Santa Cruz Mountain Ale

Our Ale is an all grain, close fermented, lightly hopped, handcrafted ale. We steep and sparge the freshly milled grain, in a slow and deliberate process using both a mash tun and a lauter tun, before pumping it over to our kettle. Once in the kettle, we bring it slowly to a boil and add hops in incremental stages, for bittering, aroma and flavor. While in the kettle, the wort must be carefully attended too as it threatens to boil over. After the boil is complete and all of the hops have been added, the beer is slowly cooled through a water chilled cooler and brought to a perfect temperature for pitching our yeast. After a period in closed fermentation, the ale is passed through a filter into a brightening tank where it awaits packaging. Nothing in our brewery is automated, ensuring that each step in the brewing process is hand crafted. We use a hand selected blend of organic malts with a primary base of organic Gambrinus Ale malt. We add top-secret specialty malts to give the ale robust body, rich colour, and foam retention. The results are clear. Hops selecting in our recipe formulation is difficult since there are so many amazing organic hops to choose from. Again, we use a top-secret blend of organic whole hops in our Ale but we favor an aromatic beer so we use an age old method of 'dry-hopping' - adding a final 'tea-bag' of organic hops in the brightening stage.