Sapwood Shipping and New Release of a Japanese Version of The New IPA!

I thought I would put together a quick post to let people know about a few updates in my world including a new shipping club with Sapwood of mix-fermentation beers and the release (paperback and e-book) of The New IPA in Japanese!

Sapwood Shipping Club

If you live outside Maryland and have been curious to try some of the beers from Mike and myself at Sapwood, we just launched a shipping club administered by Tavour that will ship to 34 states! The club will focus on our mix-fermentation bottles, but if you are interested in trying some of our “clean” canned beers, Tavour also takes periodic pallets from us that will show up for their single-can sale options which are separate from the Sapwood Club! These can include anything from IPAs, DIPAs, pale ales, Smüzí fruited sours, imperial stouts, and lagers!

How the shipping club works:

Two to three times a year, Tavour will ship a box to your home that contains six bottles of six different 500 ml mix-fermentation bottles. Each box will cost $146 which includes shipping, but you can cancel at any time. There is a limited number of spots available for the club, but a waiting list will be created after it’s it’s full! 

First Beer Shipment Box Includes:

Jammiest Bit: Our homage to Kriek and Framboise, a barrel-aged sour on loads of sour pie cherries and red raspberries. Fruity, funky, tart etc.

Barrels of Rings: Our pale ale base, mixed-fermented in wine barrels and then dry hopped right before bottling. Citrusy-funky with restrained acidity. This one is a personal favorite of mine!

Botanicia: A blend of pale sours aged in gin barrels that we then infused with dried limes and quinine. A weird play on a gin-and-tonic… but with a lot more acidity and funk!

Elliptical Orbit 2023: A continuation of our annual dark sour. For this one he roasted Geisha coffee beans and we infused the barrel-aged dark sour with Geisha cascara (dried coffee cherries).

Fruit of Many Uses: We sequentially racked the same barrel-aged tart/funky base onto second-use Chardonnay wine grapes, cherries, raspberries, and white nectarines. All of the fruit was whole/local.

Shipping available to: WA, CA, OR, NM, NV, CO, MN, NY, DC, CT, NE, MA, FL, PA, NH, NJ, ID, TX, KS, IN, WI, MO, IA, IL, MI, ND, VA, RI, NC, SC, MD, LA, GA, TN

If you don’t already follow Mike’s blog (The Mad Fermentationist), you should because he’s planning on writing up each beer included in the club so you can follow along on the recipe, process, and what we thought of the results (and what to potentially improve). Mike’s back to blogging! 

Sign up for the Shipping Club Here! 

The New IPA in Japanese

I continue to be amazed at the interest in The New IPA around the world and in the U.S. four years after its release. In English copies, it’s sold well over 20,000 copies to date, about 19,950 copies more than I was anticipating! In addition to the English version, the book is now available in Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and as of this month, Japanese!

For the latest Japanese version, I have Kiyoshi Takoi, Ph.D., to thank! Kiyoshi’s official title is Senior Research Brewer Product & Technology Innovation Department SAPPORO BREWERIES LTD. However, you may recognize his name from his amazing work in the beer literature world. I reached out to Kiyoshi when researching for The New IPA back in 2017 and 2018 to make sure I understood his work correctly and to ask follow-up questions on how brewers could practically use some of the results from his papers. To get an idea of how much Kiyoshi has contributed to the beer knowledge world, a quick search of his name on Research Gate shows results for 74 published papers with his name as an author!

Kiyoshi reached out about a year ago to see if he could translate the book and include a new Chapter from a Survivable blog post; my answer was obviously, of course!! Those in Japan can purchase the book from Amazon here.