Definition please....

Inefficient?

 

Yes, you speak of Mystic Brewing in Massachusetts. They are a "fermentorium" so to speak.

 

Not quite the same thing, but when I visited Capitol in Madison, WI...they brewed in Madison (well, just outside Madtown) but shipped the beer to Steven's Point for bottling.

 

Fascinated by what they had to do to not lose a TON of carbonation.

 

They carbonated it at the time of bottling. Still fascinated?

 

Shipping the wort (a sterile liquid) would subject it to picking up contaminates such as wild yeast, so I'd say this method of producing a beer product would be too high risk without extreme caution put into play.

 

Not really. I hoped for something more organic. Oh well.

 

More organic? Not sure what you mean.

 

Blame it on the Guava Grove.

 

This is what some potential 'host' brewerys were saying to us when we started. Over 55 trips later we haven't had one contamination. We do limit our range to 2 hours from the host brewery to our brewery.

A short list of brewery's that do it this way is:
Drie Fonteinen, Belgium
Hanssen's Artinsanaal, Belgium
De Cam, Belgium
Mystic, MA
Crooked Stave, CO
Backacre, VT
Rare Barrel, CA

We call it the "Geuzestekerij" model because it is based the wort shipping method 3 Fonteinen and Hanssen's use (both Geuzestekerij's = sour beer blender). Dosen't exactly roll of the tongue though. The model can employ both contract and rental versions. In a contract model you could have the wort shipped to you. Mystic rents a brewhouse for the day and we do all the brewing ourselves and drive the wort back on our truck.

Bryan
Founder, Mystic Brewery

 

This is not uncommon with beer or wort in Europe, as far as wort it could be aerated with oxygen in transport and this can be done properly and without thought of contamination in this day and age.

 

honestly thats pretty amazing. i struggle getting wort from the stove to the spigot safely.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Tilquin does this as well, in addition to the breweries named by Bryan from Mystic brewing.

 

Granite City, which brews out of Iowa, brews the wort in one location, ships, and then ferments in their "brewpubs". There is one in the Detroit metro area, so that is a fair way to ship wort.

 

Schlitz used to ship concentrated wort from their L.A. brewery to their Primo brewery in Hawaii, and Coors did the same thing before their Virginia facility had a complete working brewhouse. In the latter case, AB sued (or maybe it was just filed a complaint with regulators) over Coors' promotion of "Rocky Mt. water" - assuming that the reconstituted wort obviously contained some Appalachian water, as well.

 

I was under the impression that Granite City's beer was not brewed here in Iowa but was shipped in from some place else? I could be wrong though...