Warped Wing collaborates with two Mexican breweries

Warped Wing Brewing Co. has teamed up with two breweries in Mexico City to produce a new beer with a distinctive international flavor.

The Dayton brewery collaborated with Cerveceria Primus and Cerveceria Escollo to produce Tres Carnales, a 7.8 percent India pale ale that includes blue agave, hibiscus flowers and Mandarina Bavaria, Centennial and German Magnum hops.

The breweries are calling it a “Pan American IPA.”

“We wanted to use ingredients that are in the purview of Mexican culinary history and make it Mexican,” Warped Wing brewmaster John Haggerty said about the use of blue agave and hibiscus.

They also used German hops because of the Germanic influence in Mexican brewing.

Warped Wing will host a keg tapping party for Tres Carnales at 5 p.m. April 23. The beer will be released on draft only to taverns, restaurants and select accounts on April 27.

The unusual collaboration stems from Haggerty’s friendship with Primus’ Rodolfo Andreu Valdes and Escollo’s Jorge Luis Ringenbach. In the past, he has talked at a Mexican craft beer conference and trade show organized by Valdes, and the three of them became friends and decided they should brew a beer together.

The two Mexican brewers recently traveled to Dayton to help make the beer at Warped Wing. Haggerty will return the favor later this year when he travels to Mexico City to brew the beer there and have it ready for the trade show in September.

“It’s always fun and exciting to do something with anybody, but it’s definitely interesting to do something with people who have a slightly different perspective on the world,” Haggerty said about the brewing experience.

He said he hopes U.S. beer drinkers understand that there is a growing craft beer scene in Mexico. The country isn’t just Corona and Dos Equis.

The Mexican beer scene is similar to the mid-1980s in the United States, Haggerty said. In other words, it's an exciting time there.

“These guys don’t really know where to get raw material from,” he said. “They really don’t know where to get equipment from. Lot of scrambling around. Not a lot of knowledge. Figuring out what they can do to make their beer better. Make their plant better. It’s exciting. It’s kind of cool.”