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Between now Upright's third anniversary in late March, two new sour fruit beers will be released. The first, titled Fantasia, after the musical term (not the movie, even though I enjoy it somewhat regularly), is one I'm really excited about. The project started early in the summer of 2010 after meeting Trevor Baird whose family operates an orchard that produces stunning fruit, most notably peaches. It was a tremendously friendly Trevor who planted the idea in my head to make a peach beer, and so I set about to brew something totally different from anything I've done before. The process started in July when it was time to begin propagating some lactobacillus and brettanomyces, which don't reproduce all that quickly. I wanted a healthy and respectable pitch to get the flavors I had in mind, and by the time the peaches were ripe and ready, which landed the third week of August, the yeast and bacteria were plenty ready to go. The few weeks leading up to the brewday were also spent procuring some appropriate oak barrels, eight in total sourced from four different wineries here in Oregon. After finally getting the call from Trevor that the peaches would be ready on the 23rd, everything was in order and Gerritt fired up the brewhouse while myself and a few very hardworking friends unloaded 800 pounds of fruit and spent most of the day cutting them up and stuffing them into the barrels.
It took quite a while, and the wort enjoyed an extra long boil in the meantime much like traditional lambic worts. The recipe was pretty simple, all barley (unlike the wheaten lambic style), but employing warm aged hops from the 2008 harvest. By the end of the boil, all eight barrels were full of the fruit plus a mixture of saison yeast and the aforementioned lactobacillus and brettanomyces. The wort was then cooled and pumped directly into the barrels, all of them getting filled to roughly 2/3 or 3/4 capacity to allow room for the fermentation (one that was filled a little much clogged the breathable bung with peach flesh and blew it out like a shotgun during a bottling run, which created one of the most incredible messes in Upright history), which after a couple weeks was on it's tail end and the barrels were topped off with one of two beers; the Four and the Tokay d' Portland, a small batch barrel aged experiment of sorts. At that point, the Fantasia was ready for extended maturation in the casks, so it was hard bunged and set aside until the following August when seven of the eight barrels were blended and bottled shortly thereafter. Those bottles have been conditioning in the back of the brewery since, and as soon as we get it labeled later this month they'll finally be at the end of their journey and ready to enjoy or to cellar for even more time as I expect this beer to continue developing for two years. After that the fruit character will likely dull a bit even though the beer will still be tasty.
The Fantasia is very lambic-esque, despite the fact that it wasn't brewed strictly to style. I suspect the aromatic similarity is due to the primary fermentation being carried out not only with the three yeasts and bacteria intentionally pitched but also with who knows what the fruit had on it. Fresh fruit is notorious for carrying all sorts of "wild" yeasts, and the Fantasia certainly has a pleasant complexity thanks to that. The Four Play on the other hand, a brew that has been released twice by Upright now, has used a puree from Oregon Fruit Products. I use their fruit often for all sorts of barrel aged beers. They're packaged aseptically, so there's never any surprises; the flavor is always consistent and excellent, and they're pureed so no hours and hours of destemming and cutting. I know, sucking the romance right out of it, but next time I get 800 pounds of peaches or 400 pounds of cherries, etc., I'll give you a call and you can see exactly how romantic it is after half the day has passed.
The Four Play has been a bit of a cult beer for us. It's always generated a fair deal of hype (much to my dismay) and sells out pretty quickly. Basically a barrel aged sour cherry version of the Four, it has what I think is a perfect balance of funk and fruit. This separates it greatly from the Fantasia or even more so from red fruit lambic-style beers which can be so forward that the grain-based beer gets completely buried. Well, I'm stoked to say that Upright is taking its most popular beer and retiring it. The Four Play, whose release coincides with the brewery anniversary, is being turned into a similar brew named after a colleague and friend, Ben Love of the upcoming Gigantic Brewing Company. The new beer, titled Blend Love, is essentially the Four Play but with barrel aged Six with raspberries mixed in. The inaugural release, blended earlier today, used 25% of the Six. It's an evolution of the Four Play, giving it added layers - more malt, more alcohol, deeper color, and more fruit (but still in check with the malt profile). I'm into it, and hope that you will be too! For those that loved the Four Play, don't be dismayed as the brewery is securing more space for barrel aging and is strongly considering producing a couple batches of Four Play annually to keep on tap year round at the tasting room, besides making several more new annual releases, but of course that's ripe for a future blog posting.
The Fatali Four is going out the door today. Roughly half the batch is headed to our distributors in BC and here in Portland, while the remainder will trickle out the tasting room over several weeks, or as is happening right now, will find its way in a glass on my desk. This second bottling of the Fatali only varies from the previous by the addition of one first use old tom gin barrel. The rest is aged in three former pinot noir barrels that have been filled with beer at least twice, with two of those incorporating some mixture of brettanomyces and/or lactobacillus. The interesting thing is that the gin barrel portion brings a whole new dimension to the beer, even while representing a mere 25% of the blend. The nose, which was dominated by tropical notes last year, is full of bright lime and other citrus elements; aromas I personally am very fond of. Once on the tongue, the flavors of the 2010 vintage return with a bit less heat, but the gin character comes through here too in a way that people familiar with Ransom's wonderful spirit will recognize. Add in bits of brett and oak character along with a pinch of sulfur and you've got a 4.5% beer with a whole lot going on. I'm curious to hear what others think about the change this year, so please comment as I practically never fix recipes and am always open to more changes in the future.
Also worth noting is that Jason and Jay from Burnside dropped by during the blending and we decided to produce a couple Sweet Heat/Fatali kegs. I'm planning on bringing one of only two Fatali kegs over to their place tomorrow and we should have the blended kegs ready soon. Expect to see one on tap at the Grain and Gristle and the other at Burnside in the near future!
Big thanks to Snob Ritch for growing enough chiles in such an adverse year! Dr. Greenthumb, this brew wouldn't exist without you!
It's official. After working with a handful of different yeasts since opening in the spring of 2009, I've finally found a strain that has that elusive mix of flavor and functionality. For the past few months now, the four year round "numbered" beers and a couple seasonals have been fermented with one that many beer geeks and brewers are familiar with - the Ardennes, or Chouffe yeast. It's awesome! Here's why:
- excellent attenuation, but like the French saison strain still leaves a pleasantly full body
- ferments quickly and dependably, with extra short lag phases
- has a huge temperature range, much lower than typical Belgian yeasts
- settles out fantastically
- low sulfur production
- forms a nice harvest-able layer mid-fermentation all the way through to terminal gravity being reached
To elaborate on these points and why they are important, a more detailed explanation:
The high attenuation level is obviously key in making refreshing, farmhouse-style beers. Dryness is a wonderful thing, making higher gravity beers like the Six and Seven still reasonable pint pours as they won't fill you up. Often beers that are well attenuated come across thin, but each yeast has a distinct mouthfeel and this one leaves the beers with a great balance between crisp and creamy.
Fast fermentations are welcome for reasons of increased capacity anywhere, but the short lag phases are especially important here because these beers are all made in open fermenters where every hour that the wort sits waiting for the yeast to get rolling, airborne bacterial contamination is a concern. This is also why the cooler temperatures are better, as most common beer contaminants thrive above 80 F, which is where our last strain needed to be to work properly. The wide temperature range of the Ardennes yeast is nice because it allows for relatively cool fermentations, so beers like the Five and Six or perhaps upcoming seasonals or one-offs, which I want to push in a biere de garde-like direction with more delicate yeast profiles, become easier to control, around 60 F. At the same time, I can produce the Four and Seven around 10 degrees warmer and get a solid but still not overpowering Belgian-esque profile.
Every strain previously used here was a poor flocculator, and too often, particularly in draft versions, the beers had much more yeast than I'd like. It contributes a harsher bitterness and clouds/distorts the finish as well. That's now a thing of the past here, and while most of the beers retain a protein haze from the use of certain malts or raw grains, they should never pour with excess yeast again. In addition to that, all former strains employed here were significant sulfur producers, and sometimes no matter what we tried the sulfur couldn't be completely stripped out. The new yeast, jokingly dubbed Mc Ill Ganome, produces some sulfur during fermentation and, like most strains, quickly dissipates without any unusual effort on the brewers end.
The best thing of all though, is the ability to crop this yeast right off the top. Typically the timing works out that I can simply scoop it off with a stainless steel pitcher and go from tank to tank. Otherwise if it needs to be stored for a bit I attach a vacuum pump to the yeast brink that has a 1/2" diameter stainless steel "wand" and suck the yeast off. It's pretty cool, and the electric pump works better than the reversed bike pump I rigged that would burn an entire day's worth of calories for either Gerritt or I to operate. This top cropped yeast is especially pure and healthy, and is the main reason for having the open fermenters in the first place. Took nearly three years to find the one, but it was certainly worth the work and wait.
The past couple days were spent brewing two special beers at Upright, both of which warrant some detailing as their processing is somewhat unusual.
The one we ran through the brewhouse today is simply named "Provision" and will be our entry for the Holiday Ale Festival. The following description was admittedly written earlier for the festival program, but puts it together concisely:
Upright Provision is a malty farmhouse-style beer with layered aromatics and flavors. Its depth comes from a blend of 80% freshly brewed biere de garde-style beer and 20% English-style old ale. The French inspired portion is made traditionally with true lager yeast at an elevated temperature and openly fermented, while the old ale follows historic suit by being aged in an oak barrel for one year with brettanomyces, a yeast first isolated from 19th century examples. The resulting blend has a complex nose and is richly flavored but not overly heavy.The specifics regarding aromas and flavors are purposely kept vague here because the actual blending is roughly two weeks out, and I'm honestly unsure how much of the bold old ale nose will work into the finished beer, although I'll be able to adjust that stated 20% however much necessary to achieve a desirable profile. Expect the biere de garde base to be quite malt forward but balanced on the palate and relatively clean. I suspect this beer will bottle very well and plan to fill 5 or 10 cases under the Sole Composition label for release sometime in December. Another fun note is that the barrel of old ale that gets worked into the Provision will be refilled right away with the blend itself; another little project that should mature nicely throughout the bulk of 2012.
Yesterday the mash tun had its biggest workout of the year, taking in over 900 pounds of malt for the annual Billy the Mountain brew. In the previous two releases the beer has been 100% barrel aged with brettanomyces, yielding a firmly tart beer that while I still enjoy thoroughly (particularly around 60 F and from a large wine glass around midnight), I simply felt like changing it up this year. The recipe remains similar: gravity, grist, ibu's, yeast strain, and fermentation temperature are all the same or very close, but this late 2011 version will be done in a similar way to the Provision, blending in around 20% of the 2010 barrel aged brew into what's fermenting as I write this. It will be a significant departure from batches one and two for certain, with more hop presence, more straightforward aromatics, and less acidity. Like the previous Billy, this one will be bottled still to accentuate the vinous qualities, although the high proportion of young beer will lend this vintage to a more dramatic evolution in the bottle (or keg for that matter) as the bit of brettanomyces slowly works on the residual sugars. Expect this one to be out by years end, but no rush as it will likely hit a pleasant stride from the spring through 2012 and far beyond.
