American Beers With a Pungent Whiff of Place
- 6 years ago
American Beers With a Pungent Whiff of Place
Mr. Stuffings has consulted other brewers, and Belgium’s High Council for Artisanal Lambic Beers, to introduce a new certification mark — Méthode Traditionnelle —
that Americans can use to market lambic-style beers made according to Belgian tradition.
In the coolship, however, the microbes attacking the liquid have never been cultivated — “yeast
that either floated in from outside, yeast that was already naturally occurring in this room, yeast that was maybe living in this ceiling,” Mr. Stuffings said.
— In a former machine shop here in the Texas Hill Country, Jeffrey Stuffings, a founder of Jester King Brewery, led a tour group
up a narrow staircase, to a loft where dozens of oak barrels surrounded what looked like an enormous copper sheet pan.
“It is a very romantic and mystical style,” said Levi Funk, of Funk Factory Geuzeria in
Madison, Wis. Mr. Funk began filling barrels in 2015 and opened a taproom last June.
To ferment most beers, brewers tend a culture of microbes and add it to each batch: typically a “pure culture” of brewer’s yeast, or in the case of many farmhouse and sour beers, like Jester King’s core offerings, a mix
that includes yeast and bacteria isolated from the wild.
“The coolship kind of creaks and groans.”
The miracle of the lambic process — which yields some of the world’s most complex
and captivating beers, yet has caught on in America only recently — is what happens next: The beer starts to ferment spontaneously, no starter required.
Mr. Stuffings has consulted other brewers, and Belgium’s High Council for Artisanal Lambic Beers, to introduce a new certification mark — Méthode Traditionnelle —
that Americans can use to market lambic-style beers made according to Belgian tradition.
In the coolship, however, the microbes attacking the liquid have never been cultivated — “yeast
that either floated in from outside, yeast that was already naturally occurring in this room, yeast that was maybe living in this ceiling,” Mr. Stuffings said.
— In a former machine shop here in the Texas Hill Country, Jeffrey Stuffings, a founder of Jester King Brewery, led a tour group
up a narrow staircase, to a loft where dozens of oak barrels surrounded what looked like an enormous copper sheet pan.
“It is a very romantic and mystical style,” said Levi Funk, of Funk Factory Geuzeria in
Madison, Wis. Mr. Funk began filling barrels in 2015 and opened a taproom last June.
To ferment most beers, brewers tend a culture of microbes and add it to each batch: typically a “pure culture” of brewer’s yeast, or in the case of many farmhouse and sour beers, like Jester King’s core offerings, a mix
that includes yeast and bacteria isolated from the wild.
“The coolship kind of creaks and groans.”
The miracle of the lambic process — which yields some of the world’s most complex
and captivating beers, yet has caught on in America only recently — is what happens next: The beer starts to ferment spontaneously, no starter required.