Kyle Nabilcy
I shouldn’t have been surprised when I cracked the first can of Every Day Hero and took in a spicy, tropical nose, a flavor profile both crisp and dank — somewhere between weed and a Czech pilsner — and a clean finish that drops off the radar in a hot second. After all, the World’s Biggest Pinner Fan had sent it to me.
You might remember beer maven Katie Herrera from such columns as this one, specifically “Be our guest,” wherein we discussed collaborative beers and guest brews in general, and Side Project Brewing’s Shared label in particular. Back then, Herrera was still working for Side Project and had just debuted her contribution to the Shared lineup: a dry-hopped passionfruit pale ale called J Dub Fan Club. She mentioned her undying love of Oskar Blues’ Pinner as formative to the experience she wanted to create.
Snap back to 2019, and Herrera has moved a state closer to the best state in the Midwest, now working for Revolution Brewing in Chicago. Revolution is in a good place right now, coming off its second winter of Deep Wood Series barrel-aged beers released in 12-ounce cans to serious acclaim. But it’s also a brewery that is known for crushing it in the Midwest IPA realm, with its line of hoppy Hero beers. There are a whopping 23 current and former Heroes listed on the Revolution website.
The newest is Every Day Hero, a session IPA with a name that was, frankly, begging to exist in the Revolution stable of beers. Now I admit, a session IPA feels a bit like a deviation for Revolution, a brand that lives in a permanent Midwestern-aggro sensibility. They built a mini-half-pipe to skateboard on just outside their booth at Great Taste 2013, for crying out loud.
We’re not too far now from entering Founders All-Day IPA’s second decade of existence, long enough now that multiple trends have come and gone in the IPA world during that beer’s very successful run. With All-Day IPA starting in 2011, and Pinner showing up just as the session IPA wave crested in 2015, a new year-round session IPA in 2019 could certainly be seen as a gamble.
This is, however, not a typical session IPA. It does have the thin body of a beer with a minimal grain bill and there is less punch from the hops. But you have to see the forest for the trees. We’re in a period of craft brewing where there’s still a rising clamor for simplicity in the face of fruited sour milkshake IPAs and cinnamon vanilla maple port barrel-aged imperial stouts. The hoppy low-ABV table beer — think Firestone Walker’s Pivo Pils or Allagash’s aptly-named Hoppy Table Beer — is being embraced beyond the session IPA category. If beers like Pinner or Every Day Hero offer cross-category appeal, they won’t be subject to the whims of trends and industry fashion.
And cross categories, Every Day Hero certainly does. That almost saline sort of crackery snap speaks to a whole different group of beers. Katie Herrera described her 2017 beer palate as favoring “biscuity and bready grain bills, lagers, low ABVs and tropical fruit flavors.” With that in mind, you start to understand why she loves the beer her new brewery is putting out.
That said, she did also send along some barrel-aged goodies from this batch of Deep Wood releases — very much not session beers — which just goes to show that Revolution is swinging with both fists right now.
The full Wisconsin launch of Every Day Hero is coming up on April 1-3 in Madison and Milwaukee. There will be an official Madison happy hour at BarleyPop Tap and Shop on Wednesday, April 3, at 5 p.m., and Herrera told me she hopes to secure additional tap lines at some of her old Madison stomping grounds so she can share the Every Day wealth around town.
Follow Katie at @CellaredKatie on Twitter for Every Day Hero launch updates. Cans will be dropped at Big Ten Pub and Red Zone (some of those old stomping grounds I mentioned) for enjoyment starting on 4/1, no foolin'.
