Edition #14 in Terrapin Brewing’s Side Project series is arriving – “Tomfoolery” a black saison ale. The color, like the flavor is uncharacteristic for this kind of ale. Tomfoolery fits perfectly with Terrapin’s experimental mentality. Spike describes:
A few sources close to Brooklyn Brewing’s distributors are telling me that the brewery has promoted their recent Brewmaster’s Reserve Sorachi Ace to a year round offering.
Sorachi Ace is a farmhouse ale released early 2010 brewed with a rare unique hop Continue Reading →
The next release of Terrapin Brewing’s Side Project #14 “Tomfoolery” ships soon. This black saison is an all new experiment for Athens based brewery. Here’s the details –
Description:
Tomfoolery “Black Saison” is the latest addition to our Side Project series of Continue Reading →
[UPDATE 12/17] – It has been discovered that the cask tonight is actually The Bruery’s 7 Grain Saison. Made using barley,oats,wheat,rye,corn,rice and spelt. A bit less abv than rue – 5.5% ABV.
In early July, I got to collaborate with Crawford Moran & Matt on a beer. After Crawford and I got to talking, a beer I’d always wanted to try surfaced – a dark saison. I really thought it would be interesting to take a darker spin on the light bodied saison. On brew day we went to work. Starting around 7:30 am we fired up the grain mill. All in all, this beer took about 7 hours to brew from start to finish, and has been fermenting about 3 months.
This Thursday, yours truly (@ATLBeerMaster) , Jennifer Mann (@ATLBeerChick), Wendy Rutherford (@ATL_Events), and John Ashbaugh (@AtlantaBeer) with 5 Seasons West will be getting together to tap the Dark Saison. It will be a pretty cool evening, Wendy has “negotiated” some specials including $3 pours of the Dark Saison, $5 Svedka vodka cocktails, $5 house red & white wine, & 2 for 1 app specials! Be sure to read on to see how this beer is brewed.
5 Seasons Westside -10/7, 6:30-8:30 pm
1000 Marietta St NW
Atlanta, GA
I’ve been wondering which edition of this beer would reach Atlanta first. This beer is a collaboration between Victory, Stone, and Dogfish Head Brewing . Each brewery collaborated on this beer at Stone in California, and took the recipe home to brew and label under their own packaging. This Victory Brewing edition has arrived first. Still working on verifying if the Dogfish and Stone editions will hit the city. Read more for the whole story.
On shelves now is Saison De Pipaix from Brasserie à Vapeur from Pipaix-Leuze, Belgium. This Belgian brewer first opened it’s doors in 1785. This saison has been brewed there since day 1. The ownership of Brasserie à Vapeur has changed Continue Reading →
Edition #14 in Terrapin Brewing’s Side Project series is arriving – “Tomfoolery” a black saison ale. The color, like the flavor is uncharacteristic for this kind of ale. Tomfoolery fits perfectly with Terrapin’s experimental mentality. Spike describes:
Made with a silly amount of rye, wheat and black malts, this dark spicy beverage will quench the thirst of any court jester in the land. We hope you enjoy our light hearted attempt at making this traditional style with foolish brewing behavior. Spike’s Brewing Words of Wisdom: Beer is serious business…what you do after consumption often times is not.
Style: Saison
Hops: Golding, Willamette, Vanguard
Malts: Pale ,Vienna, Wheat Rye, DH Carafa III, Acidulated
Taste Expectations: Dark malts, coffee mix with fruit. Spice shines throughout.
Availability: 22oz bombers. Draft. One time Side Project Release
A few sources close to Brooklyn Brewing’s distributors are telling me that the breweryhas promoted their recent Brewmaster’s Reserve Sorachi Ace to a year round offering.
Sorachi Ace is a farmhouse ale released early 2010 brewed with a rare unique hop Sorachi ace. It was developed in Japan at Sapporo Brewery in 1988. Ace is a cross between British Brewers Gold and Saaz hop varieties. This hop is very lemony in smell and flavor. Unlike other offerings by Brooklyn, Sorachi Ace features only this hop. Ace is unfiltered, uses a proprietary Belgian yeast strain, and is dry hopped also with Sorachi. Also bottle re fermented.
Ace became quite popular very fast, and with Brooklyn Brewing’s recent expansion promoting this beer seems like a no-brainer.
The next release of Terrapin Brewing’s Side Project #14 “Tomfoolery” ships soon. This black saison is an all new experiment for Athens based brewery. Here’s the details –
Description:
Tomfoolery “Black Saison” is the latest addition to our Side Project series of beers. Number 14 on the list, this ale boasts an uncharacteristic black color for a tradi- tional Saison, but is just untraditional enough for our experimental mentality. Made with a silly amount of rye, wheat and black malts, this dark spicy beverage will quench the thirst of any court jester in the land. We hope you enjoy our light hearted attempt at making this traditional style with foolish brewing behavior.
Style: Saison Hops: Golding, Willamette, Vanguard Malts: Pale, Vienna, Wheat Rye, DH Carafa III, Acidulated
[UPDATE 12/17] – It has been discovered that the cask tonight is actually The Bruery’s 7 Grain Saison. Made using barley,oats,wheat,rye,corn,rice and spelt. A bit less abv than rue – 5.5% ABV.
The Porter Beer Bar taps a cask of The Bruery’s 7 Grain Saison. This is a specialty offering by The Bruery, and like their other saisons, is unfiltered, and cask conditioned.
Style: Saison/Farmhouse Ale
Taste Expectations: Grains FTW! Leave a comment with what you taste!
Cask taps 6pm, 12/17/10
Porter Beer Bar
1156 Euclid Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30307
In early July, I got to collaborate with Crawford Moran & Matt on a beer. After Crawford and I got to talking, a beer I’d always wanted to try surfaced – a dark saison. I really thought it would be interesting to take a darker spin on the light bodied saison. On brew day we went to work. Starting around 7:30 am we fired up the grain mill. All in all, this beer took about 7 hours to brew from start to finish, and has been fermenting about 3 months.
This Thursday, yours truly (@ATLBeerMaster) , Jennifer Mann (@ATLBeerChick), Wendy Rutherford (@ATL_Events), and John Ashbaugh (@AtlantaBeer) with 5 Seasons West will be getting together to tap the Dark Saison. It will be a pretty cool evening, Wendy has “negotiated” some specials including $3 pours of the Dark Saison, $5 Svedka vodka cocktails, $5 house red & white wine, & 2 for 1 app specials! Be sure to read on to see how this beer is brewed.
5 Seasons Westside -10/7, 6:30-8:30 pm
1000 Marietta St NW
Atlanta, GA
Brewing craft beer takes a bit of time. ( It’s basically an all day affair for just one batch.) The short version – You have to crush your grain, Mash in, sparge, boil, cool, transfer to your fermenter, pitch yeast. and then wait. There is a good bit to talk about in the brewing process. Fair warning – this is a simplified, short, version of the process.
Grain. Every beer begins with grain. Malts to be exact. Malts are crushed in a grain mill to allow water to soak out the fermentable sugars That’s where your alcohol will come from. In this case we used 6oo lbs of malt, including..
Mashtun. This is your first step. The grain mill feeds the grain into the mash tun. Here it is soaked between 155-160 degrees. The sugars are being pulled out of the grain. You may hear this referred to as the “tea”
Sparging. A very important step in the process. The spray nozzles you see is a way of slowly dripping water through the grain to get all the sugars out. This creates a sweet tasting “tea like” liquid called wort. This is a delicate process. If it is done at the wrong temperature, or the pH is incorrect, you will extract tannins from the husks of the grain. This will bitter your beer. (In a bad way.)
Brew Kettle. The image to the left is the wort filling up the kettle from the mash tun. Here the wort is boiled, and hop additions are made. Note: What hops are used, and when they are added change the resulting flavor of the beer.
Hop Addition #1: Whole flower Willamette hops are being added in a bag early in the boil. The bag(s) are tossed in to soak like a teabag. I actually used a stick to fully soak the bags. As you can imagine, it’s a bit warm.
Belgian Candi Sugar. Belgian candi sugar comes in light & dark versions. It’s literally rock candy you’ve seen as a kid. Candi sugar is commonly used in dubbels & tripels. It boosts alcohol in the beer without adding too much to the body. (Heavier mouthfeel, thick body, etc.) In the image on the left, we are boiling the light candi sugar to pour into the boil.
Hop Addition #2. This secondary hop addition is a noble hop Hallertau. This are not bagged, but allowed to freely boil.
Cleaning the tun. As you can see the water has been drained, leaving spent grain behind that needs to be emptied. What I am doing her is harvesting some of the grain to be used to make “Spent Grain” bread in the kitchen. The remaining grain is left for farmers to use as feed/fertilizer, etc.
Cooling: This is yet another very important step in the process. Water boils at 212 degrees. That’s WAY too hot to introduce live yeast cells. It would be like throwing live crabs into boiling water. They would die. The boiling wort has to be cooled to at least 70 degrees to allow the yeast to be pitched. (next entry) The picture to the left has multiple connections. Here this is connected to the brew kettle. Behind this panel is a series of cooling plates that chills the wort to 70 degrees is literally seconds. Here the beer is being chilled and pumped from the kettle to the fermenter. (Pic to follow)
Yeast Pitch. The yeast is being pitched into the fermenter here, as it fills. We used a Belgian Saison yeast.
The Fermenter. Dubbed “The Michael Jordan” because it’s fermenter 23. The location of the primary fermentation. Here the yeast goes to work.
Victory/Dogfish/Stone Collaboration “Saison du BUFF” Arrives!
I’ve been wondering which edition of this beer would reach Atlanta first. This beer is a collaboration between Victory, Stone, and Dogfish Head Brewing. Each brewery collaborated on this beer at Stone in California, and took the recipe home to brew and label under their own packaging. This VictoryBrewing edition has arrived first. Still working on verifying if the Dogfish and Stone editions make it south.
The idea for this beer germinated way back in 2003 when the three guys (Sam from Dogfish, Greg from Stone and Bill from Victory) formed the BUFF alliance (Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor) – a noble endeavor with the goal to highlight the passion and camaraderie of the American craft brew movement.
So, BUFF didn’t really do anything (beyond talk a lot of talk) until 2010 when the three brewers finally got together to jointly brew at beer at the Stone Brewery. Saison du BUFF will first be brewed at Stone and then replicated at each of the other two breweries – same recipe, same ingredients, three different breweries throughout 2010.
Are they different? The same beer is brewed at different breweries. As you will see in the video below, Sam calls this beer iterative. A dialog if you will. There will be some variations however subtle to this beer. Worth trying all.
Style: Saison
Brewed with parley, sage, rosemary, & thyme.
6% ABV
Availability: Each brewery uses the same recipe, bottled under their own artwork. Very limited.
Looking for this? 9/9 –In stock at Tower Wine & Spirits, Green’s Beverages, Hop City.
Below – Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head) speaks about Saison du Buff
On shelves now is Saison De Pipaix from Brasserie à Vapeur from Pipaix-Leuze, Belgium. This Belgian brewer first opened it’s doors in 1785. This saison has been brewed there since day 1. The ownership of Brasserie à Vapeur has changed a few times over the 200+ years of existence, only closing it’s doors once from 1983-1984.
Long brewed Pipaix is a Wallonian saison – described by the brewery as –
“SAISON DE PIPAIX 6 %vol. 75cl a traditional Wallonian saison beer, born with the brewery in 1785. Dry, normally hopped, slightly acidic, very spicy (black pepper, ginger, sweet orange peel, curaçao, star anise…)”
Taste Expectations: Slightly tart, with fruits like apple & pear. Lemon & sweet malts. The flavor profile is busy and complex, but fun.
Availability: 750 ML, Capped bottles. Year round offering.
Edition #14 in Terrapin Brewing’s Side Project series is arriving – “Tomfoolery” a black saison ale. The color, like the flavor is uncharacteristic for this kind of ale. Tomfoolery fits perfectly with Terrapin’s experimental mentality. Spike describes:
