Rocks Brewing

By Scotty Morgan

I was lucky enough to brew Corriolis DIPA with Chris Anderson at Coachella Brewing Co in between checking out our new brew house – incidentally the very first collaboration brew for Rocks Brewing Co.

Coachella is made famous for its music festival, its stark desert environment, and now its first class brewery. Chris makes stunning beers. As a trained chef he has a great grasp on flavours, particularly with the use of spices, herbs and fruits – all obtained locally.

Coachella Valley Brewing Co has the same brew house we have, an IDD 20 hectolitre Mash Filter system. Chris is the sort of brewer that pushes things to the limits. Jeff the brewery supplier said not to go over 1200 pounds (approximately 600 kilograms) of malt, so he went with 1350 pounds. Wet hops were not recommended, so we went with them, of course.

The brewery exceeded both Chris and my expectations – we got more extract than anticipated. In non-brewer speak that is more sugar from the grain. We got 95% extract when we expected 93%. In a standard brewery we would get approximately 75% with all that malt – so the result was pretty darn good.

We chucked in 40 pounds (approximately 20 kilograms) of wet hops from Washington State. The hops were picked the night before the brew and flown in, on their own seat, to Coachella. The aroma of the hops was amazing, fresh and zingy. That smell was made all the more intense when we put them into the hop back and ran the hot wort through them.

At the end of the day we ended up with a huge beer. It will ferment out to about 10.0% ABV and some will be barrel-aged. This brew is one of many that Chris and I plan to do, with an expected trip back to the US next April, so we look forward to tasting the beer and making a few more. Chris is also working on a trip down to Sydney for a few weeks late next year too… Looks like we have plenty of years of huge beers ahead of us.