Community is as important to us here at Allagash as it is to the Portland Hearts of Pine—our city’s USL1 league team.
So, when coming up with the recipe and design for our collaboration beer, we knew that we wanted community at the core of its creation. Also, of course, we wanted it to be easy-drinking and delicious on a hot summer evening supporting the Hearts.
Part 1: The Recipes
When we’re looking for a new beer to brew, we’ll pull from our deep bench of Pilot Beer ideas. This long, long list of employee-inspired beer ideas can come from anyone around the brewery, no matter their tenure or position. This beer started no differently.
First, though, we talked with the team over at the Hearts of Pine to see what they were looking for in a beer to enjoy during match day. What flavors, what color, what ABV (alcohol by volume). Where it ended up was something that was light, bright and refreshing, but also not lacking in flavor. Essentially, they were looking for a classic Pilsner-type lager.
So, from that conversation, we pulled four recipes from our Pilot Team’s list, all of which came at the idea of an easy-drinking lager in different ways.
And we could have stopped there, chosen, and moved on. But we wanted the selection process for this beer to involve both the Hearts of Pine community, and ours. So we brewed all four beer options on our 10-gallon pilot system, and then put out an invitation for members of the Hearts of Pine team, Dirigo Union (the supporters club of the Hearts), and our fans to join us for a tasting, and voting session. Basically, bringing together our community to help us decide which beer was best. We capped the event at 80 people, mainly because we didn’t have THAT much of each beer, and wanted to make sure everybody was able to sample a significant enough amount.
We put out the invite on a Wednesday afternoon. The event sold out in 20 minutes.
The tasting event was extremely serious (j/k it was a blast).
Part 2: Tasting Party
In early January, we held our tasting event in our Cellars space. The atmosphere was full of excitement, cheers, and Hearts of Pine chants. To reduce bias, we conducted the tastings blind, only telling the participants a number to identify each beer, so they could keep track of which beer they liked the most.
In the end, one beer did rise above the rest.
The winner was #851 (we gave each beer a random number, so as not to bias our samplers). It was 5.0%ABV lager with a bit of wheat in the grain bill—which adds body as well as some nice citrus notes—and also a light dry hopping to round out the beer’s flavor. That beer received the most positive feedback, both at the HoP tasting event and through internal tests with Allagash employees. So, cool to say, the decision was unanimous!
Members of Dirigo Union, the exemplary supporters club for Hearts of Pine, showed up in force.
Part 3: The Name and the Can
So, with the actual beer chosen, we needed a can to put it in. We knew that the Hearts of Pine colors and crest would have to be on there.
As for the name, normally that’s one of the hardest parts of creating a new beer. Think of a beer name, and search it in google, chances are there are already 4-5 beers carrying that exact name already. But Gabe Hoffman-Johnson, the founder of the Hearts of Pine, had an idea. “Kickabout” is a term used in soccer to either describe an informal game, or just a game of passing the soccer ball. And it’s a term that certainly hadn’t made its way into the beer world, as of yet.
It had such an easygoing ring to it that we latched onto it right away, and designed our beer around the name. The result is as you see below, Kickabout Lager.
*Trumpet noises*
Part 4: Where to Find Kickabout Lager
This very special collaboration beer will be available at Fitzpatrick Stadium for all Hearts of Pine games, and will also be available for enjoyment in the Allagash tasting room, on draft and in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans.
We hope this little rundown brought you into the cool story of this beer, and makes it taste that much better when you’re raising a can at the next Hearts match!
Thanks, as always, for following along!
