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Forget the Russian menace: Ballantine is back

Iconic ale returns under new owner

Pabst Brewing supplies less than 3 percent of the beer consumed in the United States. Over the past few weeks, however, the company – best known for no-frills brands such as Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Colt 45 and National Bohemian – has generated about 95 percent of the industry buzz.

Most of it has revolved around the company’s recent sale. “Do Svidaniya, Pabst! Iconic Beer Brand Bought by Russians,” screamed the headlines. “Czar of Brews,” quipped the New York Daily News. The word “brewski” got a workout.

Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, cautions Pabst brew master Greg Deuhs. Pabst’s new chief executive, Eugene Kashper, does operate a brewery in Moscow (as well as plants in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) through his company Oasis Beverages. But he’s an American citizen and New York resident who broke into the beer business back in the 1990s. “He was with Stroh when I was there,” Deuhs said.

Besides sparking a new Red Scare, the hasty reporting obscured the real news emanating from Pabst: The company has resuscitated Ballantine India Pale Ale, one of this country’s most storied beer brands.

P. Ballantine and Sons, founded in Newark, is perhaps best remembered as the sponsor of the New York Yankees during the glory days of Berra and Mantle, and for its “Who Is the Ale Man?” commercials extolling the macho virtues of its beer. Besides its regular ale, the brewery marketed an IPA that was considered the most authentic surviving example of the style, which originally was brewed strong and bitter to withstand long sea voyages to tropical outposts.

Ballantine India Pale Ale was dosed with a concentrated hop oil and aged in oaken vessels for a full year before bottling. “Dangerous, high-test, 44 magnum ale, its bitter, woody suds, reeking of spruce sap, overwhelm the nose and palate – God, this is a fabulous ale,” wrote the late Alan Eames in his 1986 tome, A Beer Drinker’s Companion.

Ballantine fell on hard times and closed in 1972. Its brands eventually fell to Pabst, itself a brewery on the rocks amid a cost-cutting frenzy. Production of the IPA was moved to Cranston, Rhode Island; then to Fort Wayne, Indiana.; and finally to Milwaukee. The alcohol was reduced, hop oil gave way to pellets and fermentation was moved to stainless steel. Ballantine IPA was a still-quaffable but more middle-of-the-road beer when Pabst pulled the plug on the brand in 1996, shuttering its Milwaukee brewery.

Jump to 2012. Deuhs was applying for his present position at Pabst. “They asked me a pre-interview question: ‘How could Pabst get into the craft beer market?’ I said, ‘You already have the answer: Ballantine IPA.’

“I worked on it a good solid two years,” he said, whipping up 24 test batches in a 10-gallon brew pot in his home north of Milwaukee. “I’d be telling you a fib if I said I found a recipe in a box in the basement, but I did have some analytical data going back to the 1930s.” He also interviewed older drinkers who remembered the original.

Reconstructing historic beers always involves compromise. Bullion, the key hop variety in the original Ballantine IPA, isn’t grown to any significant extent today. Deuhs devised a complex formula involving eight types of pelletized hops and two varieties of hop oil that he obtained from a British company called Charles Faram. The hop distillate was so pungent that a liter and a half sufficed for a 70-barrel batch.

The jury is out on whether the oaken tuns at the Newark brewery imparted any significant flavor to their contents.

“They were lined with pitch, but the pitch was pretty thin, so some of the wood character came through,” Deuhs said.

No wooden vessels were available at Cold Spring Brewing in Minnesota, where he brewed the IPA in rented tanks. He tried to duplicate the original process, however, by circulating the beer through a steel tank filled with oak spirals.

Deuhs wasn’t interested in challenging West Coast IPAs for bragging rights to the world’s hoppiest beer. Ballantine IPA is well-balanced by several varieties of specialty malt. But it gets a bitter, floral perfume from English Target hops and an immensely resiny flavor from American varieties such as Cascade and Columbus. One old-timer commented to Deuhs that it was “pretty much right on, except for missing a hint of spruce.” At 7.2 percent alcohol by volume and 70 bitterness units, it approximates the measurements of the original.

Deuhs, 51, was a youngster when Ballantine’s Newark brewery was boarded up. But bottles of the original Ballantine IPA are floating around. This writer sampled one at a beer memorabilia show in the mid-1990s. Although the beer was more than a quarter-century old, the hop aroma from an uncapped bottle was piquant and fresh – a remarkable feat because hops tend to fade in a matter of months.

“I would certainly think that the oil had something to do with it,” Deuhs said.

The new Ballantine IPA is rolling out throughout the Northeast in kegs, six-packs and single 750-milliliter bottles. A canned version is being contemplated. If sales warrant, Deuhs will dip into the archives to re-create other old Ballantine recipes.

Like the Burton Ale.

That extravagantly hopped, barley-wine-strength brew (over 10 percent alcohol) spent up to 20 years mellowing in Ballantine’s cellars. A limited amount was bottled and given away (never sold) as a Christmas bonus to brewery VIPs.

Deuhs tentatively plans to brew his own version for a fall 2015 release.

“I had a discussion with Eugene,” Deuhs says of his new boss. “He wants more innovation, more new beers, more new categories. I think he’s going to push us outside our comfort zone of American lagers.”

Greg Kitsock is the editor of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News.



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