MashCraft Brewing has been making beer for Indianapolis, IN since 2014, and in that time its three taprooms have woven themselves into the fabric of their communities. Head brewer and owner Andrew Castner’s mantra is “consistently, great variety” – he and his brewers keep the faucets at each location flowing with a range of rotating seasonals.

Everybody needs a flagship, though, and one of MashCraft’s always-on house beers is their IPA, a 6.4% abv, 70 IBU American-style hop showcase brewed with barley and wheat malts. That’s why it was a big deal when Andrew and team decided to replace a proprietary hop variety in their IPA hop bill with RahrBSG’s HS Sitiva®.

It all started with a conversation: “In discussing hop contracts with John (Carroll, RahrBSG Technical Sales Manager),” Andrew recalls, “he recommended Sitiva as a cost-friendly and accessible substitute.”

MashCraft IPA is described as featuring “big citrus character,” a quality the HS Sitiva blend can be relied on to bring to a party – alongside ripe peach, floral, and tropical fruit aromatics. Nose appeal in a rub-and-sniff test is all well and good, but will it hop?

“The stakes were high,” Andrew admits, “because MashCraft IPA is our number one beer. We brought in some samples and did side-by-side trials of the IPA recipe with each hop, and the beers were nearly identical.”

MashCraft switched over to HS Sitiva at production volumes, incorporating it in the whirlpool and two separate dry hop additions. Andrew describes the beer as “better than it’s ever been.”

“I’d recommend Sitiva for anyone looking to maintain flavor in a hop-heavy style while helping your bottom line.”

If your portfolio includes a hop bomb and you’d also like to see how HS Sitiva (or another of our exclusive Hop Solutions blends) could impact its sensory profile as well as its bottom-line profile, please get in touch with RahrBSG!