Diadasia
Collab with Mirage
The sun beats down on you as you struggle forward through the sand. Coarse, rough, irritating, everywhere. You’d sell the tattered remains of the shirt off your back for a drop of something to drink, to rinse the dust from your lips and ease your cracking throat. What’s that in the distance? A trio of figures seem to cluster around a shimmering pool. As you stretch out your hand to grasp at the at the apparition, it vanishes between your fingers. A Mirage. It is at that moment that you hear a small voice buzzing in your ear. Diadasia rinconis, the chimney bee. You’re on his turf, and now you play by his rules. The tiny voice issues his challenge: “Bro! Check out the nose on this IPA! These hop terpenes are sick AF!”
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Anyway, Diadasia is a new IPA brewed in collaboration with Mirage Beer. It’s named for the desert chimney bee, the cactus bee, the one and only: Diadasia rinconis. He’s a solitary bee that lives in the desert, burrowing into the ground to make his nest, and piling up the sand around the entrance in a chimney-shaped turret. He’s also oligolectic, meaning he prefers to gather pollen from a single type of flower, in his case cactus.
Like it’s namesake, Diadasia features a single type of flower: the new Elani hops from Yakima Quality Hops. Elani was discovered growing wild in Idaho, and brought back to the Yakima Valley where it quickly earned a name for itself. It has an intriguing floral aroma with notes of pineapple and stonefruit that is both delicate and complex.
The beer we built around it combines signature ingredients from both Watts and Mirage. Mirage brought Golden Promise malt, a British-grown variety that is basically the superhero of base malts, and Watts contributed our house Kölsch yeast for a crisp, clean fermentation with a touch of the white grape ester that makes Kölsch unique.
The finished beer is something of a desert island beer for both of us. Light, bright, and refreshingly hoppy with a distinctive stone fruit aroma. It will be available draft-only at both Mirage and Watts, and anywhere our beers are sold. Get it while it lasts!