In the days after opening the doors of their brewery, the Bucketty’s team faced a problem many new breweries face – people were drinking their beer faster than they could brew it. Brewing a batch of beer generally takes two to three weeks from go to whoa, but the thirsty locals were guzzling it like it was milk at a chilli eating contest.
That’s when kveik came to the rescue. Using the Norwegian super yeast, head brewer Tony D’Astolfo turned out an XPA in not three weeks… not two weeks… but five days flat. The customers, those vicious animals, responded by drinking 14 kegs in three days. So Tony brewed it again and again, tweaking the recipe and amping up the dry hop until the 5 Day XPA went from being a problem solver to being a crowd pleaser.
“I pushed the envelope a little bit further, and we put in one and a half times more on that dry hop, and the aroma and flavours, just… poppin’.”
These days, 5 Day XPA is a cloudy yellow drop with Chinook and Citra hops providing a whoosh of citrus with a spatter of bitterness. It’s still handy for Tony that it’s so quick to brew, but no one who’s drinking it really cares – they just drink it for the taste.
Mick Wust
