Oyster Shuck and Cask Ale Festival – Bierkraft Backyard
April 19th, 2011
After our trip to Jimmy’s this past weekend, Chris O’Leary (from Brew York, New York) and I headed over to Bierkraft to check out their new backyard and partake in their first annual Oyster Shuck and Cask Ale Festival. Needless to say, the combination of outdoor drinking and rain showers made the afternoon a quite Portland-esque.
But despite the fowl weather – and lack of oysters by the time we arrived – everyone was in great spirits and we had a chance to try some fantastic beers including a Kelso of Brooklyn Oyster Stout brewed specifically for the event. Its briny character and slight roasted character were perfect on a rainy day with my consolation prize lunch of Meat Hook Bratwurst. Check the photos out below.
Tags: Allagash, cantillon, jimmy's no 43, Jolly Pumpkin, kriek, lambic, new york, photos.April Sours – Jimmy’s No. 43
April 18th, 2011
Sour beers… how I love them. I’ve never been big on drinking (or brewing) sweet beers. Aside from the occasional Christmas beer or Russian Imperial Stout, I tend to gravitate towards the dryer side of beer. And then there are sour beers.
What I described the other day to someone as “Beer 301,” sour beer is a small niche in the craft beer world full of wild yeast, complex bacteria and spontaneous fermentations. And while “wet mildew,” “horse blanket,” and “rotten cherry pie” and not desired tasting notes to the everyday beer-drinker’s palate, they were just the types of flavors we were looking for at this past weekend’s April Sours event at Jimmy’s No. 43
Tags: Allagash, cantillon, jimmy's no 43, Jolly Pumpkin, kriek, lambic, new york, photos.Spontanious Fermentation: Allagash's new Koelschip
December 16th, 2009
Always pushing the limits of Belgian inspired American beers, Portland, Maine’s Allagash brewery have developed their very own Koelschip for creating spontaneously fermented beers similar to the lambic style. While sour beers utilizing wild yeasts such as Brettanomyces have been popping up all over, all of the American versions of these are brewed using cultivated yeast strains. That is, until now.
The new Koelschip – aka a very large open air room with a steel tank and wooden ceiling (see photo above) – will change all that. For a few months out of the year, the weather by the Allagash brewery will be just right for cultivating “good” wild bacteria which accumulate on the ceiling and then fall into the beer tank. The beer is then pumped back indoors for fermenting and later aged in barrels.
Check out the awesome video below and keep an eye out for the first batch (no release date announced). In the interim, grab a glass of Allagash’s amazing Interlude which is a sour Belgian that was “accidentally” infected with local yeast and started this whole adventure. More photo’s here.
UPDATE: Beernews.org reports that this beer will make its wordwide debut tomorrow, December 16th in Philadelphia:
So when does the beer make its U.S. debut? Tomorrow night according to Felicia D’Ambrosio of the Philadelphia City Paper: “Rob Tod, owner of Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine, will visit Philadelphia to make the U.S. debut of the first-ever American spontaneously fermented lambic in a Tria Fermentation School class on Thursday, Dec. 17. Hyped lambic-heads have already sold the class out, a testament to Philadelphia’s devotion to the rarest and weirdest of all artisanal beer styles.”
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