What this is
A sessionable hazy at 5.5%, brewed eight times between January 2022 and November 2025. Citra-led, with a 150 g whirlpool charge of a New Zealand hop behind it, and a grain bill that is 14% malted oats and 11% flaked wheat.
Modest for the style, deliberately. This is not a 7% double dry-hopped showpiece — it is a beer built to be drunk.
The recipe restarts at IV
Unusually, this lineage has a hard break in the middle. Brews I to III and IV to VIII share almost nothing but Citra.
I to III were Ale malt with wheat malt and flaked oats, and the yeast wandered: a West Coast ale strain plus wine yeast for the first, then French saison yeast for II and III. That last choice explains the numbers — both finished at 1.004 and 1.002 and came out at 6.8%, which is a hazy fermented like a saison. Whatever else it was, it was not this beer.
IV, in July 2023, arrived fully formed and the recipe has barely moved since. Munich 1.0, Big O’ed Oats 1.0, flaked wheat 0.75, Aurora 0.25, Verdant IPA, 7.0 kg of grist, mashed at 69°C. Five consecutive brews on that spec.
That makes this the opposite shape to a lineage that converges gradually. There was no narrowing. There was a search, then a decision, then repetition.
What still moves
Two slots, and only two.
The base malt. Pilsner at IV, Ale at V, then American Ale from VI onward. Three brews on American Ale now, so this looks settled.
The whirlpool hop. Cascade through IV, Taiheke at V, Moutere at VI, back to Taiheke for VII and VIII. Since Taiheke is New Zealand Cascade in all but name, most of that range is narrower than it looks, and Moutere at VI is the real outlier.
Everything else — the Citra schedule, the yeast, the mash temperature, the four supporting grains — has been fixed for two and a half years.
Brewing it
Mash high, at 69°C. That is deliberate and it is what gives a 5.5% beer enough body to carry 150 g of whirlpool hops without going thin.
The hop schedule is simpler than most hazy recipes: two small boil charges of Citra for a bittering spine, a single large whirlpool at 80°C, and one dry hop of 100 g Citra over five days. No dip hop, no double dry hop, no cryo.
Two packets of Verdant is a full pitch at this gravity and it matters — the strain’s low-to-medium attenuation is what leaves the beer at 1.013 rather than drying out.