By: Naomi Kerchinsky
Troubled Monk is keeping summer rollin’ with a crisp pale ale. Made in collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops (YCH), and set to be featured in Alberta Beer Festivals 5th edition of Beerfest in a Box, this beer is the dream of the season you’ll want to keep your hands on, or else like Ian Tyson sings, “she will be gambled and gone like summer wages.”
| Summer Wages | |
|---|---|
| ABV | 6.50% |
| IBU | 31 |
| SRM | 3.7 |
Featured Single Farm Ingredients
This crisp pale ale features a single farm for each ingredient: YCH Ahtanum® and Loral® hops grown at Carpenter Ranches, and malt from Origin Malting. It pours a gorgeous golden dollar colour. Upon cracking a can, you’ll immediately be greeted by floral scents, accompanied by a light citrus. The Ahtanum® Hops in this beer lend to the notes of grapefruit and pepper that you will taste. Melon flavours also steer the palette while notes of cedar round out the beer’s profile. Summer Wages will transport you to those golden hours reminiscent of an afternoon after a long shift, when you’re having a beer to send off the day’s work.
Fun Fact: If you are wondering how to say Ahtanum® use the Sesame Street Muppet Show’s Mahna-Mahnam for inspiration.
One Step at a Time, Big Picture in Mind
Summer Wages was made in collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops. YCH is owned by 15 hop growers, sourcing from more than 50 different independent hop farms in the Pacific Northwest. YCH is a grower-owned organization that works from the ground up with a focus on the farmer and the hops. They walk alongside the growers, building tangible and meaningful connections with them that are as unique as the beloved hop varieties they cultivate. This ensures they keep the big picture in mind: hop growers’ voices are heard, borders between brewers and farmers remains transparent, and family hop farms have enough resources to deliver quality hops year after year. With a strong return to growers’ initiative, 76% of revenue generated by YCH has been returned to growers. And in the last 6 years, 400 million has been re-invested, allowing growers to make critical investments in people, land and infrastructure. Farming can be a gamble, but YCH manages the risk by focusing on best practices, quality management, and a fair and healthy Return-to-Grower policy to ensure that the hop farmers’ summer wages are not all gambled and gone.
The hops featured in this beer are from Carpenter Ranches, located in the Yakima Valley, which is now the largest hop-producing area of the world. Summer Wages boasts two varieties of Carpenter Ranches hops – Ahtanum® and Loral®. The Ahtanum® variety is named for the area where the Carpenter family started their farm in 1868. Six generations later, Carpenter Ranches prides itself on being a family-oriented farm that enjoys passing the torch to each generation as they grow into their role(s) on the ranch. As people say, “They focus on growing hops, cattle, apples, cherries, and kids. Lots of kids.”
What the Carpenters have figured out is something we all need to focus on: that time is the biggest gamble of all. And time spent well for the Carpenters means nurturing that which is built and not bought. Focusing on ingenuity and sustainability will ensure their generational legacy continues well into the future.
Time to use those summer wages, and what better way to celebrate than by turning that hard-earned money into time with friends near and far and grabbing an Alberta Beer Festivals, Beerfest in a Box (BFIAB). This awesome box of beer was created during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to continue bringing people together, over food and drink, even when regulations did not allow us to meet in person. BFIAB features eight incredible beers from eight incredible breweries. A QR code on each case links you to brewers discussing the beers so you can hear about each beer directly from the people who made it.
Summer Wages will be one of the eight beers featured in the 5th edition of BFIAB to be released on September 1st. Available online or at Sobeys and Safeway liquor store locations. This will be sure to keep summer rollin’ well into the fall.
Enjoy the Golden Summer Hours
You can look in all the beer parlors all down Main Street, but the dream of the season is getting brewed at Troubled Monk! Made in collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops, Summer Wages is a pale ale for the end of a long day on the job. Whether you’re working hard or hardly working, you’ve earned your summer wages.
