Cloudburst's Peaked in High School recipe published after World Beer Cup gold

From Cloudburst founder-brewer Steve Luke, here’s a homebrew recipe for the West Coast double red that won gold at the 2025 World Beer Cup." That subscriber-only post, published on January 28, 2026, gives homebrewers the recipe metadata for Peaked in High School and signals a rare open door into a medal-winning commercial beer.

The Craft Beer & Brewing recipe is an all-grain, 5-gallon (19 liter) formulation with a brewhouse efficiency of 72 percent. It lists an original gravity of 1.068 (16.5°P), a final gravity of 1.011 (2.7°P), 60 IBUs and a calculated ABV of about 7.5 percent. Untappd’s commercial listing records the beer at 7.7 percent ABV and also shows 60 IBUs; both sources are explicit about the slight ABV difference between the homebrew calculation and the commercial entry. Craft Beer & Brewing offers downloadable BeerSmith and BeerXML files for All Access subscribers, noting "All Access Subscribers can download the BeerSmith and BeerXML version of this recipe. Subscribe today." The publisher’s subscription pitch also lists "Plans start at $4.99/month • 30-day guarantee."

Cloudburst’s own product copy frames Peaked in High School with a heavy dose of retro humor while confirming the beer’s construction. The site copy reads in full: "The last time we brewed a hoppy red in 2023, it won a GABF silver medal, and they weren’t even COOL then. But what comes around goes around, amiright? If baggie AF wide leg pants can make a comeback (MOM ARE MY JNCOS AND AIRWALKS STILL IN THE ATTIC?) then why can’t RED BEER?! ONE CAN DREAM! And dream we did, with this garnet beauty, much like a belly ring from Claire’s. It’s layered with several crystal malts and hopped with a soirée of Chinook, Simcoe, Mosaic, & Centennial. So part your bowl haircut in the middle, tie that hemp necklace on tight, sag your umbros, hop in that soft top Jeep Wrangler and get over here STAT. Red beer is cool again, right now, at Cloudburst…til it ain’t."

Community reaction and tasting notes are visible on Untappd. The page shows 133 ratings, 160 total check-ins and 148 unique users in the snapshot provided, with recent check-ins indicating cans and purchases at outlets such as The Brewmaster's Taproom and Chuck's Hop Shop Seward Park. One Untappd tasting note reads: "Toffee malts, orange peels, and some crisp pine on the nose. Flavour has lots of crisp pine, toffee, burnt sugars, some orange peels, and fairly bitter finish. Nicely done."

Practical value is straightforward: the published recipe metadata and downloadable BeerSmith and BeerXML files give brewers a usable starting point to recreate a 5-gallon version of a World Beer Cup gold winner. The recipe excerpts omit exact grain weights, hop quantities and timings, yeast strain and mash schedule, so subscribe to download the full files or contact Cloudburst or Craft Beer & Brewing for precise measurements. The published recipe bridges taproom trophy and homebrew kettle, and for local drinkers the commercial cans showing 7.7 percent ABV are already turning up in retail check-ins, one more way medal-winning beers move from festival stage to neighborhood fridge.