Kyoto Brewing Co. - Wholesale
黙ってそれをやるだけさ (I did my duty)
A definitively East Coast-inspired full-bodied IPA made in collaboration with the masters of Australian Hazies.
Fast forward to 2025 and the idea was to do another cross-ocean exchange and this time we were paired with Mountain Culture, a brewery known for their hazy IPAs. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons the festival was shelved. Not one to back away from a chance to have some fun, Mountain Culture asked us if we'd still be game for a collaboration and we said we'd love to.
In March, prior to heading over to New Zealand for hop harvest, we visited the Mountain Culture guys at both their original brewery located about 90 minutes out of Sydney in the Blue Mountains and their new production brewery located in Emu Plains. On their end, they brewed a Belgian IPA and the beer was aptly named, "I Did My Duty" to express how we still wanted to brew despite the festival not happening.
Fast forward a few months and head brewer Jumbo came out and visited us. Off the back of that, we decided to brew hazy IPA on our end and took inspiration from their manga-like label artwork.
Jumbo (Mountain Culture's head brewer) and James (our head brewer) have mostly similar approaches for Hazy IPAs, so we wanted to focus on what was different. Their beers tend to be on the sweeter side, often using lactose in the boil to add body and sweetness. They also use a much more malt-forward water profile by going for a much higher chloride to sulfate ratio than we typically use. Outside of that, this beer uses a familiar Golden Promise base malt, with a blend of wheat and golden naked oats for haze, body, and a pillowy mouthfeel. We used NZ Cascade in the mash for a light bitterness, and Riwaka and Citra late in the boil along with the lactose to bring up the sweetness level. T-45 Simcoe and more Riwaka and Citra were again introduced for the cold side in the dry hop.
The beer has turned out great. While we were a little nervous about the sweetness level, as a brewery who tends to lean more on the drier side, this beer hits all the marks. The sweetness blends with the hop character nicely, giving it a mango nectar-like flavour, with notes of apricot, peaches, and papaya. A little bit of dank resinous character lingers in the background, but the tropical stone fruit is front and center. Fermented out with a London Ale strain popular in East Coast-style hoppy IPAs, the beer has plenty of stable haze with the massive amount of hops in this beer. This one is definitely for the haze lovers out there!