Bailey Spaulding and her team at Jackalope Brewing Co. have been busy bunnies during their government-mandated downtime, despite the fact that they have been unable to open either of their taprooms yet. They’ve continued to brew, and kept the tanks filled with a regular rotation of their fantastic beers, relying on retail sales and brewery pickup to try to replace some of the sales volume lost from bars and their own taprooms.
Even in the face of these business headwinds, Jackalope still manages to take time to help others with a new release called Pangaea Proxima IPA, which will be used as a fundraiser for the Believe in Beer Fund, a fund set up by the Brewers Association and Bottleshare to help craft breweries affected by COVID-19.
Spaulding shares the story behind this juice IPA: “We first wrote the recipe as the official commemorative beer of HomebrewCon,” said Spaulding. The 2020 National Homebrewers Conference was slated to take place in Nashville in June, with Spaulding as the keynote speaker. Due to COVID-19, the conference is now going to be virtual, and while Spaulding will still be delivering her address, attendees won’t be in Nashville to drink the brew.
With the recipe already written and Brewers Supply Group and Lallemand committed to donating the ingredients, Jackalope acted quickly to pivot. “I reached out to the sponsors, and they were all enthusiastically on board to turn this brew into a fundraiser,” Spaulding explains. “Craft breweries are such an important part of their communities and are so immensely affected by this pandemic, we wanted to do what we could for our cohorts.”
Like all Jackalope beers, Pangaea Proxima has a mythical and mystical name, referencing a theorized future supercontinent. As such, the beer contains ingredients that span the globe, including New Zealand hops to give it a tropical juicy punch, and it is fermented with Norwegian Kveik yeast. Jackalope has affectionately dubbed the beer a “Polar IPA.” The beer became available on Friday, May 29, at the Jackalope taproom (currently open for to-go and delivery service only) and a limited number of retailers throughout Nashville. It’s a limited edition, so if want to try it, don’t dawdle!
