Usually when we release neither/nor we all sit around drinking it nodding our heads. The last few releases of it have felt like some of the best work we've done here at the brewery. Sometimes in the off-season we talk about what beers are going to get made next year, and few of those winter I've said "why don't we make like 6 versions of neither/nor?" So for anyone who has that same feeling, this year we finally made two.

If you remember back to three-and-a-half years ago we released the first iteration of Neither/Nor, 2018 Neither Sight Nor Time. Since then we've made a few iterations simply titled Neither/Nor, which is what we always call it internally out of sheer laziness. The version we are releasing for this allocation has long been something I've wanted to try and we always internally call this version "red neither/nor" because while the other blends are made from pale fleshed/skinned fruit, this is made entirely from red plums and pluots. The color of the final beer, however, is closer to that Exoculo shade of orange, reminiscent of a persimmon (photo below). I was fully expecting that it would be pink, so when we made the final blend and transferred it off of the fruit I was a bit shocked that it was that kind of golden honey color instead of a shade of red/pink.

The beer itself was so good before dry hopping that we considered not making it a Neither/Nor and just releasing it as-is, so I hope that this one may fade really nicely. In the end we stuck to the plan and it was heavily dry hopped with a variety of hops, mostly New Zealand varietals which bring a big orange crush and lime character. I was calling it "astronaut orange juice" for a while, although probably more notable is the big apricot note hiding slightly behind the citrus. Mike said "It's like sticking your head in a bag of hops" when we first cracked one. I always love how the fruit itself blends seamlessly into the fruit character of the dry hops when we do these right, and this one is a really nice blend of complex and drinkable.

The beer deserves a pour that incorporates the dregs, as most of these do, and the body is very pillowy and soft. It is still VERY low acid given that it was aged longer than most of the neither/nor beers are, and like our other dry hopped beers we had to print the label before bottling so the ABV is an estimated based on a lab test of the beer and an adjustment we make for the abv increasing due to bottle conditioning. The single digit is our way or marking those estimated ABVs.