Everything Jester King

The last two nights have been rather cold... in the 40s to upper 30s. I'm sure they waited until the weather was perfect. They posted on twitter that they were able to cool it all down to 68 degrees (IIRC) by the morning.

Their barrel room (where the coolship is located) is also temperature controlled.

"real winter"? Yeah. We don't get those. Maybe one snowfall a year and it doesn't stick.

 

Sounds perfect - I think 40s might be even perfect & snowfall is quite rare in Belgium as well these days.
Best of luck, I hope I will manage to try this at some point, Jester King is one of my favorite breweries in the USA - they make great sours.

 

Very cool. Great to see another brewery doing this.

 

Virtuoso picked up 367 cases (Batch 1 and Batch 2) from us, plus another few dozen cases we self-distribute.

Jeff

 

Wow... that's a huge amount.

Is this gonna be limited or a continual release? How long does it take to make?

 

Is El Cedro going to be available in San Antonio this weekend? I'm coming down from Colorado.

 

That is a lot. I guess this means we will have this abvailable for a while. That makes me happy.

 

El Cedro is greatness. The brett character is so dominant...and goes really well with the hop/cedar...easily my new favorite from JK.

 

Gotta win, bro.

 

It's okay Azzy, we still love you.

 

Tried cask El Cedro and Salt Lick last night at Dancing Bear. El Cedro was delicious and Salt Lick completely blew away my expectations. I was CRAVING brisket after drinking it. It was much more smokey than I anticipated, but in a good way. The pecan smoke was nice!

 

Man you arent monkeying around are you!? haha

 

Expanding a bit on this, lambic brewing in Belgium is performed in the winter so that the local microflora suited for fermentation of lambic are more likely to outcompete the mold, bacteria and other microflora present in the air which might otherwise spoil the wort and produce something undrinkable. At Cantillon, scientific analysis of the yeast sediment demonstrated that over 400 different yeast strains were present.

Even the best sometimes lose a batch to spoilage, particularly near the end of the brweing season (late March or, if the brewer is daring enough, April).

There are also temperatures where it is *too* cold (or nearly so) to brew. On a visit to Cantillon, I was told that two winters ago, brewing was very difficult due to the harshness of the winter. One batch brewed in December didn't show the slightest sign of active fermentation until May.

-Kevin.

 

Did this land at cm westgate tryin to condense my beer purchases today

 

http://jesterkingbrewery.com/first-100-spontaneous-coolship-brew

This is exciting, I know we are a long way off but you gotta be excited about the possibilities.

 

Good stuff, and I was about to say something similar. Expanding on that, there is nothing that even remotely resembles winter in Texas. I am really not sure how that will effect what JK is trying to do? Anyway, I will certainly be interested to see what comes of this.

 

I don't think anyone really *knows* for sure. I have no idea what the local microflora are there, but I do like the idea of putting the koelschip in the barrel room for exposure to both wood and the bugs. Perhaps that won't be representative of what's going on outdoors, but it may well be that they have better environmental control there (at least with respect to humidity?). Mind = spinning.

Even if they made some test batches at small scale and over time, there's no assurance that the scale up would work in similar fashion (so many variables like cooling rate, etc...that's why gueuze and even lambic are often blended).

Spontaneous fermentation is truly a mixture of art and science. If you have any interest in the topic, listening to someone like Armand Debelder talk about it is spellbinding.

There's a sign on the wall at 3F that says "Brewing lambic is my passion...blending gueuze is my art!".

Armand told us that when he first started to lead the lambic brewing under his father's tutelage (even after many years of apprenticeship in the brewery), it took him over six full seasons of brewing (~20 batches each season) until, as he said, "I gave the lambic to my father and asked what needed improvement. When, at last, he said, 'you do not need to change anything,' that's when I started calling myself a brewer". Seeing (and you can see it) the passion in his face when he said this was an amazing experience.

I wish JK all the best and hope to have the chance to try something from this experiment when they deem it ready.

-Kevin.

 

CM in SA just got el Cedro today. 3 cases.

 

Picked up two at cm westgate will try tonight

 

It's a nine week beer, which is about the same amount of time it takes us to make our other 100% stainless steel fermented beers. It's a limited release. I'm pretty sure we'll make it again, but it won't be for several months.

Jeff