Embrace The Funk

Sour, Funky and Wild Beer

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  • Chris White On The New Funky and Sour offerings from White Labs in 2012

    2012 is about to get even funkier! White Labs released their revised seasonal strain “Platinum Series” schedule and it includes 2 NEW funky offerings PLUS 2 funky fan favorites (say that 10 times fast) are going year round. (You already know one from this post last month)

    I love news like this. Changing their release schedule to add 4 wild/funky offerings is a huge step in getting more people to embrace the funk! I had the chance today to speak with Chris White; president at White Labs to get a little more insight into the strains. That interview is below…. But first up the exciting new offerings:

    WLP644 Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois (MAY-JUNE release)
    This Belgian strain, used traditionally for 100% Brettanomyces fermentations, produces a slightly tart beer with delicate characteristics of mango and pineapple. Can also be used to produce effervescence when bottle-conditioning.
    Optimal Temp: 70-85F
    Flocculation: Low
    Attenuation: 85%+
    Alcohol Tolerance: Medium-High

    WLP665 Flemish Ale Blend (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER release)
    Blended culture used to produce the classic beer styles of the West Flanders region of Belgium . A proprietary blend of Saccharomyces yeasts, Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus, this culture creates a more complex, dark stone fruit characteristic than WLP 655 Belgian Sour Mix.
    Optimal Temp: 68-80F
    Flocculation: Low-Medium
    Attenuation: 80-85%+
    Alcohol Tolerance: Medium-High

    And the fan favorites that are available now as a year round offering.

    WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend
    Inspired by local American brewers crafting semi-traditional Belgian-style ales. This blend creates a complex flavor profile with a moderate level of sourness. It consists of a traditional farmhouse yeast strain and Brettanomyces. Great yeast for farmhouse ales, Saisons, and other Belgian-inspired beers.
    Attenuation: 75-82%
    Flocculation: Medium
    Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 68-72°F
    (20-22°C)
    Alcohol Tolerance: 5-10%

    WLP630 Berliner Weisse Blend
    A blend of a traditional German Weizen yeast and Lactobacillus to create a subtle, tart, drinkable beer. Can take several months to develop tart character. Perfect for traditional Berliner Weisse.
    Attenuation: 73-80%
    Flocculation: Medium
    Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 68-72°F
    (20-22°C)
    Alcohol Tolerance: 5-10%

    ETF- How much has the demand for White Labs sour strains and blends increased recently?

    Chris- Alot. I would say more than double, probably closer to a threefold increase if not more. It’s not only in the homebrewing side but we are seeing it growing more and more on the commercial side too. We are seeing breweries wanting to use something for their barrel projects and conditioning. We had a brewery contact us that just got 20 wine barrels to put some strains into. But it is up across the board, it’s what people want right now.

    ETF- With the WLP670 / WLP630 full time now and the WLP665 / WLP644 coming out, is this the most funk ever in the White Labs lineup?

    Chris- Yes for sure. It’s actually the most strains across the board we’ve had available in at least 5 years. Funny thing with the new line up we didn’t realize this until we looked at the sheet that we had so many Belgian type strains this year. (13 of the 23 scheduled)

    ETF-In the new WLP644 Brett release does the word “Trois” (3) in the strain name give us some insight on a commercial example with this strain?

    Chris- Ha! We usually try to throw something in the name to give a clue…But it’s us having some fun with it.

    ETF-In the WLP665, can you give some insight on what might be the strongest microbe or what more forward microbes to expect in about a year?

    Chris- That’s a tough one, It has a great mix of the Brettanomyces, Pedio, and Lacto. We wanted to come out with something a little more Rodenbach like that will develop even more after that time.

    ETF-Any ideas or plans to have more sour/wild releases in 2013?

    Chris- We are going on a bigger acquisition quest this year for more strains. Definitely getting more active in collecting some different strains over the coming year.

    We also talked about helping out brewers who are new to sour and funky brewing. I told Chris I heard a lot of new to the funk brewers appreciated the good solid recipe (Tomme Arthur’s Saison Blanc) that was included in the White Labs newsletter when the WLP670 came out. Since getting into sour brewing can be intimidating to say the least, just having that recipe from a reputable source really helped some new brewers tear down that wall of uncertainty and jump right in…those brewers are now hooked. In short Chris said they would discuss it at White Labs tomorrow and look into having a recipe to coincide with the strain releases.  So if you have been thinking about brewing a sour beer, it sounds like White Labs is once again going to give you some great ground level support for your first batch!

  • A Message From Cantillon About The Brussels Gueuze Museum

    A few days ago this message hit my inbox from Jean Van Roy of Cantillon  in regards to The Brussels Gueuze Museum … I thought I would pass it along. He asks that you contact him at this link with any questions. 

    Message to our loyal members and to all fans of Cantillon Brewery! 

    Like every year around this time, I very much hope to see every member of our organisation renew his or her membership by paying the associated fee for the following year. 

    For the first few years after the Brussels Gueuze Museum was founded, the “Membership dues” item on the museum’s balance sheet accounted for a significant portion of its income. Over time, however, the number of visitors continued to grow and this of course increased the amount of money collected through entrance fees. The result of this is that today the funds brought in through annual membership dues has become ridiculously small compared to the income generated by visitors to the brewery. 

    Yet despite this, in my eyes, actually in my heart, I look at your continued commitment as a token of friendship, acknowledgement and trust, and certainly not as a financial contribution intended to shore up or grow the museum’s assets. We need this friendship, this loyalty, as it gives us the strength to continue in our endeavours. For this reason, I truly hope to be able to include your name and address in my membership list for 2012.

    As regards the membership fee itself, are you ready for something truly original? We have decided to reduce the minimum amount from EUR 12 to EUR 10 for Belgian members and from EUR 13 to EUR 11 for members living abroad. The maximum amount naturally continues to be “at your discretion”. And if you want to know why we’re rolling back dues, well let’s just say that I hate to see the price of French fries stay the same while potatoes get cheaper. 

    Some of you have been supporting our organisation since its inception in 1978, and yet others have joined us along the way. However, new members are few and far between and among the 125 museum members in 2011 there was only one lady who was not already with us the year before.

    Clearly, our organisation is losing members each year and if we take a closer look at the figures we see that the best performance dates back to 1994 with 287 people.

    This is not a very positive trend, all the more so as in the meantime Cantillon Brewery has been building up a reputation and its products have become more and more popular throughout the world. And here I’d like to point out to all the brewery’s fans that this is a business which just barely avoided bankruptcy in the early 1970s.

    Back then, I thought it would be a great idea to showcase the marvellous process of spontaneous fermentation as well as the related tools and equipment. Following on from this, several cultural events served as the foundation for increased awareness-raising about this traditional industry.

    Then, in 1978, the crowning achievement of this small revolution in brewing circles was the creation of the non-profit organisation Brussels Gueuze Museum. So basically what we’re saying now is all you Cantillon fans out there, come and join us! By becoming a member you will show us that you acknowledge our efforts and that we made the right choice 40 years ago.  

    Please note that I would be happy to personally assist anyone who would like more information about our non-profit organisation. Membership in the Brussels Gueuze Museum includes receiving a personalised newsletter every 4 months to keep you informed of our activities, as well as an invitation to the general meeting at the end of January to discuss the cultural and financial events of the past year.

    Happy New Year to everyone, and thanks again for your loyalty.


    Jean-Pierre Van Roy

    President

    Membership fees

    Thank you for your loyalty and your confidence.

    Belgium: € 10,00 – Other countries: € 11,00

    To be paid into the account of the asbl Musée Bruxellois de la Geuze: 310-0078340-50.

    We remind you that members enjoy free access to the museum, tasting included of course. They get a discount when they buy beer, wine, cheese or marmalade and they get a special rate on the occasion of the Brewing Quintessence.

    Bank identification for payments from abroad:

    ING – 16 A Place Bara 1070 Bruxelles – Account number: 310-0078340-50

    Swift code: BBRUBEBB010 – IBAN: BE86 3100 0783 4050

  • Yazoo “Fortuitous”…A Conversation With Linus Hall

    It’s kind of a convoluted story

    About 9 years ago when I was first learning to brew I remember hearing about this new brewery planning to open in Nashville. A guy I worked with knew I liked good beer so he told me about his buddy Linus who also knew how to brew beer. Well he happened to be the guy who was opening the new brewery called Yazoo. A few months later I remember meeting Linus and trying his beer for the first time at The Music City Brewers Festival. Chit chatting with him at the festival I remember thinking what a nice guy he was to give me some brewing tips and to take time for beer chat. Fast forward to 2011…while much has changed like Yazoo outgrowing their old location at the Marathon Motorworks building or the fact you can order a Yazoo at almost any restaurant in Nashville, one thing that hasn’t changed is Linus still makes the time to sit a chat about beer. I’ve been fortunate enough to follow Yazoo from the beginning and in 2009 even brew a batch of beer on their system for a taproom only release. 

    So I was thrilled to learn one of my favorite breweries that just so happens to be local too had a sour beer in the works. A few days ago I sat down with Linus in the taproom to talk about their most ambitious beer project yet:  Yazoo “Fortuitous”. Which is based on their award winning Cherrywood Smoked Porter called “Sue”.

    for·tu·i·tous : (Adjective) Happening by a lucky chance; fortunate.

    ETF-So what’s the back story and timeline on this batch of beer?

    LH-It’s kind of a convoluted story….We brewed a batch of Sue in August of last year (2010). In late November we started getting some calls from stores saying people were bringing these back. They were saying it had a sour taste to it, so it had been about 3-4 months since then. 

    So we brought back everything we could get our hands on and replaced it with a fresh batch. But as we were tasting it, we’re like wow its kinda unfortunate we weren’t shooting for that flavor because it’s starting to develop into something interesting. So then the idea came to take some Sue and sour it with that micro organism. We looked at it under the microscope, we never sent it off for testing, but based on the way it tasted and looked like under the microscope we think it was pediococcus. In the early stages it had a lot of diacetyl, but that receded and it developed that real nice sour taste. But by itself it had almost a thin slightly metallic flavor that we thought needed to be rounded out. We also had been barrel aging some Sue in Corsair barrels so we thought that would make a great blend. The bourbon in the middle and beginning seemed to enhance the sourness of the finish.  

    ETF-What was your first reaction when you realize there really is something wrong with this batch and it’s not just a few people thinking something is wrong?

    LH-This happened during a transition period from Marathon to here and you know especially beers that are sitting warm on the shelf (which unfortunately in Tennessee a lot of the high alcohol beers are kept warm) it’s not unusual after 3-4 months if you picked up the slightest bit of infection its gonna start to show. 

    So we thought we would treat this as a learning process … try to figure out where it came in, but its kind of hard to pinpoint since we are in the middle of moving tanks and trying to figure out whats going on. But yeah your first thought is oh crap! But you know since its was based here in Nashville and we don’t ship Sue hardly anywhere else we knew we could replace that beer for people and they’d be pretty happy. Anybody who complained we replaced it with a fresh 4 pack even if they drank half the pack, so everybody seemed pleased.

    New Yazoo Building (courtesy fledglingbrewer.com

    ETF-How long after you got everything back here did you decide well we have this unintended sour beer, but I think we can make something out of this?

    LH-It just seemed a shame to not at least try to do something. I knew the time would come where we could play around with things like this. Now that we have the space we just put this beer away from everything else and it just seemed like an opportunity to showcase some different ways we could spread our wings. With the (12th South) Winter Warmer coming up it just seemed like a great time to play around with some different things we hadn’t done before.

    ETF-Whats the breakdown of the blend?

    LH- It’s tough because we basically kept blending it into one of our smaller 10 barrel fermentors that we kept from Marathon until we liked how it tasted. But I would guess it’s probably around 30% barrel aged Sue, 65% sour, and we did blend a little fresh Sue in (5%) to round out the aroma.  

    ETF-How long did it take you to reach the point where you know that’s the final blend that’s the one we are going to bottle up?

    LH- We just kept getting small sample sizes of each part and pouring ourselves blends. Once we had an idea of how we wanted it to taste we started blending them all together. To me you want to start with your most extreme aggressive flavors first and then start blending in some lighter flavors after that. We loved the bourbon aroma but it was almost too much by itself. The sour had some nice notes but it was kind of thin and metallic in the middle so you keep playing with the blend. But you want to take your strongest flavors and diluting them with your different flavors.

    ETF- How many times did it take to get the blend right?

    LH- Well I started having this idea of blending the two shortly after we got all the sour Sue back, but it took awhile before we could play with the blends because it did have a lot of diacetyl, but we thought time will cure that. We had been tasting it for around 6 months and there was interest to put it out so a great place to showcase it and get reaction was at the Winter Warmer.

    ETF-When will this beer be distributed?

    LH-We will give the release date out on Facebook and Twitter. But right now I know it won’t be until at least a few weeks in 2012. We are also trying to figure out how to release it so it’s fair for everyone and they have a chance to try a bottle. 

    ***Linus briefly hit on the possibility of a release event, it’s not my place to say what all that might actually entail since most of those details are still being sorted out. ***

    ETF-How many bottles do you anticipate will end up in distribution?

    LH-We are shooting for about 800-1000 (25oz bottles), which isn’t very many at all but we are hoping that the success of that will lead us to do some bigger batches of sour beers.

    ETF- Tagging along with that last answer…you guys did the all Brettanomyces IPA last summer and now you this bacteria beer. Did you ever think a year or 2 ago that you would let these into your brew house?

    LH- Well no …not really, but you’ve always got to be careful. We now have that dedicated tank we don’t do anything else “normal” in. Cross contamination is always a worry, but these things are close to normal yeast so the things you use to kill or harm your normal yeast will kill them. So it’s really just keeping them separated during aging and making sure you don’t use certain hoses you transferred sour beers for other normal beer things.  It’s a scary process until you see what the dangers are and what precautions people need to take. I think as brewers you are always worried so much about the negative side of sour beer, but once you taste one of these beers you are like “wow”! To me it’s almost worth the risk to be able to produce something like that.

    ETF-With the dedicated tank do you have anything planned for the coming year?

    LH- Yep… this is one of my favorite styles of beer and it’s neat to see the general public’s taste going that way. I think for the next 3-4 years sour beers are going to be as hot as IPA’s. So yeah it’s something fun to do, but the bad thing is there is so much time and effort invested into it that you can’t really build your business around it unless you are Cantillon or like them. But it’s something you can have a lot of fun with and while it will never be a major part of our business here its something we as brewers love doing  and sharing with people.

    …as brewers you are always worried so much about the negative side of sour beer, but once you taste one of these beers you are like “wow”! 

    Owner/Brewmaster Linus Hall in Yazoo's taproom

  • News from White Labs on WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend

    Back in September I posted this article on WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend. It’s a farmhouse yeast strain and Brettanomyces blend all in 1, most likely strains from The Lost Abbey. I (like many others) was a big fan of this blend and used it in 2 beers which turned out great. Sadly a number of brewers missed out on this seasonal offering from White Labs. In that post from September I asked if you liked it or wanted to see it again to please email them.

    Well…..White Labs has listened to everyone! I got confirmation today that we will not only see WLP670 back, but it is coming back as a year round offering! Regardless if you contacted them because of my posting or just on your own I thank you! It’s a great blend and will not only make it a little more cost efficient to brew this style, but gives us one more way to spread the funk and wild!

    ***Update*** This will make it’s year round offering debut in January! So look for it in your LHBS maybe the 2nd or 3rd week of January. If your LHBS doesn’t have it in by then you may want to ask when they expect to order some.

  • Batch 4 and Batch 5 Beatification soon plus RR is installing a new Coolship!

    CHECK OUT THE BIG NEWS BELOW on RUSSIAN RIVER BEATIFICATION RELEASES (Can anyone help me get a bottle?)

    Russian River Brewing Company: Holiday Greetings From Russian River!.

    ….and don’t forget about my interview earlier this year with Vinnie!