Written by Jon Morse, Director of Production
This year marks the fifth anniversary of our former employee Herb Lindveit’s passing. Jack had the idea of doing something unique for it. Not knowing that Herb had worked on a malt liquor recipe for a while at Lowell Beer Works. To this day one of my favorite names of a beer, Mustang Thunder! I reached out to Rich Ferrell who worked with Herb at LBW to see if he remembered the recipe.
The story behind Mustang Thunder As told by Rich Ferrell…
Herb and I riffed on that silly recipe together for a while. The general idea was to not make a craft malt liquor but actually to try to make some of the same corner-cutting choices that might result in an honest malt liquor profile. It still tasted pretty good, but here’s what I remember about it:
- 60% 6-Row,40% dextrose was the grist
- 8% ABV
- We fermented it FAST and WARM. I recall us letting it get into the 70s and it fermenting out very quickly. Pretty sure the lager yeast was 34/70 though so we used good yeast. We did not lager it for long, only a week I think.
- BU target was sub-10, I think around 8. We used a box of Cluster that Herb insisted on leaving out of the walk-in for several days to “make them crappier”.
- Herb also threw a dozen donuts from Top Donut in Lowell into the mash tun to “make it LESS healthy”. Obviously, we spent many a shifty coming up with ever dumber ideas for this.
That’s probably all you need to know. It actually tasted pretty decent. It obviously fermented out pretty dry. I can’t think in attenuation anymore, but RDF had to be high 70s. We wanted to charge $2 a pint for it, but Joe S insisted on it being our “anniversary beer” in Lowell so it was like a $9 pint. When it didn’t sell quickly we split it off into a Blueberry WONF dosed version and a Watermelon WONF dosed version that were called “Ripped Blue Jeans” and “Red Bandana” respectively. They got the “proper garnish”. Those sold much better.
If you want to know a little more about Herb, please listen to the podcast that Jack, Jeremy Cross (Quality Manager), and I did in January of 2021. We got to share some of our favorite stories of Herb.
Mustang Thunder is now available in package and on draft in our Beer Hall, pick yours up before it’s gone!
