I’ve heard many stories of breweries and beer professionals coming together to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy, and I’ve always found beer people to be generally awesome people, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that Brewery Ommegang was lending a hand to a brewery in need.
After Sandy struck in early November, Ommegang put out a notice to breweries affected by the hurricane, offering to help any way they could. “We, fortunately, escaped the worst of the storm,” says brewer Phil Leinhart.
Other breweries weren’t so lucky, including Barrier Brewing Company in Oceanside, New York, which suffered massive damage and is now closed for repairs. Leinhart explains, “Evan Klein, from Barrier, got in touch with Simon Thorpe, our CEO, and it was decided that we would do a collaboration brew of one of their beers. [It’s] basically their formula brewed here with our yeast strain.”
The collaboration was brewed last week and is currently finishing fermentation and will be kegged next week. Phil describes it as a “very hoppy” Belgian Pale Ale/IPA dubbed “Barrier Relief.”