for the brewer and the style. Eli is a long-time homebrew friend of mine from QUAFF. I know he’s a skilled brewer and we’ve had some great times together, both locally and on trips to Denver and Mexico. As far as the specific beer, cold IPA is an exciting new style that was already on my to-brew list, so I saw this as an excellent opportunity to fit the style into our brew schedule as a collaboration and to learn from Eli’s exploration of the style.”

Chris Banker, Director of Brewing Operations, Barrel & Stave Brewing

A friend at work was asking about IPAs…history, examples, differences between styles, etc. I began to explain IPAs to him, and after that whole drawn-out historical explanation, I let him know I had just brewed a ‘cold IPA’ and it was churning away in the fermenter. So, obviously he asked me what a cold IPA was, to which I responded…it’s the ‘last road’ the style can possibly go. They have tried different strengths, colors, yeast, enzymes and malts, and it’s the last road they can take with the style.”

Eli Palma, Homebrewer