Bottle Conditioning and May Beer Release!

As most of you know, we always 100% bottle condition our wild beers. This process involves adding a known amount of sugar and fresh yeast at packaging time to the still (un-carbonated) beer. The beer is then immediately packaged and kept warm to undergo the beer's last fermentation while sealed in the bottle. As the fresh yeast consumes the newly available sugar it is producing mainly ethanol and CO2. Since the package is sealed and the CO2 has nowhere to escape to, it stays dissolved in the beer producing carbonation! With our process and depending on the beer it takes about 6-8 days for all the sugar to be consumed by the yeast and the beer to be carbonated. BUT, the beer is not ready to consume at this point...

During conditioning, the yeast is also producing some flavors and aromas that are normal by-products of a healthy fermentation. Several of these flavors are desirable in the final product but not all of them, so it's important to allow the beer sufficient time to condition.  We typically allow another 3-12 weeks or until the green flavors of fermentation have all been consumed by the hungry yeast still inside the bottle. It is at this point that we finally release our beer because we want you to be able to enjoy it in all its glory from the day that it is released.  

That's a long-winded intro and explanation getting to the main point here, which is that today we did one final taste of all the beers for the May 20th release before opening the pre-sale and can still detect a small amount of these green fermentation flavors in Pinot Spontanée. The yeast will consume all the green flavors in the coming weeks but there is no guarantee that will happen before our release party.  Unfortunately that means we will be holding the bottles of Pinot Spontanée until our next release to make sure the beer has the time it needs to finish conditioning and tastes as delicious for you all as we know that it should. But look for it later this year.  It is an awesome beer!  

BUT, don't be too sad, because in its place we will be pulling out a few cases of the first version of Touch of Brett from our cellar for the mailing list release as a library offering so you can compare it side by side with this year as a mini vertical! Keep in mind when tasting them both that we were not trying to make the EXACT same beer. The theme of the Touch of Brett series is that the beer is: 

• Barrel Aged
• 100% Brettanomyces fermented Saison  
• Liberally dry-hopped after aging  
• Bottle conditioned  

With those themes in mind here are the differences between Touch of Brett and Touch of Brett Mosaic- 

BEER

Yeast Strain

Barrels

Dry Hop

TOUCH OF BRETT ('16)

Brett. Lambicus

French Oak and Acacia

Citra

TOUCH OF BRETT: MOSAIC

Blend of Brett. Brux

French Oak

Mosaic

We hope you enjoy this mini vertical and we'll see you all at the release!