All Together with Big Timber

When the über-hot Other Half Brewing Company of Brooklyn, NY, announced their idea to help laid off bar and hospitality industry employees, it did not take Big Timber Brewing long to respond.

The West Virginia brewery quickly signed on to make Other Half’s collaboration beer called All Together IPA.

“We decided to get involved with the project because we liked that the collaboration proceeds go back to your local community,” said Matt Kwasniewski, Big Timber’s president and head brewer.  “We only distribute in West Virginia and West Virginia has plenty of people in need, so we like to keep our charitable contributions at home, and this project supported that.”

Other Half recruited over 650 breweries to join them in the collaboration project. (Find a list of the breweries at this link.) Each brewery made a beer by the same recipe. Each the brewery will sell the beer in its home market and dedicate a significant portion of the proceeds from the sale to helping local, out-of-work servers, bartenders, bussers, dishwashers, cooks, and other hospitality industry workers.

At Big Timber, Kwasniewski explains, “Half of our taproom sales of All Together will go to service industry members in need, and about a third of our revenue from distribution will go to the cause as well.”

“Elkins is a pretty small, tight knit community, and the service industry members are a pretty tight knit group within that. These are our neighbors and the people that normally help sell our product on a daily basis, so helping them out when they lose most if not all of their income is just doing what should be done.”

All Together – the beer

Other Half Brewing kept the All Together IPA recipe pretty simple. It’s brewed with 2-row base malt, oats and carapils. It’s bittered with a little Columbus hop, then dry-hopped with a beautiful blend of Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, and Cascade. It’s nicely drinkable at a 6.5% ABV.

Matt says Big Timber followed the recipe as it was written. “We had yet to do a hazy with that specific hop combo, so we didn’t really tweak it much.  I feel like we finally got our water chemistry for hazies figured out so we are pretty happy with the way the beer turned out.”

He also notes that this is a beer that needs to be consumed fresh to be at its best. He does not expect it to have a terribly long shelf life.

Other Half hazy IPAs are revered across the country by fans of the style. Not only other breweries, but also many homebrewers try to replicate the aromas, taste, and consistency of Other Half brews. Charleston beer fan and New York native David Mincer is one who is on the Other Half bandwagon. “Their IPAs are my favorite in the world because they’ve perfected the use of oats and lactose to make a full-bodied, creamy beer unlike any other brewer,” Mincer says. “They’ve also indicated they genuinely want to make both the brewing community and the communities in which they brew better.”

All Together IPA – Distribution

Big Timber’s version of All Together is packaged in 16-oz. cans, and it was just released at the brewery yesterday. Matt says, “Most will be sold in Elkins, as that’s where the proceeds will be going.”

Out of the 110 case yield, about 40 cases will hit distribution. Expect it to appear in the accounts that have handled Big Timber’s small-batch specialty items in the past. Due to the small quantity available, it will be on tight allocation through Big Timber’s beer distributors. It normally takes a week or longer for distributors to pick up a new Big Timber beer, and then longer for it to get into retail accounts. If you really want to get some now, head to Elkins this weekend and buy it at the brewery.

Helping their community

To help out Elkins-area hospitality industry workers, Big Timber will begin distributing funds very soon once the beer sales are underway.

“We want people to hit us up on social media if they know a service industry member in need [in the Elkins region]. We want to get the checks out quick so we’ll be distributing funds to people at the end of next week.”  

“We hope that it will help relieve some stress for people in need,” says Matt.

Big Timber Brewing was Brilliant Stream’s 2019 West Virginia Brewery of the Year for a good reason. They are only adding to their excellent resume with projects such as this.

Homebrew Recipe

For homebrewers interested in making the recipe, check out this PDF file.

Recipe file link

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LINKS

Big Timber Brewing website
Other Half Brewing website
#alltogetherrbeer