Jeremy Wirtes, cofounder and head brewer for Triple Crossing Beer in Richmond, Virginia, may never be completely happy with the beer he makes. “We can always be better, and it’s a constant pursuit of that,” he says. But for this two-location brewery in the burgeoning craft beer city of Richmond, things are going right thanks to a philosophy of constant improvement and experimentation, and smart strategies for using their small scale as an asset rather than a hinderance. In this conversation, Wirtes talks about the steps they took to arrive at their current ester- and haze-forward IPA approach, hops blending techniques such as blending lots of the same variety from multiple vendors and farms to achieve more depth in single-hop beers, and how they grew comfortable leaving hazy double IPAs with high finishing gravities.

“In my head, I couldn’t stand it. It drove me nuts. But then I would taste them, and they’re great. They sound sweet on paper, but then you have them, and they just don’t feel that way. They feel plush, they feel full. They feel delicate. No matter what the final gravity and the hydrometer was saying, our palates and minds are saying ‘this is what we want them to be.’”

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