WarPigs, the Danish brewpub run in collaboration by Mikkeller and 3 Floyds, announced today that's it's named a new head brewer. On board since the brand first launched two years ago, Lan-Xin has been tapped to lead brewing operations into the future, the company says. In a statement, Mikkeller says she’s a “natural” fit for the role, adding she brings to the table “unbelievable talent” and a “creative mindset.”
In a statement, Lan-Xin touched on her own ambitions in taking over as head brewer, detailing her hopes of improving beer quality batch to batch.
“A lot of what I like to do is to refine things. So if we make a half decent hoppy beer today, how do we make the next batch better?” she says. “The way we barrel age beers, is there something that we haven’t done before that we can try? That sort of thing. We already brew a lot of experimental beers with lots of interesting ingredients.”
Lan-Xin takes over for Kyle Wolak, a former 3 Floyds employee who moved from Indiana to Denmark two years ago to spearhead the WarPigs brand. Wolak left WarPigs earlier this summer, however, heading back to the states for an unspecified job at Hill Farmstead in Vermont.
The shakeups also come on the heels of Mikkeller and 3 Floyds bringing WarPigs to the U.S., coincidentally around the same time Wolak left the company. Upon arrival, WarPigs began selling beers, including Lazurite IPA, Salmon Pants Lager, and Foggy Geezer Hazy IPA, that had been previously available at the brewpub in Denmark. As we reported yesterday, the company is focused on building the brand in the States right now, but added WarPigs brewpubs highlighting what the company is all about in Copenhagen are to come.
“I think WarPigs has something you’ve not seen in the states, not seen anywhere in the world, and we want to showcase that,” Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, owner of Mikkeller, told GBH this past weekend.
As such, it’ll be worth watching to see not only what Lan-Xin develops in her new capacity as head brewer (she also hinted at increasing the amount of collaborative work), but also to see what of her brewing imagination makes its way back Stateside.
—Dave Eisenberg