Most collaboration beers involve two breweries. HANGTUF involves six, one from each New England state, along with a boot brand.

Mast Landing Brewing Co. organized the project and brought in a brewery from every other state in the region:

Mast Landing Brewing Co. - Maine

Garrison City Beerworks - New Hampshire

Foam Brewers - Vermont

Tilted Barn Brewery - Rhode Island

Vitamin Sea Brewing - Massachusetts

Fox Farm Brewery - Connecticut

The beer they landed on is a New England IPA at 6.8 percent, brewed with Elani, Citra and Amarillo. Mast Landing describes it as bright, expressive and hop-forward.

Two of those hops need no introduction in this style. Citra and Amarillo have been load-bearing in New England IPA since the category took shape, supplying the citrus and stone-fruit character the style is known for. Elani is the less familiar name on the list, and pairing a newer variety with two established ones is a reasonable way to give a beer its own signature without gambling the whole batch on an unknown.

The sixth partner is XTRATUF, the boot maker, whose branding turns up on the footwear in the brewery's launch photos. Mast Landing frames the fit as a shared audience rather than a marketing tie-in, describing XTRATUF as a brand built for people whose lives revolve around the water, the outdoors and working with their hands, and drawing the line from long days in the brewhouse to weekends on the coast.

Six breweries, six states, and a whole lot of New England packed into one beer.

That is the brewery's own summary, and it is a fair description of what the project is actually for. The beer is the occasion; the regional roll call is the point.

HANGTUF debuts at a launch event at Brewer's Fork in Charlestown, Massachusetts on Thursday, September 17, from 5 to 8 p.m., with the breweries and partners behind the collaboration on hand. It releases the same day at Mast Landing's Maine taprooms in Westbrook and Freeport.

Editor’s Take

A two-brewery collaboration is already a diary negotiation. Six is a summit. Somebody had to get brewers from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut into the same building on the same morning, in a trade where getting two people to agree on a single hop can absorb an afternoon, and then presumably everyone had to be gracious about whose water they were using. I would have paid to sit in on the dry hop conversation.

The geography is what makes the brief possible, mind you. New England is the one corner of the country where 'one brewery from every state' is a realistic ask rather than a logistical fantasy - you could reasonably visit all six in a long weekend and still be back for Sunday dinner. Try the same idea across the Mountain states and you are filing a flight plan. And then the whole thing is anchored to a boot company, which is the detail that wins me over. Not a hop grower, not a maltster, not a coffee roaster. Boots. One of the brewery's own launch photos is simply a row of them lined up on a brewhouse stair, which is either a group portrait or the least glamorous band shot ever taken, and I mean that in the warmest possible way.

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.

HANGTUF Takes One Brewery From Each of Six New England States

Six breweries, one from each New England state, plus a boot company. HANGTUF is a 6.8 percent New England IPA on Elani, Citra and Amarillo, debuting Thursday in Charlestown and at Mast Landing's Maine taprooms.

Source & Editorial