Barrel-Aged Fun
Barrel-aged sours take a huge amount of planning and time behind the scenes. Especially now that we are up to 50 barrels filled, we have beers at each stage of development.
- 365.24 (a blend of gin-barrel-aged rice saison and wine-barrel-aged sour golden) is in bottles, carbonated, and waiting for it’s February 29th release. Details below.
- Our Vin De Céréale (10% ABV sour red) is in port barrels waiting for us to execute the blend we worked out with Nathan Zeender of Hibernaculum Winery (and previously Right Proper Brewery).
- House Saison #3 refilled the barrels that first held No Beginnings and is now waiting to go onto local wildflower honey from Maryland Honey Co.
- A new 5-grain (barley, spelt, plus Maryland-grown millet, buckwheat, and corn) saison is fermenting in stainless. It’s a collaboration with Old Westminster Winery (which is supplying the barrels), foraged (which will lead a foraging expedition for a final dose of herbs/fruit), and Fadensonnen (which came up with the idea, and will throw an awesome release party).
We have more than a dozen other beers aging, and we’re hoping to release close to 12 more barrel-aged bottlings this year! We are down to just seven memberships remaining in the 2020 Wood Club (which includes two bottles from eight of those releases, plus the ability to pre-purchase additional bottles from all releases).
We’ve also started sporadic Vintage Sundays where we release a case of bottles from the archives for in-house consumption. Eventually this will be every Sunday, but for now it is less frequent as we continue to build-up our stock.
Canning Update
We still have a few cases of Not Out of the Woods (our IPA collab with Idiom Brewing) cans. They were nice enough to bring their MicroCanner over to the brewery and let us can the batch. We’re still waiting on delivery on our three new 20 bbl tanks… the factory is currently shut down as a result of the Corona virus. Last we heard we should still be on for a March delivery. We’re leaning towards starting with mobile canning given our current lack of space for our own canning line. The result will hopefully be a can drop of three beers once every 4-6 weeks once everything is worked out.
What’s on Tap Now
We’ve just started tapping a fresh wave of hoppy beers with Southern Lights. It’s a hazy pale ale that showcases Australian Vic Secret, supported by Citra. Vic Secret is often referred to as Galaxy’s “Little Sister” as it has some of the same tropical passion fruit aromatics, while also bringing pine. Saturday we’re tapping Sabro Says, a new IPA hopped with Sabro and Lotus. You may remember Sabro from Hop Swirl, where it gave a unique coconut aroma. Lotus seemed like a fun pairing as it brings tropical-mango aromatics. Next week we’ve got batch #2 Cryovolcano, our Citra-Mosaic DIPA, (plus a large Imperial Orange Sorbet variant for the week after)!
In addition to hoppy-stuff, we have a few dark beers on including Crinkum (a rum-barrel-aged stout blended with a fresher extra-roasty imperial stout) and Threat Level Noon (a more sessionable stout that doesn’t sacrifice body, sweetness, or roast). Plus our first “clean” Belgian-inspired beer, Concrete Leave a caramel-fig forward dubble (with a 10% ABV quadrupel, Concrete Forest, waiting behind it).
365.24 Bottle Release
Saturday February 29th we’ll be releasing our next barrel-aged bottle, 365.24. The acidity is closes to First Blush, so tart without a heavy-handed sourness. Two bottle-limit, $14/each.
Saison Ale Aged in Gin and Wine Barrels
Each year on Earth last 365.24 days. Once every four years we combine the remainders to create a leap-day. To celebrate February 29th 2020, we blended this beer. The fresh green aroma reminds us of winter’s end and the new growth of spring.
365.24 is the culmination of two threads. First, a rice saison aged in gin barrels, vibrant and juniperus. Second, a sour golden ale aged in a wine barrel, acidic and succulent. The combination balances aromas of resin and earth, against tartness and oak.
Mike & Scott
Brewed: Spring 2019 – Bottled: 1/16/20
ABV: 7.7% – Final pH: 3.60
Bottle Count: 1,080 – Cellar: 4 years
