ASTRO ZOMBIES ADN
DDH HAZY IPA
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THE STORY & CAN ART
CHROMATIC INSPIRATION
ASTRO ZOMBIES is where our love for music, film, and art collides with one seriously hopped-up recipe.
The name sits somewhere between cult cinema and punk mythology, inspired by the horror-driven world of Astro Zombies and the Misfits’ iconic track of the same name. We wanted the can to feel like a found artifact from some strange midnight transmission: bold, irreverent, nostalgic, but unmistakably ours. The restrained metallic base gives the artwork room to breathe, while the fluorescent pink and acid green cut through like a signal from another dimension. One of our favourite recipes deserved a world of its own. We’re here to stay, and this hop buffet is making noise.
LABEL COMPOSITION
The label blends eccentric colour, clean graphic language, and a touch of beautifully weird storytelling: a lone figure floats above a dense British Columbia rainforest as UFOs descend from the sky, not to invade, but to inject pure hop juice straight into our veins.
THE FLAVOUR ARCHITECTURE
Our DDH Hazy IPA is the result of a long process of refinement: stripping away what we didn’t want, amplifying what we did, and building the entire beer around a very specific expression of fruit, texture and hop aroma.
At the centre of it are Simcoe Cryo, Mosaic Cryo and Dolcita.
We use Cryo hops very deliberately. Traditional T90 pellets contain the full spectrum of hop material, lupulin alongside leaf and other vegetal matter. Cryo processing concentrates a greater proportion of the lupulin, allowing us to push hop intensity while introducing less of the green material that can contribute astringency, roughness and vegetal character when dry-hop loads get extreme.
For this beer, that means we can chase saturation without sacrificing softness.
Simcoe Cryo brings bright citrus, resinous depth and ripe fruit. Mosaic Cryo adds another dimension of tropical fruit, berry and saturated citrus character. Together they create a concentrated aromatic foundation with enough definition to remain expressive through a very heavy dry-hop.
Then there is Dolcita.
We first started working with the hop in 2024, while it was still known by its experimental name, HBC 1019. Miguel, our Head brewer, tried it before we released Changing Colours Brewing Project and immediately became convinced that it needed to become part of one of our beers. Its character was impossible to ignore: intensely aromatic, fruit-forward and distinctive enough that we wanted to build a beer around it rather than simply add it to an existing recipe.
A SHARP PROFILE, SOFLTY DELIVERED
That started a muchlonger process of
experimentation
The architecture of this beer changed repeatedly as we searched for the combination that would give us the exact character we wanted. We worked through Simcoe T90, Citra Cryo, Citra Incognito, Amarillo, and Mosaic in several different formats, changing not only varieties but also how and where those hops were introduced.
Some combinations were more tropical. Some were louder. Some had more citrus or more resin. But being bigger wasn’t necessarily better.What we were looking for was clarity.Eventually, the dry-hop settled into the combination of Simcoe Cryo, Mosaic Cryo and Dolcita. Instead of stacking varieties simply for intensity, each hop had to have a purpose. Simcoe gives the beer structure and citrus definition. Mosaic contributes saturated fruit and complexity. Dolcita sits across the top of the profile with incredibly expressive notes of candied citrus, ripe mango, peach and tropical fruit.The hot side was designed to support that character rather than compete with it. A generous addition of Idaho 7 creates another layer of ripe stone fruit and citrus underneath the dry-hop, building flavour into the wort before fermentation even begins.
Fermentation
Fermentation became the other major piece of the beer.
Rather than relying on a single strain, we use our house yeast approach: a blend of a thiol-active strain and a classic Hazy IPA strain. The idea isn’t simply to create the highest possible thiol expression. We use fermentation as another tool for shaping the hops, encouraging biotransformation and unlocking additional aromatic compounds while retaining the plush fermentation character and soft fruit profile we want from a modern Hazy IPA.The result is intentionally more nuanced than an aggressively thiol-driven beer. Instead of overwhelming passionfruit or sulphur-forward thiol character, the expression stays controlled, allowing citrus and peach to lead, with mango, tropical fruit and candied citrus filling in underneath.
The result
Everything in the process is working toward the same goal: maximum aromatic concentration with minimum distraction.Less vegetal material from the dry-hop. Concentrated lupulin from Simcoe and Mosaic Cryo. The unmistakable character of Dolcita. Idaho 7 layered into the hot side. Yeast selected not simply to ferment the beer, but to actively shape how those hops are perceived.The final beer is saturated without being abrasive, intensely aromatic without becoming muddled, and soft enough to carry an enormous amount of hop character.
