Dashawn Agbonze, brewer and past recipient of the Michael Jackson Foundation scholarship award, shares this recipe for a West Coast–style IPA meant to raise funds and awareness for the foundation. Breakside in Portland, Oregon, recently brewed it in collaboration with Agbonze, and the beer is now available at Breakside’s taprooms and at select accounts in Oregon.
Founded in 2020 by Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver and named for the influential beer and whiskey writer, the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling aims to support technical education and career opportunities for people of color in those industries.
Breakside brewmaster Ben Edmunds explains how they developed the recipe: “The fun in making this beer was using Michael Jackson’s own descriptions of early craft IPAs,” he says, “and trying to reconstruct something along those lines that also matches today’s sensibilities. Technique-wise, we landed in a place that is pretty familiar to today’s brewers, but the flavor profile scratches the itch for something of the late ’90s or early ’00s.”
He adds: “I was really taken by Jackson’s descriptions of those early IPAs. They’re so evocative: ‘Long, oily, hop flavors, a cedary dry finish.’ ‘An oily palate with suggestions of orange, peach sorbet, and a rush of intense, woody-minty-cedar bitterness in the finish.’ ‘Building to an intense finish as dry as a martini.’ It really is fair to say that we used his words as the creative brief for this beer.”
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.051 (12.6°P)
FG: 1.007 (1.8°P)
IBUs: 49
ABV: 5.8%