Name: Really Much
Brand: The Establishment Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

The whole-leaf Cascade in The Establishment Brewing Company's newest pale ale reached Calgary the hard way. The brewery says the hops came from the same lot that Sierra Nevada buys. It also says Blake, who sings and plays guitar in the band Really Much, hauled them back from the Pacific Northwest himself.

That band is also the beer. Really Much is a 5.0% Wild Pale Ale and, by the brewery's account, its first collaboration with a band. That makes for an odd little inversion: Establishment has spent close to eight years naming its beers after songs. This time the name comes off the marquee instead. Really Much is the brewery's house band, described as power pop and garage rock.

Whole-leaf hops are the older format, and they have largely given way to pellets. Pellets are denser, more stable, and far easier to handle in a modern brewhouse. Cascade is the variety American craft pale ale was effectively built on: grapefruit, a little pine, and a floral note that tends to sit underneath the citrus. Setting that over a wild fermentation is the part worth noticing. The beer lands in Establishment's Wild Things line - can number 027 - the series where the brewery's wild-fermented beers go. The taproom itself is ringed with barrels holding beers that the brewery says take anywhere from three months to three years to mature.

Establishment describes the result as a modernized wild pale ale with juicy orange, citrus, and floral notes, kicked up with a hint of pepper. It calls the beer mildly tart and, in its own words, supremely crushable. Its listed notes are mandarin orange fruit cups, grapefruit zest, and marigolds.

The recipe has a stated ancestor. Establishment says it drew inspiration from Random Rules, an old-school pale ale it brewed with Tailgunner in 2025. It built this one out from there.

The brewery is selling cans through its online shop. The release show is Saturday, August 29 at the taproom on 1 Street SE in Calgary, with Really Much joined by Sparkle Blood and Soft Pet. Doors at 7pm, first band at 7:30, ten dollars at the door.

Editor’s Take

Tasting notes are normally written in the language of the greengrocer: fresh mandarin, ripe stone fruit, zest of something. Establishment has gone with mandarin orange fruit cups, which is not the fruit at all but the little sealed tub of segments sitting in their own syrup, and anyone who was ever eight years old knows instantly and precisely what that means. It is a genuinely different flavor from a mandarin, and they are right to make the distinction.

Then there is the Cascade. Whole leaf, from the same lot Sierra Nevada buys, carried north from the Pacific Northwest by a guitarist - which is, technically, a supply chain. Cascade is the hop that taught this continent what a pale ale smells like, and running it over a mildly tart wild base sounds like a stunt right up until you remember that grapefruit and acidity have been on good terms for a very long time. Note the marigolds on the list, too. There is a floral streak in Cascade that usually gets buried under all that citrus, and a lean, faintly sour beer is exactly where it finally gets heard.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Really Much Is Named After the Band, and the Hops Rode Home by Hand

Establishment has spent eight years naming beers after songs. Its first band collaboration is named after the band instead, and it is hopped with whole-leaf Cascade that the singer drove home from the Pacific Northwest himself.

Source & Editorial