Talking with Chris at VIB about Flying Bomber

I was a little too quick with my posting about VIB's new release, The Flying Bomber. Chris, on of the brewers at VIB, never had a chance to talk about it. Here is what Chris had to say about the white IPA:

The W.I.P.A. was a fun challenge for me, in that they asked me to brew a style I'd never tried before. I could guess by the name that it should be a hybrid of Witbeer and IPA styles, but as for which elements of each should show up in the finished beer... well, that's where the fun came in.

For the malt, I basically took a witbeer composition, and increased the total malt bill to bring things up to IPA strength.  As you can tell, the bittering hops (Galena) are definitely from the IPA side.  This beer has far more hops per hectoliter than have ever been put into any beer that VIB has made!  Of course, I used our newly acquired Weihenstephan yeast, and this is where things really got interesting.  I knew that this yeast can impart a big fruity nose, and I knew I wanted big hop aroma,  but how the two would work together was a bit of a gamble.  In my opinion, it paid off BIG TIME!  The two seem to take turns -- tropical fruitiness when first poured, but as the beer warms up, the Cascade hops really start to come through.