THE PROCESS
To show how it works, we’ll follow Mariah’s beer’s path from idea to reality. Her beer is called Two Lights. It’s a lager with sauvignon blanc must (the unfermented juice of the grape) added during brewing, making it a subtle balance between lager and a wine spritzer.
First, she submitted her idea. We have an internal form where employees lay out the broad strokes of what they want their beer to be. For Mariah, her idea was boiled down to her love of refreshing wine spritzers. So why not try to brew a lager with a hint of spritz?
Our Pilot Team received that submission and gave it a look. The Pilot Team itself is made up of a group of talented brewers from across our brewery—some who work in our lab, some who work on our canning and bottling lines, and some who brew our beer. The team meets once weekly to talk about newly submitted beer ideas. And during that meeting, Mariah’s beer sounded like something they also would love to drink, so they assigned Mariah a brewer to work with.
Mariah then met up with that brewer to work out ingredients and the nitty gritty of her beer. What ABV should it be? How much carbonation? What sort of mouth feel and aroma? What grain bill and yeast, exactly? How would they get that wine-like flavor into the beer?