Remember Half Hours on Earth (HHOE)?
Kyle and Kristen were the closest thing to a comparable brewery Short Finger has ever had, both in size of operation (we are bigger than they were but.... close) and also in their use of beer as a creative outlet. They pushed the borders of styles and general perceptions of what beer can be, which is what we're aiming to do every day.
Anyway, that's not the point of this blog. The point is: I can't find them?! I have called, I have emailed, and I have texted with no luck. So we are releasing our collab with HHOE but ... they don't know about it and haven't tried it. A lot can change in 4 years.
Back in February 2019, we had Kyle and Kristen down to work on our collaboration beer. The resulting beer is Reducto, an 11.9% Barrel Aged Eis-Sour Grape Ale. The base of this beer is a golden sour primary fermented with Zinfandel juice. As primary fermentation was winding down, I waited until the coldest possible day forecasted, moved the beer from a stainless fermenter to a tote, and put it outside for 24 hours while it was -30C outside. The result was that we were able to freeze out just over 50% of the liquid volume. This process was stolen from a relatively unpopular beer, an Eisbock. It is not often done because it is honestly a complete pain in the ass to do, and to try to do it consistently would be wild. We actually lucked out with the temperature dropping so much, but I froze my ass off doing this and it was so cold the forklift barely started. I thought we were never getting the beer back inside.
After the freezing, we transferred the remaining beer directly into a second-use wine barrel. From there, it was tucked away in a corner for three and a half years. Unfortunately, in the time that I was waiting on this beer, Half Hours on Earth closed its doors. I had intermittent contact with Kyle after the closing but as Reducto came to fruition... I have not been able to pass along this simple message.
Kyle and Kristen,
Reducto is done (finally) - it tastes awesome! Please come by and drink some.
- Love Rob
So, if you see HHOE, please let them know that Reducto is waiting for them. In the meantime, come get some for yourselves to enjoy over the holiday season.
Cheers,
UPDATE -
We did manage to locate Half Hours on Earth, and they politely asked us to f*$k off, as they value their privacy. Unexpected turn of events – we thought it would be a fun quest, but it backfired a bit. Not everything turns to gold, and it's worth noting that HHOE was not at all rude about it.
On another note, we had a contest running for anyone who could find HHOE for us, promising them the only Magnum of Reducto. Surprisingly, Rob managed to track them down through Instagram, because it is very intrusive and awful (let's be honest, Instagram is a time-wasting, frustrating platform, deliberately designed to be challenging if you don't play by their rules and post all the time... but that's a sidebar).
Back to the story, we decided to turn a negative into a positive. We held a little raffle for the food bank in Waterloo, offering the Magnum of Reducto as the prize, and we ended up raising $680. That's pretty excellent in our books.