The story behind Wake N’ Haze, our collaboration with Champion Brewing, starts with Darkness Day.
We invited a hell-ton of breweries to pour at our 2018 release party, and if they wanted to send some people along with their kegs, go ahead, we’d get an air mattress and some couches. One of the breweries who took us up on it was Champion, out of Charlottesville, Virginia. We like them because they make excellent beer, and we resent them because they have a (GABF gold medal-winning) brew named Shower Beer that is such a good beer name.
Champion’s Josh Skinner and Hunter Smith plotted with Surly Lead Brewer Josh Lemke, and they agreed to do a collaboration when Skinner came north. They correctly decided to brew it on Thursday morning (aka the day before the day before Darkness Day), as Thursday evening is when a lot of the other breweries and Darkness Day guests start arriving and we have a little party at the old Brooklyn Center facility. It can be a late night.
Wake N’ Haze, hatched bright and early on Thursday morning, is not just a brewery collaboration, but a style collaboration: A NE-style haze bomb that’s also a German-style kellerbier. A kellerbier is basically a hazy lager, so the thought was to add another layer of complexity with Citra and Simcoe dry-hopping.
It totally worked.
The medium-bodied beer has heaps of citrus aromatics (mango, pineapple, orange) and is super drinkable at 7.5% ABV. All collaborations should succeed this well.
Wake N’ Haze is pouring exclusively in our Beer Hall.
