Name: Walking Distance
Brand: Gate City Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

The name is the most literal thing about this beer. Gate City Brewing Company and Variant Brewing both sit in historic downtown Roswell, Georgia, a few blocks apart - Gate City's taproom at 43 Magnolia Street, Variant at 66 Norcross Street. The two have brewed a collaboration together and called it Walking Distance.

It is a Double New England IPA at 8 percent ABV, hopped with Mosaic, Citra and Idaho 7 in Cryo form. Gate City describes fresh pineapple, juicy citrus and big tropical fruit, wrapped in a smooth, pillowy body with a light resinous finish.

The Idaho 7 is doing the specific work in that description. It is one of the few American aroma hops that delivers tropical fruit and a resinous, piney edge at once, and pineapple is among the notes it is best known for. Cryo is a processing step rather than a variety. The lupulin is separated from the leafy bract material and concentrated into a pellet, roughly doubling the lupulin content by weight. Putting Idaho 7 in through that form concentrates the exact pineapple-and-resin combination the brewery is pointing at.

Mosaic and Citra round out the bill, the pair most hazy IPAs are built on.

Walking Distance is on tap now at the Gate City taproom on Magnolia Street.

Editor’s Take

I have a soft spot for a collaboration beer that declines to be grand about itself. No shared mythology, no origin story about two head brewers meeting at a festival in Denver and bonding over a mutual reverence for saison. Just: we are near each other, we made a beer, here is a name that says exactly that. Walking Distance. You could not be plainer if you set out to be.

The photograph seals it. Six people around a table at Variant with hazy glasses raised, one of them in a Gate City shirt, another in work trousers that have clearly had a day. That is what a collaboration actually looks like most of the time - not a summit, just a short walk down the street and a long shift at somebody else's brewhouse. Eight percent, mind, and the brewery cheerfully admits it drinks like less. Whichever of the two taprooms you start in, the walk to the other one is the easy part.

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.

Walking Distance Is Named for the Walk Between the Two Breweries

Gate City and Variant Brewing sit a few blocks apart in downtown Roswell, and their collaboration is named accordingly. Mosaic, Citra and Idaho 7 Cryo push it toward pineapple at 8 percent.

Source & Editorial