{"id":21273,"date":"2018-10-17T10:23:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T17:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=21273"},"modified":"2018-10-29T09:48:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T16:48:28","slug":"brewed-with-passion-horus-aged-ales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2018\/10\/17\/brewed-with-passion-horus-aged-ales\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewed with Passion: Horus Aged Ales"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Horus Aged Ales<\/a> has grown in popularity faster than maybe any other brewery in San Diego County. The first four bottle sales were over in a matter of seconds, and owner Kyle Harrop has poured his beer at some of the most exclusive beer festivals across the world; at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Copenhagen, he served alongside established San Diego breweries AleSmith, Bagby, Pure Project, and Modern Times.<\/p>\n

From a social media perspective, he has more than 42,000 Instagram followers, with engagement levels similar to The Lost Abbey and Pizza Port. \u201cI think it\u2019s flattering on one side of the spectrum, and it\u2019s terrifying on the other,\u201d Harrop says.<\/p>\n

San Diegan brewers have taken notice. \u201cKyle\u2019s experimentation with different types of barrels for his mixed fermentation beers goes to places that I would never have thought of,\u201d says Winslow Sawyer of Pure Project, whose barrel-aged sour took bronze at the Great American Beer Festival in 2016. \u201cHe creates amazingly nuanced and layered beers with great variations. Regarding his Stygian beers, I would describe them as exemplary specimens of the pastry stout style.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Anthony Tallman of Burgeon Brewing, \u201cThe network of brewers and breweries that Kyle has at his disposal for tips, tricks, information, ingredient sourcing, et cetera is pretty remarkable. He\u2019s done more collaborations than anyone or brewery I know of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the popularity, Horus Aged Ales is a one-man show. Harrop runs it all by himself. There is no cellarman, no assistant brewer, no social media guru…when people come to claim their bottles, Harrop is the one handing them out. He responds to social media posts personally. He pours the beers at the festivals. And he does all of this while working a full-time job in aerospace, and raising his two-year-old daughter alongside his wife Laurel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of the fact that this is my own, and I want to keep it that way,\u201d says Harrop.<\/p>\n

Harrop’s headquarters are in Oceanside, where a light industrial unit contains dozens of barrels filled with beer. What you won\u2019t find, however, is a major brewing system or tasting room. To brew, he goes off-site, renting time on other systems around town \u2013 Burgeon and Groundswell for example. Harrop does the brewing himself, then totes it back to Oceanside where it\u2019s conditioned and aged before bottling. \u201cWith the small amount of beer I am able to produce, I fear that I would run out of beer within a few weeks if I were to build out a tap room. Nevertheless, I do look forward to having a tap room someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaborations<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\nAt the beginning of 2018, Harrop had yet to sell a single beer under the Horus label. He had, however, brewed 55 collaborations, and was rapidly accumulating connections and exposure. Today, he\u2019s close to 100 collaborations in more than 20 states, and four countries. \u201cI think learning was the number one thing I got out of it…some of the collaboration beers challenged the way I would have brewed that style in the past \u2013 stouts being one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

One example is Mount Stoutmore, a four-way collaboration alongside J. Wakefield, Bottle Logic, and Angry Chair, some of the country\u2019s most acclaimed stout producers. \u201cOur recipes couldn\u2019t be any more different!\u00a0 Like, none of them are even remotely similar in any way, down to water profile, grain choice, boil time…it was across-the-map different. I think all four of us came out of that with a different mindset, and I think all four of our beers have gotten better since that one. Mine sure have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides developing recipes, these partnerships also helped Harrop learn how to brew his beers on a commercial system. \u201cI felt quite scared when I first got onto a big system. Brewing with Derek [Gallanosa] when he was still at Abnormal, that was my second collaboration and it was a ten barrel; it\u2019s just a lot different than your mash tun at home. There\u2019s a lot of money on the line, there\u2019s a lot of ingredients, there\u2019s just a lot of unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wake Fest 2018<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\nIn February, when Harrop showed up to the 2018 Wake Fest Invitational (the anniversary party for J. Wakefield Brewery in Miami), he was running late. It was his first major festival pouring his own beer, and he didn\u2019t know what to expect. \u201cI showed up to the festival, maybe two minutes to go before VIP started. I was pouring next to Hoof Hearted, Holy Mountain, and Hudson Valley, and there was a line forming. I figured it was probably Holy Mountain\u2026I\u2019m a huge Holy Mountain fan and thought, that\u2019s cool. As I got behind the booth, I slowly realized it was for my beer.\u201d\u00a0 Buoyed by a local article previewing his Great Maple Imperial Stout, he blew through the keg before VIP was over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expected to be the guy who had a lot of beer at the end of the day, and I ran out of both beers in the first hour and a half, of a six-hour festival. One of many lessons learned this year was to bring more beer next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three days later, Harrop\u2019s first bottle release went on sale. Oceanside\u2019s Eleven, a blend of 11 different strong ales aged in Pappy Van Winkle barrels, sold out in two seconds.<\/p>\n

Goshawk\u2019s Grasp<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n\u201cI set out to do something innovative each and every time I make a beer, and that does not usually come cheap. I just don\u2019t really sacrifice ingredients because of the cost. Some people appreciate that, others might be resistant to it.\u201d Harrop has become known for using rare, exotic, and costly ingredients and barrels. With Goshawk\u2019s Grasp, he used the most expensive Geisha coffee in the world. \u201cAfter reading several threads and forums online about how that coffee does not belong in any beer because of how delicate and floral it is, I took that as a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added thousands of dollars\u2019 worth of hazelnuts and boiled off more than half the original wort in the kettle. In the end, he had to charge a price that is comparable to a bottle of barrel-aged beer in order to not lose money. Goshawk\u2019s Grasp went on sale in April and crashed the Brown Paper Tickets website due to the extraordinarily high volume of traffic.<\/p>\n

The Convocation<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\nIn May, Harrop poured his beer among the best brewers in the world at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Copenhagen. Two days later, he caused a massive line at the Modern Times Festival of Funk by announcing pours of Goshawk\u2019s Grasp via Instagram.<\/p>\n

In June, Harrop launched his beer club, The Convocation, comprised of two hundred memberships. Along with first dibs on bottle releases, members receive sour ales bottled exclusively for the club, like the beer Not Yanny. \u201cI put real mint into the beer; it is probably one of the hardest ingredients to work with. I took a single barrel of a Belgian-style sour ale that was aging the entire time in an expensive Del Maguey Mezcal barrel, named after my wife Laurel, and added lime and mint from my own backyard. I wanted to create something that would challenge somebody\u2019s palate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Harrop serving at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brewing with Passion<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\nDespite this success, Harrop maintains his business is not lucrative \u2013 \u201cnot at all\u201d \u2013 mainly because of the small scale. \u201cAll along, the sour stuff would barely pay the rent. The pastry stouts are basically allowing me to keep brewing the barrel aged beer. I think keeping it small in this business model is a huge factor, but I have no choice with my current lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than anything, Horus Aged Ales is an intensely personal passion project.
\nHarrop\u2019s father, Bob, is a falconer \u2013 hence the bird-themed names and label artwork. \u201cI saw a lot of goshawks growing up. My dad had one I will never forget named Mocha, and I also saw them camping out at June Lake and Mammoth.\u201d The Horus logo design was a wedding gift from his wife. The label is a falcon\u2019s head atop his own, a re-envisioning of the Egyptian god Horus.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife pushed me one thousand percent\u2026then this health scare,\u201d he says, pointing to a scar on his throat. Two and a half years ago, during a routine physical, his doctor ordered a CT scan. With his young daughter at home, Harrop had half a dozen lumps surgically removed from the base of his neck. The lumps turned out to be benign. \u201cI realized life can be really short and I wanted to pursue the thing I was so passionate about: beer.\u201d
\n<\/strong>
\n\u201cA lot of people put me into this hype category \u2013 and I hate hype, I don\u2019t want that, I just want to keep making the best beer possible and let the beer speak for itself. There\u2019s nothing cooler for me than when there\u2019s a guy at a bar or a festival who\u2019s never had a beer like this, and you see their reaction, and you talk about it…It\u2019s the community that it brings, the experiences, the people you surround yourself with. Brewing beer is just something I\u2019m incredibly passionate about. There\u2019s so much ground that hasn\u2019t been carved out yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horus Aged Ales has grown in popularity faster than maybe any other brewery in San Diego County. The first four bottle sales were over in a matter of seconds, and owner Kyle Harrop has poured his beer at some of the most exclusive beer festivals across the world; at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Copenhagen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":21275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beer-news","8":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/39016_1536212656096.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-5x7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21274,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273\/revisions\/21274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}