HANSON Brothers Beer Co.’s Taylor and Isaac Hanson drink there Pink Moonlight Hazy IPA with Peach.
The HANSON Brothers Beer Co. has a new beer on the market and it is this week’s beer of the week. Pink Moonlight Hazy IPA with Peach hit the Tulsa market last Friday with a very limited release.
The McNellie’s Group’s Bishop Quigley, 1810 S. Cincinnati Ave., will host the HANSON Brothers Beer Co. for the release of Pink Moonlight at 7 p.m., on June 28. The beer also will be available in Illinois during this first batch.
The HANSON Brothers Beer Co. has teamed up with DESTHIL Brewery of Normal, Illinois, to produce Pink Moonlight. DESTHIL will also brew their MMMhops Pale Ale.
The Hanson brothers met DESTHIL’s owner Matt Potts during the Great American Beer Festival in Denver a few years ago. Like the Hansons, he is also a musician.
HANSON Brothers Beer needed a brewery to distribute across the United States and keep up with the supply that comes with that distribution. DESTHIL Brewery can do both.
“So this beer is the beginning of a kind of new partnership with those guys,” Taylor Hanson says. “This particular design is a recipe that’s a collaboration. It’s a hazy IPA recipe with a foundation of two-row grain and a little flaked wheat in there to give it the haziness and Mosaic hops. So you have a hoppy beer, but not overwhelmingly hoppy — it’s a nice, fresh sort of bitterness and then a little bit of peach. It kind of takes that edge off. It is a 7% (ABV) beer, so it definitely does its job.”
The HANSON brothers tour across the globe and would like their beers available in the states where they perform.
“When you drink this beer, it really gives you all the flavor, all the fruitiness, all the hops and nothing else you don’t want,” Taylor says. “It’s strong, it’s bitter. This is definitely a very fresh, very approachable recipe. It’s not even overwhelmingly hoppy, but it’s incredibly delicious.
“The first time that we premiered a version of this recipe was actually at a Hop Jam Beer Festival, except at that time it was a milkshake IPA. It had lactose, so we decided that while that was a good beer, we felt like it was a little bit of a niche kind of limited-release version and that maybe we could find something that was a little bit more broadly appealing and pull out some of that lactose and make it less sweet,” Isaac Hanson says. “We really loved the kind of foundation of the beer. We loved the peach and the IPA combo, and we are really excited that it’s coming out.”
Pink Moonlight will be a limited release in June, and a larger release is planned for a dozen states, which include New York and Florida for MMMhops Pale Ale and Pink Moonlight in the fall.
“We want Tulsa fans to know to come out on the 28th and then look for the beer in your bars and your retailers. And if you can’t find it, then tell people you want it so we can bring it back. This beer is a part of our sort of culture of beer and music. The record we put out 20 years ago had a song called Penny and Me on it,” Taylor says.
That song, “Penny and Me,” is part of the inspiration of beer’s name, he adds.
“There’s a lyric that says ‘Making It By Under Pink Moonlight,’” Isaac says.
Hop Jam was a music and beer festival the group hosted for several years. It brought breweries and musicians from across the country to Tulsa. The brothers don’t have immediate plans to bring the festival back, but are imagining it returning in the future.
HANSON will perform two Christmas shows at Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom on Dec. 13 and 14.
