The year was 2014. The sun was shining, the flowers were blooming, and Ska Brewing was getting ready to introduce a new year-round beer, Rudie Session Ale, a 4.5 percent ABV IPA made with Galaxy and El Dorado hops. Rudie – which Ska tagged with the line “Rudie can’t fail,” from a Clash song of the same name – was right on trend: Breweries across the country were scrambling to produce lower-alcohol, full-flavor beers that were suddenly in high demand. “We wanted to brew an aggressively hopped beer that you can drink a few of and still hold your shit together,” Ska co-founder Dave Thibodeau wrote about the beer at the time.
Fast-forward to 2017. “We tagged it ‘Rudie can’t fail,’ and of course, Rudie is failing,” Thibodeau says now.
Read the rest of the story at Westword: http://www.westword.com/restaurants/ska-brewing-uses-humor-to-turn-a-bad-hops-contract-into-a-beer-9381027
