Sangre de Shiva Blend10 – black sour barrel-aged with TX red wine lees.
Our tenth release of a barrel-aged beer we first released in 2014 is upon us. Now part of our Sur Lees program, we began adding TX red wine lees from our winery partners on Blend8.
This beer was aged in two different barrels with Syrah lees from William Chris Vineyards in Hye, America. The barrels had aged the Syrah wine for a couple of years before we filled them.
After roughly a year we packaged Blend10 with unfermented wort and allowed final carbonation to occur naturally in the bottle.
You may recall that we previously released Sangre de Shiva in 12oz bottles. Going forward all beers in our Sur Lees program will be formatted in 750ml bottles and Blend10 is the first release in that format.
Release in our downtown taproom will begin tonite and this weekend.
Release to our distributors begins on Monday, Feb 5.
Blend10 yielded 30 cases of 750ml bottles for distribution and only enough kegs for our taproom.
Funkromancer – Hibiscus Flower Sour Wheat
Our second release of our electric pink hibiscus sour wheat has been bottled and kegged.
This beer starts with our crisp, wheat sour, Blondine. Hibiscus flowers are steeped hard into the beer to extract their fruity minerality.
Bottles were packaged on Wednesday, January 31 with fresh wort to naturally carbonate in the bottle.
This beer was conceived 100% by Head Brewer Nathan Rice and falls into his “All the best beers are pink” mantra of life.
Release in our downtown taproom will begin at our Evening of Funky Naughty Romance on Feb 10.
Release to our distributors begins in two parts starting on Valentines Day, Feb 14. Blend2 yielded 13 cases and 7 kegs. Blend3 will be ready two weeks later and will be 60 cases and 40 kegs.
Extempore Blend1 – Spontaneously fermented blend of 1,2 and 3 year old beer.
After nearly 4 years, we are pleased to share with you the fruits of our spontaneous project.
Years ago we heard of a small brewery down the road that was attempting to make a lambic-inspired beer here in TX. Since the yeast and bacteria we brew with was harvested spontaneously it seemed like something we wanted to try. But instead of producing a golden-colored beer, we (Kelly) had to exercise our contrarian spirit and brew a darker sour beer with brown sugar and whole black peppercorn.
The beer starts as a parti-gyle brew with our black farmhouse sour beer, Uber. We add additional unmalted wheat and pilsner malt to the 5 malts already in the mash and completely pull all the available sugars into our brew kettle. After a 4-hour boil with aged hops we store in our outside storage container, we add brown sugar and whole peppercorns in the final minutes.
Innoculation takes place overnight with a fan and a prayer. The next day we transfer the beer to barrels to complete fermentation and maturation for up to 3 years.
We selected 5% from our 2014 brew, 35% from 2015 and 60% from our late 2016 brew. In future releases we plan to utilize larger percentages of older stock, particularly as they get better and are more reflective of the beer we make today.
Prior to packaging, we transferred the barrels to a stainless steel tank to blend the final flavors.
On the morning of packaging we then added fresh, unfermented wort to referment naturally in the bottle and keg.
This release was packaged in September 2017 and has been resting on its side ever since.
As a beer that began as a contrarian idea, we invite you to enjoy Extempore with that in mind. This beer does not resemble anything else in our portfolio. It is dynamically funky, aromatic and brewed to showcase what happens when we relinquish a bit of control over the brewing and fermentation process. Like a pungent cheese, it is not brewed for everyone’s tastes. We hope you enjoy Extempore as much as we do.
Extempore Blend1 is available in 80 cases of 750ml bottles at very select retailers. A small number of kegs will be available for special events.
Saison de Elektra Blend3 – Elektra strawberry sour
Our next release in our fruited sour saison series, Saison de Elektra is the evolution of a beer we’d made twice before named Elektra la Exotica.
Like all of our Saison de beers, Elektra begins with Blondine, our blonde wheat sour fermented with our house mixed culture. The beer is refermented in oak with whole strawberries. To ensure the strawberry flavor was still prominent on release, we only pressed off the fruit a single time.
First Press took roughly 2 weeks to ferment the fruit and extract the color. After which we pulled the beer out to stainless and infused with whole vanilla bean.
The morning of packaging fresh Blondine wort was added to the tank to complete carbonation naturally in the bottle and keg.
Only 21 cases of 500ml and 3 kegs were produced for Blend3 this year. Release in our Downtown taproom will be Feb 10 at our event An Evening of Funky Naughty Romance. We doubt any of this beer will see distribution outside of our taproom.