New Release: Pump the Caribbean Hazy IPA

Pump The Caribbean Hazy IPA is the latest addition to the sapling series developed at the Stanley Park brewpub. We caught up with brewmaster Thom Riley to tell us about this tropical treat.

Pump The Caribbean is the latest addition in the sapling series, what can people expect?

I love bringing people who wouldn’t traditionally drink beer and find ways for them to enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of how we can take classic cocktails to translate it to beer. You think about it, when cocktails are being created, you choose specific spirits or flavours together to get a specific feeling, we look to our ingredients as to how we can construct that.

The cool thing about Pump The Caribbean is that we identified a gap in flavour with the hop variety with coconut and some pineapple so how do we pump up the pineapple to match the coconut and I was super happy with how it turned out.

I love working with passion fruit as a flavour. There are times where you work with fruit in a beer, you take away the sugar and it doesn’t hold a lot of flavour in the end product, you then have to fill that gap but passion fruit translates really well into a beer.

What ingredients are used and how did you approach bringing the Caribbean to British Columbia?

Sabro hops are a really interesting hop variety as it’s basically piña colada in a hop. It’s exciting when hops have a literal translation into the beer and we’ve seen some piña colada beers come from that but wanted to take it to another level, so we thought to add pineapple puree in there to pump up the tropical nature.

I found that Sabro tends to be a little more on the coconut side and not quite have enough of that pineapple flavour so we added mosaic, commit and crystal. I found that commit hops have a pineapple forward note and mosaic hops have a mango/pineapple component to them and crystal hops add citrus to cut through it. We added the pineapple puree during fermentation keeping the top end notes of pineapple and not so much of the sweetness.

We had Pump The Tropix in 2020, now Pump The Caribbean - how did this sapling series get its name?

It was not originally intended to be a series after Pump The Tropix Hazy IPA but we wanted to see where else we could take it with the Caribbean element. Our brewers were talking about the flavour profiles that we wanted to get out of beer and we were asking “how can we pump this up?” to make them bolder with flavour notes. The series grew from this idea.

How did this beer come to be from the brewpub to its own release?

Since we opened the brewpub, it has become our hub of innovation where all of the teams can sit down and have a discussion. We experiment with recipes and flavours that we like and can get feedback from people trying our beers, which allows us to continuously experiment.

Do you have a favourite spot in British Columbia where this should be enjoyed?

It’s a great summer beer and at a time where travel is limited, this is great for a patio, balcony or garden. We wanted to bring the Caribbean to you and that feeling of being on vacation to your glass.

Where can I order Pump The Caribbean?

Pump The Caribbean is available at select stores around British Columbia. You can also order from our brewstore with free local beer delivery in Vancouver.