Collaboration beer Skookum Puffs an IPA made with puffed rice

Two of the best young IPA brewers in the state recently got together to make — what else? — an IPA.

Skookum Brewery’s Hollis Wood teamed up with Jeff Stokes, head brewer at Olympia’s Three Magnets Brewing, to brew Skookum Puffs, an IPA made with five different hops and a variety of puffed rice. The beer was made as the breweries’ offering for this year’s Washington Beer Collaboration Festival in August.

Wood said he and Stokes met at a brewer’s night at Pint Defiance in Tacoma and, after trading mutual admiration, decided to collaborate on a beer for this year’s Collaboration Festival. They talked about playing with rice, and later came up with a grain bill that is 18 percent puffed rice, including wild, Jasmine, flaked and other varieties. The rice gives the beer a dry quality that pairs well with the hops.

Along with Mosaic, Simcoe, Centennial and Eureka hops, the beer also has a hop that Wood said he hasn’t played a lot with: Chelan. Wood said the Chelan hops give the beer notes of citrus, melon and pine.

Three Magnets produced 16-ounce cans of the beer for the release party July 29 at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Greenwood. Skookum will brew the beer, under a different name — Puff, Pass — to keg and put on tap and take to the Collaboration Festival.