Because of its association with chocolate desserts, mint has long been a natural ally in stouts and porters. But there are also some hop varieties that share characteristics with the cooling herb, and that’s what got Jeremiah Zimmer of Chicago’s Hop Butcher for the World thinking about brewing a mint IPA.
The brewery had experimented with mint, using extract, in a pistachio milk stout but was unhappy with the “artificial” taste. “I just thought we could do better,” Zimmer says. It wasn’t until a collaboration with Arcane Distilling (Brooklyn, New York) and a taste of its fernet (an Italian type of amaro, a bitter, aromatic spirit) that Zimmer started thinking about mint again.
It just so happened that the collaboration happened around St. Patrick’s Day and that a certain global fast-food chain had released a seasonal green-tinted milkshake. A milkshake IPA made sense, and Zimmer loaded it up with Calypso, Northern Brewer, and Fuggles, all which have minty characteristics. But he also needed the real thing, so a trip to the local supermarket led him to the tea aisle where he loaded up on every kind of mint available.