Ska Brewing turned a bad hops contract into a new DIPA

Around 2011-2012, amid a broader hop shortage that sent prices soaring, Ska Brewing signed a five-year forward contract locking in supplies of Galaxy and El Dorado hops. In 2014 the brewery built its bet on those hops into a session IPA — but the beer sold poorly, leaving Ska on the hook for years of contracted hop deliveries it no longer had a product for.

Rather than quietly discount, resell, or eat the loss on the surplus, Ska's sales manager Arlo Grammatica proposed formulating a brand-new beer built entirely around the leftover hops and naming it after the mistake itself. The result, BHC (Bad Hop Contract) DIPA — an 8% ABV double IPA loaded with Galaxy and El Dorado hops — launched October 1, 2017, its label showing the brewery's cartoon villain 'Pinstripe' signing the doomed contract with a skeleton hand.

Ska Brewing turned an over-committed, multi-year hops contract for an underperforming beer into the recipe and origin story for a new double IPA, using the surplus Galaxy and El Dorado hops as the beer's core ingredients and putting the bad contract itself — literally, a skeleton hand signing it — on the label.

Built a new double IPA around the surplus hops, and put the bad contract on the label, turning the mistake into free raw material and a shareable story.

Surplus hops became free core ingredients, converting sunk cost into low-marginal-cost product.

Naming the beer after the mistake turned an embarrassing error into a self-aware brand story.

The story generated press coverage that framed the mistake as a punchline, not a write-off.

The beer became a permanent release, turning a liability into an ongoing product line.

When stuck with surplus from a bad forward purchase, consider building a new product around it and owning the mistake as a story, rather than quietly writing it off.

BHC DIPA became one of Ska's year-round, permanent lineup releases, distributed in six-packs and cans across ten states; it also generated brewery-driven press coverage that framed the purchasing mistake as a punchline rather than a write-off. No public unit-sales or dollar-recovery figures were disclosed.