Big Ed’s Goes Red

Big Ed’s Hopyard Ale goes on tap this afternoon at Fox River Brewing in Oshkosh. This marks the third year in a row that Fox River has released a wet-hop beer made with hops grown locally by Steve Sobojinski in the Town of Nekimi.

Steve Sobojinski tending to his hop yard.

This year, they managed to pull in more than 60 pounds of hops from that yard. It all went into Big Ed’s. Among those hops, which included Columbus, Cascade, Sterling, and Nugget; is a Winnebago County varietal grown from rootstock transplanted from the site of Silas Allen’s 1850s hop yard in the town of Allenville (there’s more about all that HERE).

Big Ed’s 2019 will be different from that of previous batches. Fox River’s new brewmaster, Andrew Roth, has changed up the recipe making it a red ale. Roth said he thinks the malt notes of a red ale will provide a better backdrop for the beer's hop flavor.

Want to dive deeper? If you live in Oshkosh, check out the article I wrote for the Oshkosh Herald that should have hit your mailbox yesterday. It’s all about the wet-hop beers made this year from locally grown hops. If you’re outside of the paper's delivery area, you can check that out HERE.