Get to know your beer: Terroir Pinot Gris

It’s the end of fruit season here in the Willamette valley and this year we took full advantage of what our little slice of heaven had to offer- peaches, apricots, apples, and of course Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay. Over the last month of processing fruit from our local orchards, farms, and vineyards we were always drawn to the fact that here in the Willamette valley we have such a diverse and unique array of fruits and, as brewers of barrel aged fruit beer, that makes us incredibly spoiled. This is also what makes Alesong Beer, well Alesong beer. The local ingredients, climate, microbes, and our process all come together and form our Terroir. Our new release, Terroir, is a celebration of one of the fruits Oregon does best – Pinot Gris.

Terroir: Pinot Gris is the next installment of our wine inspired beers. This beer started its journey as a saison fermented in stainless with a blend of brettanomyces bruxellensis yeast. At the end of primary fermentation we added about 200L of freshly pressed Pinot Gris juice from our neighbors at King Estate. The beer was then barreled down which allowed the residual brettanomyces in the beer to ferment the sugar from the Gris juice and mature the beer over the next several months.  Once the beer was fully matured in the barrels and ready for packaging we dosed the blend with another 100L of Pinot Gris juice to act as the priming sugar for bottling. The resulting beer has all the wonderful aromas you would expect from a great Oregon Pinot Gris- stone fruit, pear, key lime but these are mixed with the funky fruitiness produced by the brettanomyces. The beer has a slight residual acidity that plays nicely with the smoothness from the fruit and with its high carbonation the overall experience is that of a dry funky Blanc De Gris.

Cheers!