equipment

Embracing Inefficiency in Craft Brewing

Good To Know

I used to do a talk titled "Embracing Homebrewing" (here it is on the Beersmith Podcast). Basically, rather than worry about replicating the exact process/results of a craft brewery, enjoy the things that you can do on a small scale without regulatory oversight (dosing in spirits, ice distillation, foraging) or  economic pressures (expensive ingredients, not worrying about extract efficiency) etc.

The more great brewers I talk to... the more I realize that Scott and I run Sapwood Cellars like a big homebrewing operation more than a small craft brewery. We're lucky that we have enough support and direct sales that don't have to worry too much about cost, time, or efficiency. This post dives into that a little deeper on the benefits of inefficiency using the six beers included in the upcoming shipment of our Out-of-State Shipping Club as examples! 


Variability: Flemish Gothic

Most mixed-ferm breweries have a single house culture they pull off a tank or set of barrels or a specific commercial microbe blend that they add to every batch of a given beer. It makes a lot of sense, it promotes consistency and you don't have to worry about blending/attenuation. However, for me it lacks the dynamic flavor options and variety in finished beers I love. Every time we brew a new sour base beer, we select a barrel with a culture that suits it, and add some to primary (along with a healthy Saccharomyces pitch). 

Flemish Gothic is a beer we blended from three different wine barrels, with three different base sour reds (Standard Red, Provisional Strength, Vin De Céréale) each with a different culture. That allowed us to dial in the acidity, malt balance, and level of Brett expression. It worked out that we did a three-year blend rather than the standard old/young blend done by Rodenbach and many other Flemish Reds. 


Flemish Gothic Tasting Notes

Smell - Real range, right from the start. Honey, leather, blackberry fruit leather, some dried hay of hops. Cocoa, Tootsie Pop. I could see Balsamic, but without the vinegar or nail polish. 

Appearance - Beautiful ruby red. Good clarity. Stable off-white foam, pours three fingers. 

Taste - Bright lactic acidity, with dried cherries in the finish. No acetic harshness in the finish. Mild perceived fruity sweetness. A little damp oak, but not aggressively woody despite the extended aging thanks to the well used barrels. Could have even used a little more. Slight licorice as it warms. 

Mouthfeel - Medium body, pretty smooth. Firm carbonation. Slightly oaky astringency. 

Drinkability - Really good, lots of malt/barrel/Brett character all working together without excessive acidity. One of my favorite sours we’ve done, right up there with Growth Rings. I’d like to blend something similar again in a few years. 

Changes for Next Time - A few people suggested more acidity, but I like it as is. It’s considerably more acidic than my recollection of Flemish Kiss from Commons. I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this one ages.


Effort: Gindicators 2024

Local in-season fruit is less expensive than buying IQF or Puree. What you are paying for with those is convenience and consistency. Buying locally requires figuring out who grows good produce, building relationships, and being on top of communication. For Gindicators, we sourced peaches, nectarines, and apricots as the summer progressed. I picked through them each day, processing and freezing the fruit that was ripe. Waiting on the rest. It's worth it for me to go that extra length to create the best stone fruit aroma possible! 

We paired that with a low-acidity (higher hoping rate) pale base aged in gin barrels. Stone fruit in general and apricots in particular bring a lot of their own acidity. After refermentation we blended in a 30 gallon "double gin-barrel-finished" higher-acid beer to add more gin character.



Gindicators 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Funky nose, damp hay Brett. As a result, it reads more saison-ish than our sours usually do. Melds in a fun way with citrus and rosemary notes from the barrels. Plenty of stone fruit, yellow peach especially, but leaves room for the other aromatics. Pez candy. Overall vibrant and varied. 

Appearance - Mild haze, bright yellow body. Sticky white head, good density. End of the bottle pour has some small yeast floaties. Seems like more yeast adhered in the bottle than usual too. Maybe the 58W3 from refermentaiton? 

Taste - Snappy acidity (malic?), glad we selected lower acid barrels for this one! Tastes more acidic than the >3.5 pH suggests. Lots of fresh apricot and nectarine on the palate. Minimal sweetness.  Juniper comes through in the finish, piney, Sprite-like. Faint bitterness from the higher IBU component in the blend. 

Mouthfeel - Firm carbonation. Light body, but not tannic or harsh despite the extended aging. 

Drinkability - The acid level is just about right for my tastes, lingers for a second, but then goes. 

Changes for Next Time - Not much to change on this one. I could be tempted to go up 25% on the fruit, it had a little more punch before we blended in the last 30 gallon gin barrel. Likely wasn’t necessary to repitch yeast so soon after refermentation on the fruit?


Process: Neologism 2024

We treat our sour beers with the same care and attention to sanitation and oxygen ingress as we do our Hazy IPAs. We purge the barrels and bottles with CO2, we fill the blending tank with water and push it out to remove all of the oxygen before transers. I think it really shows with the "vibrancy" of the aromatics we are able to achieve, especially in a dry hopped sour like Neologism. It goes into the blending tank on hops, and infuses cold for 48 hours before bottling. Since we can't do a water push out with the hops in there, we do the push out, then add the hops while purging with CO2. 

The only previous batch of Neologism was named to Craft Beer & Brewing's Top 20 of 2022... that was the only beer we ever entered into a contest of any type!


Neologism 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Expressive in the nose with the gin shining. Spruce tips. Barnyard. Hops aren't as "raw" as an IPA, but it is still fresh smelling. 

Appearance - Head is great (dense, long lasting). Slightly hazy golden. 

Taste - A little of that guava thing from the first batch is starting to come through, awesome. Pleasant acidity, tart, but not harsh. Gin is a little more savory-herbal than previous gin beers: rosemary, spruce, bruised basil. A touch of oaky-vanillin as it warms. 

Mouthfeel - Light astringency, firm carbonation. Light body. 

Drinkability - I think this one will continue to improve as the edges soften and the hops integrate more. Still wish we could get more of those McClintock Reserva barrels, but even the second use one really helped this one! 

Changes for Next Time - On point! Not this beer… but would still love to do a Tangerine-Gin and/or a Guava Gin at some point.


Risk: Honeymoon SZN

We try a lot of different things that "sound like a good idea." It would certainly be easier and more reliable to pick a slate of brands to make every year. We do rebrew/blend the same beers occasionally, but we don't have a firm schedule and we always try to leave room for inspiration based on what barrels, ingredients, and flavors we have available. 

For Honeymoon SZN we started with a collab we brewed at Olde Mother Brewing (Frederick). Wedding SZN was a rice ale with Nelson Sauvin, elderflowers, and Phantasm (along with a natural thiol-releasing yeast strain). We racked it to white wine barrels and let the resident culture work. I sourced muscadine/scuppernong grapes (indigenous) through a local farmstand that has a relationship with a grower in South Carolina. I knew it was a good idea from the aroma of my car on the way back - halfway between Nelson Sauvin and Strawberry candy!


Honeymoon SZN Tasting Notes

Smell - Muscadine really comes through. Lots of white grape juice. Some toasty-funk, but not a primary aroma when cold. Bridges the gap between the Nelson and Brett. 

Appearance - Clear. Very pale yellow. Good thick white head that doesn’t last long. 

Taste - Light acidity, even less than Life is Ridiculous. Good fruit character, unique, fresh. A touch of funky smoke in the finish I haven’t noticed before. No elderflower. 

Mouthfeel - Bright, light, spritzy. 

Drinkability - Good, could use a touch more acid, but it is very drinkable as is.

Changes for Next Time - Not sure muscadine is a star… would be fun with a light dry hop. Maybe with another fruit, stone fruit?


Time: Opulence 2024

We age our beers for a long time. Years ago I visited an established brewery that had just added a large barrel facility for sour beers. The brewer running it mentioned he had to meet a monthly production quota for packaged product. Just seems impossible for that to produce fantastic beer. Sometimes we go a month without bottling anything because the beer isn't ready yet... sometimes we are doing back-to-back runs because we don't want something to sit any longer! Opulence 2024 was supposed to be Opulence 2023, but the beer just wasn't ready for the cherries after 8 months in the barrel... but it was at 20 months! We had some leftover high-acidity beer from the previous batch of Opulence kegged off that we blended in with the "fresher" beer that was aged in second-use Cherry Brandy barrels. 


Opulence 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Reminds me of my homebrews (in a good way). Funk (leathery) really comes through along with cherry and almond. Cherry is really fun, lots of cherry pie, vanilla, and depth. Nothing weird from the cherry brandy barrels considering the previous use was Imperial Stout. 

Appearance - I wish the clarity was a little better, but the color is a pleasant amber-orange. Great off-white head. 

Taste - Mild acidity, could be a little higher. Detectable bitterness (maybe a hair high). Good cherry flavor, sour cherry pie, vibrant. 

Mouthfeel - Light astringency, which is disruptive to the smoothness. Firm carbonation, medium-thin body. 

Drinkability - It’s solid. I like the lower acidity compared to past batches, but the bitterness gets in the way. 

Changes for Next Time - I wonder if aged hops rather than fresh in the whirlpool would work without providing any weird aromatics? I really like what the Saaz in the whirlpool did for the aroma and balance (lower acidity), but the bitterness clashes with the acidity in flavor… despite being “only” 19 IBUs. Maybe better to go with some alpha acid extract in the tank?


Equipment: Stained 2024

One thing that has worked out well for us is having smaller equipment. Rather than be forced to do big blends, we have equipment that is sized for flexibility. For example, with Stained we age it on wine grapes and raspberries separately. I'm sensitive to the "seedy" flavor that comes from long contact time with raspberries... but I also enjoy the deeper flavors of extended skin contact on grapes. So for this batch we kegged off the raspberry half after two weeks, while the Merlot grapes continued aging for another month until we liked the flavor. This plays into having the time to taste and adjust the production schedule. 


Stained 2024 Tasting Notes

Smell - Berries, especially raspberries… go figure. Certainly reads Flemish Red, Rodenbach etc. rather than Lambic thanks to no big funk/rubber. 

Appearance - Bright red, thin off-white head drops quickly. Good clarity, but not brilliant. Very attractive. 

Taste - Raspberry popsicle, very bright. Suggestion of sweetness from the fruit and malt. THP has cleaned up. Jammy, not overtly malty, but it fills in the fruit. Firm acidity, no harshness. Wine is subdued, but layers complexity and roundness compared to straight raspberries. Clean, not much funk although there is some earthiness. Oak is subdued thanks to third-use barrels. 

Mouthfeel - Medium-light, firm carbonation. Not thin or watery, helps support the fruit. 

Drinkability - Good, plenty of acid for my tastes, delicious fruit. Could be a little more interesting microbially, but it works in the Flemish tradition. 

Changes for Next Time - Could shift more towards the Merlot? Surprised how much acidity it picked up despite the alpha acid extract in the tote.


Out of State Shipping Club

If you are interested in tasting these beers, please sign-up by 10/28! You'll be charged $146 to your card on file and expect to receive your beer the first week of November! Available in: WA, CA, OR, NM, NV, CO, MN, NY, DC, CT, NE, MA, FL, PA, NH, NJ, ID, TX, KS, IN, WI, MO, IA, IL, MI, ND, VA, RI, NC, and SC.

Includes one 500 mL bottle each:

Gindicators 2024: Gin-barrel-aged pale sour with Peaches, Nectarines, and Apricots

Flemish Gothic: 3-year Blend of Wine Barrel Aged Sour Reds

Opulence 2024: Sour Red with Fresh and Dried Sour Cherries aged in Cherry Brandy and Bourbon Barrels

Neologism 2024: Gin-barrel-aged and Mosaic Cryo Dry Hopped

Stained 2024: Wine-barrel-aged with Raspberries and Merlot Grapes

Honeymoon SZN: Wine-barrel-aged with Phantasm and Muscadine/Scuppernong Grapes


... read more
by admin 0 Comments

Reducing Oxygen in Your Finished Beer

Good To Know
This week I look at methods to reduce oxygen in your finished beer. Oxygen is known to negatively impact beer flavor and long term stability. While oxygen is widely used at the beginning of fermentation to aid in yeast growth, the yeast effectively scrubs virtually all of the oxygen out of the beer during fermentation. […]
... read more
by admin 0 Comments

Did I Wreck Sour Beer in America

Good To Know

My book, American Sour Beers, is turning ten next month! I wrote it from the perspective (and experience) of a homebrewer. I wanted to experiment and learn. I really didn't know much about brewing commercially, creating consistent blends, adapting recipes as a barrel program matured, developing flavors that would sell etc. Looking back I have to ask, did my book help launch 1,000 barrel programs, without providing the knowledge brewers actually needed to succeed?


Over the last decade American craft brewing had an explosion of breweries ramping up barrel-aged sour production, followed by a pretty rapid decline (including multiple mid-sized breweries closing their programs and sour-focused breweries closing). Part of that is the inherently less-predictable nature of mixed-fermentation (when you order a cherry sour beer, what are you expecting? Kriek, cherry juice, cherry vinegar etc.). Compare that to a bourbon-barrel vanilla-bean stout where you have a pretty good idea of what the intent was. I suspect at least part of it was the oversaturation of the market combined with the high prices.

Despite brewing my first sour beer in 2006, becoming a brewery consultant in 2011, writing a book in 2014, and opening a brewery in 2018... I haven't been consistently happy with the barrel-aged mixed-fermentations I made until the last couple years. I certainly never released a beer that I thought was bad, but there were certainly had batches that were too sour, muddled, under/over carbonated, or just didn't "pop." During that time we've also released some amazing beers that I still love!

At Sapwood Cellars we've relied on our local club members, and the people who walk in the door to buy ~10,000 bottles of barrel-aged sour beer a year. That may sound like a lot, but it's less than 5% of our production (and we're a pretty small brewery). There really hasn't been much interest in barrel-aged sour bottles in our limited distribution range. They tend to be beers that sell best when you can explain them directly to the drinker, rather than just have them sitting on a shelf! If only there was a way I could talk directly to beer drinkers interested in sour beer...


Rather than bury the lead more than I already have, Sapwood Cellars barrel-aged mixed-fermentation sours are now available for shipping within much of America through a Membership Club administered by Tavour! Shipping is available to: WA, CA, OR, NM, NV, CO, MN, NY, DC, CT, NE, MA, FL, PA, NH, NJ, ID, TX, KS, IN, WI, MO, IA, IL, MI, ND, VA, RI, NC, SC, and MD.

The first installment of the club is $146 (including shipping) for one 500 mL bottle each of six beers: 

Growth Rings 2023: Three-year-blend of barrel-aged Sours, essentially our cuvee of bases, barrels, and microbes showing off our house character. This one isn't refermented with wine yeast, so the dregs would be a good option if you are looking for microbes! It was the second highest-rated "Gueuze" on Untappd in 2023!


Barrels of Rings: Our pale ale base, mixed-fermented in wine barrels and then dry hopped right before bottling. Citrusy-funky with restrained acidity.


Jammiest Bit: Our homage to Hommage, a barrel-aged sour on loads of sour pie cherries and red raspberries. Fruity, funky, tart etc.


Botanicia: A blend of pale sours aged in gin barrels that we then infused with dried limes and quinine. A weird play on a gin-and-tonic... but with a lot more acidity and funk!


Elliptical Orbit 2023: A continuation of the "Dark Funky Saison" series still with my original collaborator and homebrew buddy Alex. For this one he roasted Geisha coffee beans and we infused the barrel-aged dark sour with Geisha cascara (dried coffee cherries). 


Fruit of Many Uses: We sequentially racked the same barrel-aged tart/funky base onto second-use Chardonnay wine grapes, cherries, raspberries, and white nectarines. All of the fruit was whole/local.


Over the next couple weeks I'll be posting my detailed tasting notes on each of the beers, along with recipes, lessons learned, and suggestions for brewing something similar at home! I'll repeat for each club release, assuming enough people sign-up for the club to make it viable. 

Over the last five years it isn't "one simple trick" we learned that improved our beer. It's the accumulation of 100 little things from ingredient selection, to blending, to process refinement, to equipment that we've figured out. It's sitting down with each beer, drinking, thinking, taking detailed notes, and iterating. So much of it is not doing it by myself, having Scott, Ken, and Spencer to push to do things I wouldn't have (Botanica was Ken's baby, and Barrels of Rings was Scott's). Both are delicious, and they are certainly beers I would not have brewed if it was all up to me!




... read more
by admin 0 Comments

Lessons from Five Years of Bugs, Barrels, and Brewing

Good To Know

This July marks five years since I left my day job with the federal government to brew full-time. We filled our first barrel with mixed-fermentation saison before opening the tasting room at Sapwood Cellars. Since then, we are up to 80 oak barrels with a dedicated suite for mixed-fermentation. So, I thought it would be a good time to sit down and reflect on the lessons that Scott and I have learned over the years! The things we got right, the things we got wrong, and where we are going from here!

Luckily, we've had a pretty good run so far! We've cultivated a great group of supporters in our Wood Club. Neologism (gin-barrel-aged Cascade/Simcoe Cryo dry-hopped pale sour) was named one of Craft Beer & Brewing's Top-20 beers of 2022 by way of winning a massive blind tasting. Despite the pandemic we've been able to modestly expand (production, staff, and space)! We're even shipping beers around the US through Tavour!

I recently realized that Google discontinued Feedburner in 2021... which is why you haven't gotten an email from me in a while. I've changed The Mad Fermentationist over to a new email service, so if you've signed up you should get emails for new posts going forward! If you want more emails from me, I write the near-weekly Sapwood Newsletter (with details on new beers often including info on ingredients, process, and equipment)!



The Things We Got Right

Diverse Microflora - It is certainly simpler to have a single "house" culture. It allows for relatively worry-free blending, but doesn't leave as much room for unique flavors. Maintaining multiple cultures, we have to worry about the microbes from one barrel over-attenuating in the bottle if they are more attenuative than others in the blend. However, the variety of flavors expressed and the options for blending is worth the effort at our scale. We've been even happier since we started selecting our favorite barrels and using them to inoculate subsequent batches. Now we can select which character fits a pale sour vs. a sour red. 

Last week we blended our second batch of Growth Rings (three year blend). To ensure all the microbes have time to get to know each other, we blended the four barrels (all different pale base beers) into a tote. They'll sit there for a couple months to ensure the gravity is stable before priming and bottling. 



Balancing Planning and Creativity - We started 2023 with a rough timeline of the 20 or so barrel-aged mixed-ferm we'll release. However, when we fill barrels there generally isn't a specific plan for which barrel will be in which beer. Pale, wine-barrel-aged beer can be delightful on it's own, or serve as a great base of fruit, herbs, or dry hopping. When we taste them, we get to decide what will make the best possible beer. However, it's also nice to have unique bases/barrels earmarked for a particular purpose. Some examples of those include Opulence (sour red with dried sour cherries in the bourbon and red wine barrels), a Brett'd Belgian Tripel in Calvados (apple brandy), or Port barrels for There Are No Edges (Vin de Céréale).



Tracking Barrels - Using Google Sheets has worked out well for us. I can sort based on fill date, final gravity, base beer etc. It allows me to sit on my couch at home and look at what beers we have in need of fruit, blending, packaging etc. Barrels still fall through the cracks (nothing is more heartbreaking than tasting a barrel that is old/stale and seeing a note about how good it was six months ago). Sometimes a beer is delicious, it just doesn't fit into a blend.



Blending with Others - Whether it is our tasting room manager (Spencer), Lead Brewer (Ken), homebrewing friends, fellow brewers (e.g., the brewers from Other Half for a collab) etc. Tasting barrels with other people helps improve your palate, riff on ideas, and make more broadly appealing results. We all have flavor "blind spots" and it is a good idea to have other people looking too. It's fun to riff off other people's ideas and come up with flavor combinations that neither of you would have made on your own. 



Packaging - Our general approach to packaging has been a big success... once we started measuring the dissolved CO2 in the beer rather than relying on time/temperature/pressure. We blend barrels or transfer fruited beers to our blending tank and cold crash. The day before bottling we'll push in sugar (boiled in water) along with Premier Cuvee champagne yeast (rehydrated with a small amount of Start-Up/GoFerm nutrient). We then carbonate the beer to ~2 vol of CO2, with the sugar and yeast taking the beer the rest of the way. We fill on a bottler (XpressFill) that purges and counter-pressure fills. So far it's resulted in relatively quick/clean refermentations with reliable carbonation. 



The Things We Got Wrong

Not Allocating Time - It is easy to put-off barrel-aged beers for more pressing concerns. When there are DIPAs to dry hop, Pilsners to can, and excises taxes to exercise the sour beers are often pushed to the side. It's rare that a week or two of aging in one direction or another makes a dramatic difference... but it's hard to get the most out of a barrel program if it is always at the bottom of the priority list. We're getting better at it, but I still wish from the start I'd blocked off a specific time/day each week to taste barrels, trial blends, source ingredients, prop microbes etc. 



Over-Correcting - Initially we weren't getting enough acidity in some of our beers, so we started pulling levers... colder rinsing barrels, lower hopping rates etc. Then our beers started becoming too sour, so we started veering back in the other direction. Managing a barrel program is like driving a cruise ship, it is difficult to pivot quickly! It's difficult to step back and tell if there is something causing one specific batch from being too sour (or not sour enough) or if there is a systemic issue. 

I think we would have been well served to do a better mix starting early (some barrels cold or no-rise, more with just Brett etc.). This would have given us more options when it came to blending over- or under-soured beers. 



Appreciating the Impact of Fruit On Acidity - Early on to help out some of those under-acidified beers, we went onto fruit. I was surprised how little additional acidity they picked up from refermentation. Sure adding a really acidic fruit (e.g., black currants for Fellow Feeling) contributed acidity, but just refermenting on wine grapes or peaches did not. However, as our cultures "matured" we suddenly had beers dropping from a tart pH of 3.5 to an obnoxiously-acidic 3.0 after going onto the fruit (2.8 pH was the lowest I measured). That's despite pitching rehydrated wine yeast to ensure a healthy and quick refermentation. 

I thought maybe our resident lactic acid bacteria were becoming more hop tolerant, and the dilution of the beer with fruit was allowing them to kick into action. To test this we began adding a small amount of hop extract with the fruit (we use a 20% alpha extract from Hopsteiner). Our fruited beers stopped dropping pH nearly as much, and as an added benefit the head retention improved considerably. 



Hot Side Hopping - I didn't appreciate how much of the classic funky lambic/saison profile originates with the hops. While we've always used a "restrained" dose of aged hops at the start of the boil (~.5 lbs/bbl), that just wasn't enough to give the beers the aromatic depth I was looking for. Recently we've been experimenting with a similar size whirlpool addition of cold-stored hops. So far the results are promising! I should have noticed that many of my favorite homebrewed Brett Saisons had big whirlpool additions and/or dry hopping... but those were all relatively quick turn-around and not barrel-aged. I'm glad Scott and Ken pushed to age some of our pale ales (pre-dry hopping) in barrels, an idea I wasn't excited about... but the results have been really delicious!

Where We Are Headed

Barrel-aged sour beer seems to be a wide/shallow market at the moment. The people who love them are still searching them out, but the average beer drinker seems to have moved on to less "challenging" more "reliable" styles. It's hard to know how much the rapid expansion of the segment played into this loss of interest. I've heard of quite a few breweries down-sizing or eliminating barrel-aged sour beers... Luckily we still have 150 people in our Wood Club, which is a great way for us to get these beers into the hands of our biggest supporters and a base-level of sales for eight releases a year. We're aiming to make our mixed-ferm beers more "delicious" the sorts of beers that people want to drink a whole bottle of, not just drink an ounce or two at a share. 

However, as we've ramped up the mixed-ferm bottle release schedule (2019 - 8, 2020 -11, 2021 - 13, 2022 - 16, and hopefully ~20 in 2023) we occasionally have bottles to spare. Rather than distribute them locally, we've partnered with Tavour (which ships to many states).  They just released Homegrown Rule, a "Marylanbic" base with homegrown lemon verbena (from my yard) and pineapple sage (from Ken's garden). It's tart and snappy, with plenty of our house microbe character, augmented by the citrusy-green notes of the herbs. 



... read more
by admin 0 Comments