312: Pure Project’s Winslow Sawyer Brews With Style, Not to Style

When Winslow Sawyer and his partners launched San Diego’s Pure Project in the middle of the last decade, they weren’t focused on brewing particular styles. Instead, they began with the tenet of building a brewery focused on sustainability, using natural ingredients from small farmers wherever possible, and lowering their environmental impact while also giving back through the 1% for the Planet program.

IPA wasn’t the initial focus—San Diego already had plenty of great IPAs—but as the hazy IPA trend caught on Sawyer quickly found a way to explore his love of New Zealand hops despite the constraint Pure Project placed on themselves—no reverse osmosis, only municipal water built up, not stripped down. Now, they don’t define their hazy IPAs as “New England-style,” but have coined the term “murky” instead.

In this episode, Sawyer discusses their approach to a range of beers, from IPA to pale lager and even spontaneously fermented acid-forward beer. Along the way, he covers:

consciously choosing single infusion over decoction in their pale lager

balancing flavor intensity with drinkability

altering their approach to hoppy beers over the past number of years

using Mosaic as a base for experimentation with new hops

reducing dankness as beers increase in ABV

brewing spontaneous beers with wet hops

And more.

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