Grapefruit Slam Ipa (Koochenvagner's Brewing Company)

 I have never heard of this brewery before, and to be honest when you first pick up the bottle it is not completely obvious who this beer is by. I have seen pictures and heard mention of this beer around the hopslam buzz this week. If you are not familiar with this buzz, is it like a tiny fly, a nat in your ear. I am just ready for it to go away. Something about the word project and grapefruit drew me to this beer plus the $9.99 price tag is the high end of retail for this beer. Stochasticity comes from the greek word to aim, so the project is aiming to make obvious choices in regards to what would be obvious to add to styles of beer? It is obvious to add grapefruit peel to this IPA, which is based on hop varieties from the great northwest. These hops from this area, Centennial, Chinook, and Magnum often best described as being big citrus, like a grape fruit. I hope the first project is well received so we can see what other obvious choices the brewers choose to execute. 

This beer was bottled 1/23/14, so it was a little over a month old. The nose is all citrus, with little to no floral hop presence.  The taste is dead on successful, big grapefruit in the back of my cheeks I can feel it. The underlying sweetness is nice, but the malt backbone is a little light. The bottle lists Koochenvagner's Brewing Company, Escondido, San Diego California as home. I tried to find more information about the brewery, but all signs point to this being a stone brewing company side project. The google search results don't turn up much, and the www.stochasticity.com website is very vague. There is really no more information on the beer on the Internet than there is one the bottle. Koochenvagers? Greg Koch? the aim is to make obvious beers? Stone makes a lot of IPA's, what makes this one any different? The 22 ounce format and the screen printed bottle seem to familiar. Is this what the hiatus is for? This new project? Stone brewing marketing experts, they keep there brand fresh. This beer must have been months in the making, especially getting label approval for a phony brewery. It was a fun journey, and I cannot wait for what else is to come out of this project.