Friday Froth: Experimental Brewing at 12% Brewing Project in North Haven

Connecticut beer has been winning national awards, appearing at the top of global beer lists, and generally earning the respect our small state typically doesn't. This proliferation of props has mainly been the work of brewing talent grown local and organic enough to be overpriced at Whole Foods, but as the number of breweries has grown, so too has the work force. Fresh eyes and ideas are coming to the state, both from name brand breweries like Trillium and Treehouse putting down roots in Connecticut, and individual brewers coming here to advance their careers. Now, brewers from Oklahoma to Sweden can be found together under the same roof at the 12% Brewing Project in North Haven.

North (duh) of New Haven, and a little past Hamden on the Merritt, 12% is in your obligatory industrial area a few miles up the road from No Worries Brewing Company. Following the signs through warehouse parking lots on a wet and dreary winter's day, I walked inside the taproom to find a crisp white space with lots of very direct lighting softened slightly by blonde wood, leather couches, and a wall length padded bench. The exterior may be a wasteland but walking into this bright, almost Nordic space was invigorating by comparison, and got me in the mood to explore beer a bit.

The new venture is an extension of 12% Imports of Brooklyn. You've probably had something from their portfolio, which includes Stillwater, Evil Twin, Against The Grain, and a bunch of the Belgian ales which are really their reason for existing, including a favorite of mine, Gueuze Tilquin. The 12% Beer Project is an experiment into creating a sizeable contract brewery in Connecticut. Their tanks are full of beers from CT's own Fat Orange Cat (which deserves more of a presence in-state), Short Throw from Richmond, VA., gypsy brewer Nightmare, and beers from the 12% BP head brewer Zac Ross' label, Marlowe Artisanal Ales.
It was wall to wall busy with an Instagram meetup event the day of my visit, but I wrangled a few minutes with Alex Blank from 12%, who was running around giving everyone a little time like a groom on his wedding day. Alex lived in SoNo back when NEBCo sprang to life in the neighborhood, and remembers an early Belgian beer fest at the original space:

“I saw people dropping their glasses, no one was used to high-ABV Belgian ales. I feel like beer has aged in dog years since then, there's so much variety now.” Alex points to American Solera from Tulsa on tap. “Chase Healey is a guy who stared Prairie Ales, and when he left, he could only make a small volume of beer for a few years as part of a non-compete. Now that’s over and we have his beer coming out of tanks right here in North Haven.”

American Solera was named best new brewery of the year in 2016, and mostly specializes in oak aged ales. The first of their beers I had seems to be a 12% exclusive, called I Want To Talk About Strata IPA. It's a healthy 7.4% ABV hazy, with big mango/orange aroma of Citra and Strata hops. A medium head melted down over a hedgehog-spiky creamsicle of citric juicy flavor. Hazebro IPAs aren’t my favorite - everyone knows this - because they mostly tend to be interchangeable, and can go very wrong, very easily. I Want To Talk About Strata is an outlier. It's a rare hazy IPA which drives down the backroads of the map to crinkly folds of orchard covered hills unrutted by the coach bus tour groups disgorging forgettable yeast slurries. It’s a juice bomb IPA, yes, but tastes the way dragon fruit looks. This is just skill in action. Grade: A. Go try it.

With around 30 barrels of capacity, the brewhouse at 12% Beer Project can have traditional ales and lagers, mixed fermentation, and kettle sours all going on at the same time in seemingly half an acre of stainless steel. A full canning line stands beside, with high rise stacks of new aluminum cans and plastic wrapped kegs taking up only a fraction of the space ultimately available.

One of the main reasons I made the trip to North Haven was to check out house brewer Zac Ross' Marlowe-labeled beers.

Zac bounced around from Voodoo Brewery in his native Pennsylvania to Commonwealth Brewing in Virginia Beach, and was last at Kent Falls before taking charge of the system at 12%. Zac said the guys at Kent Falls used to keep my article from 2016 open to poke fun at the quotes from Barry Lebendz saying he would never make IPAs or have a tasting room. Like we were saying: a lot has changed.

To me, a brewery's house lager is the face it presents to the world, and it's only polite to look the brewer in the eye when you make your introduction. The House Lager at 12% is all fresh biscuits and honey on the nose over a rich sticky meringue of head. It's crisp and bitter in the old world style rather than an English malt depth charge, or anything dosed with American hop juice. This is a House Lager to make a German or Czech happy and thus, me too. I had three of them before I could convince myself to try anything else on the tap list, and I still want more, even as I write this post for you.

I was also able to try version 2 of the Marlowe Nagging Curiosity hoppy blonde. The aroma was all pine and lemon, and the beer itself was opaque milky yellow under a white, rocky head. "Blonde" is something you should be able to see as well as taste, in my opinion, but I'm open to most experimentation, and Bagging Curiosity is not an utter abandonment of the style as it retained noticeable malt under the  sharp, biting hop character with its halo of lemon-lime juice. I asked Zac about the choice to call this one a blonde as opposed to maybe a pale ale, and he said his thinking on the matter has more to do with the use of pilsner malt as a base to the beer than necessarily anything that comes after. I could figuratively see and literally taste his point. Lots of brewers talk about "balance" in beers but I’m really inclined to believe Zac’s commitment to the matter.

From the decidedly less than subtle end of the spectrum of beers available at 12% are those from Nightmare, a gypsy brewing project with death metal inspiration and names from the history of real life horror. I stood on the brewhouse floor while brewer Billy Powell and his impressive mohawk poured me a glass of Blood Eagle, a "Scandinavian-Style" sour ale brewed with [takes deep breath]: lingonberries, hawthorne berries, cloudberries, strawberries, plum, pear, and tart cherries. The kettle souring process produced a fairly mild and tart acidity, and the abundance of fruit and estery yeast made for an enjoyable, punchy (7.5%abv) beer much more approachable in character than the murderous viking label art would suggest.

All kinds of surprises are on tap at 12%. Go see for yourself.

12% Beer Project, 341 State St., North Haven; 12percentimports.com