The Nice Slice: Brewing Dry-Hopped Berliners with Perennial Artisan Ales

Perennial Artisan Ales is known for creating modern riffs on the Berliner Weisse and Gose styles with higher than traditional ABVs and flavorful additions of fruits and spices. Beers like Poolside Breeze, their tropical tea-tinged Berliner, and Suburban Beverage, their margarita-inspired Gose, liven up the base beer styles yet steer clear of smoothie territory. 

For The Nice Slice, a dry-hopped Berliner Perennial created as a collaboration for the 2025 Craft Brewers Conference, brewer Tyler Stewart pared down those additions even further to really showcase the flavor of a new yeast strain in combination with a unique hop blend from Hopsteiner. 

Developing Acidity without Bacteria

The recipe features Omega Yeast’s new Tartango strain, an engineered version of Voss Kveik that’s been enhanced with Zing™ technology to produce its own lactic acid during fermentation without the need for a separate pitch of Lactobacillus. The yeast creating acidity during fermentation eliminates the need to tie up the kettle waiting for the wort to sour or to bring the temperature back up to kill bacteria. Zing also allows the brewer to target a level of titratable acidity based on the recipe’s original gravity. More on that here.

The Nice Slice had a final pH of 3.4 and a titratable acidity of 8.4 g/L. You may be more familiar with pH, but TA is a much more accurate measurement of acidity.

The Delicate Pairing of Hops and Acidity

Lactic acid combined with too much bitterness or the wrong flavors can create a union like toothpaste and orange juice. However, acidity can also provide brightness and lift to accentuate the right choice of hops. Successful paths include low-alpha Continental hops, which can bring softer aromas of herbs, flowers, and spice, or late additions of modern hops that can impart bolder expressions of tropical and citrus fruits without overdoing the level of bitterness.

For The Nice Slice, Perennial used Hopsteiner’s Trident hop blend in T90 pellets as well as Salvo™ fractionated CO₂ hop extract, which has been stripped of alpha acids, so the recipe gets the tropical aroma boost of the hops without added bitterness. 

Tasting Notes

Trident brings aromas of lime, pineapple, passion fruit, and guava to the citrusy character of the yeast. Adding dextrin malt to the traditional wheat portion of the grist provided additional body to help balance out the perceived dryness contributed by the beer’s acidity and dry hopping. All in, The Nice Slice comes across pleasantly tart with a bold punch of fruitiness. It’s an ideal candidate for patio sipping in high humidity.