2010 Billy the Mountain

In the conditioning room at the brewery are 3 kegs and about 70 cases of our annual old ale, Billy the Mountain. The style is open to interpretation and often ends up being produced with either a modern or a historical profile. At Upright we lean toward the latter, using a combination of barrel-aging and brettanomyces claussenii on a beer that would otherwise be considered an English-style strong ale.

The heart of the beer is a big and complex grist centered around three caramel malts of varying color and Briess Ashburne Mild malt, which is wonderfully rich and aromatic. A small amount of black barley is added as well to make the beer darker and give it a slight reddish hue. On the initial brewday a very concentrated wort is runoff into the kettle where we add hops in two additions for a projected 40-45 IBU's. A bit of molasses towards the end of the boil marks the end of the beer's main ingredients.

Billy the Mountain's primary fermentation uses a popular Enlgish ale yeast that ferments quickly and leaves the beer very full bodied and malty with attractive pale fruit aromas. At that point the beer is around 8% abv and quite hoppy and bright. It's then transferred into 4 former pinot noir barrels that have been inoculated with brettanomyces claussenii, a slow working yeast that was oringinally isolated from English beers in the early 20th century. Brett "C" is exciting to work with because it produces unique flavors in different worts/beers, unlike the two other common strains of brettanomyces that make more predictable aromas and flavors. As the Billy matures in the barrels, the brett "C" uses nearly half of the sugars left in the beer to reproduce, all the while increasing the acidity (and abv to over 9%) and yielding a large number of organic acids and esters that fill out the beer's flavor. By the end, which in the case of this second batch was about one year later, you can dissect the profile into different parts - deep malt character, tropical-like nose, slowly fading bitterness, bits of oxidation, oak and wine flavors. It's a fun beer to drink.

With the first batch that was released in January 2010 we felt that the medium to high level of carbonation distracted from the better parts of the beer and so decided to change that for the new batch, using a small amount of batch 3 (which was very recently brewed and transferred into the just blended barrels of batch 2) with it's relatively high sugar content and fresh yeast to prime and condition to a much lower level, likely to leave the beer on the still side which seems to be the most enjoyable way to drink it.


If this all sounds interesting you may be wondering when it will be released. We plan to give the beer some more time in the conditioning room to properly round out and will be officially releasing it on Wednesday, December 29th at the Grain and Gristle. You'll be able to taste one of only three kegs that evening starting at 6:30 pm and purchase bottles to go. We saved a few cases of the original brew from 2009 and will have those available for drinking at the bar as well. The brewery tasting room will have the new batch that weekend too during our normal tasting room hours.