Call to Arms Collaborates with Westbound & Down on Only Cans NZ IPA

Call to Arms Brewing (CtA) is no stranger to ridiculous beer names. From Janet Reno’s Dance Party Hazy IPA, to Oats and Hose Oatmeal IPA, their lineup of pop-culture-inspired brands bring levity and fun to thoughtfully crafted, innovative beers.

Continuing that tradition of playful beer names, CtA’s newest release, Only Cans, a Hazy New Zealand Double IPA brewed in collaboration with their friends at Westbound & Down, parodies the popular creator site that has taken the internet by storm.

This week’s debut of Only Cans coincidentally releases just a month after Westbound & Down earned a silver medal in the English IPA or New Zealand IPA category at the 2022 Great American Beer Festival. However, despite their collaborating partner’s recent accolades, Only Cans was in the works for some time.

“Honestly we had been planning on this beer since before GABF,” explained Chris Bell, co-founder of Call to Arms Brewing. “Jake (Gardner, head brewer of Westbound & Down) came by the brewery to talk through beer ideas while we were drinking each other’s NZ IPA’s and said why don’t we do a double? In the end, he liked that we had used thiolized yeast on ours and so we ran with that and used the Tropics Strain from Berkeley.

The use of thiolized yeast has been a recent innovation in brewing, which has been used to accentuate and draw out greater fruit-forward flavor profiles in beer. This compound helped to further enhance the profile of Chinook, Centennial, dry hopped with Nelson, Riwaka and Citra hops used in the beer.

“We knew the thiolized yeast was going to bring a ton of tropical fruit notes, including mango, guava, melon, pear, and stonefruit,” said Bell. “We wanted to brew a more dynamic IPA, though, and didn’t want to just harp on those notes so we dry hopped the beer with Citra & Nelson Sauvin, which brings notes of dank & citrus.

“This is a New Zealand IPA with hop aromas of, well name any fruit and it’s in there,” said Gardner.

Only Cans is now available in 16oz cans from both the Call to Arms Brewing and Westbound & Down Brewing tasting rooms and through distribution across the Front Range.

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