Wooden Horse, pins and firkens and a new Saison

In continuation of our barrel aged beers on tap, we are finally moving along to our next selection. We finished the Grandma's Sleigh Ride, and she's rode on over hills and is gone for the year. We now have our Wooden Horse on tap, it's our house stout, the Iron Horse (note it is "our house"....not "out") aged in Buffalo Trace barrels for 5 months. We're really happy with the way it came out! It picked up some nice notes of the oak and vanillins, and the bourbon is more of a background note. It was really well received at the Brewpub Shootout, so come on out and try a snifter of it! We'll also be rotating these next selections of barrel aged beers more quickly, so come on out now as it'll be gone pretty fast!

In preparation for the Day of the Living Ales (formerly the Night of the Living Ales, which completes the reference much better) we are preparing our firkin's for the event. We already have one filled and is conditioning. We used our Zephyr as the base and put Cactus Pears in, with a nice Lacto culture to expand the flavors. We did one similar to this one, which reportedly turned out very well (we didn't get a chance to try our own creation!). So we're really excited about trying this one again. We're also doing our Ghost of the Iron Horse again, which is our stout spiced with Ghost peppers to give it a nice hot zing; note that ghost peppers are the world's hottest pepper.

We also are playing with another real ale. It's not really for anything in particular, but it'll be really fun to see how this turns out. We put in a pin part of a test batch Saison (more on that in a moment) and pitched a Roselare culture into it. The Roselare blend culture is supposed to replicate the ambient micro flora of the West Flanders region, best known for its spontaneously fermented Lambics and Geuzes. It contains two saccharomyces cultures, a belgian and a sherry, two brettanomyces cultures, a lactobaccilus and a pediococcus cultures. It'll be quite interesting how this project turns out!

Now on to that Saison. We're doing a seasonal batch in conjunction with The Bristol Eatery and Bar in the Bucktown area. It's a lighter colored Saison, brewed with Clementine peels, Rosemary, and peppercorns, and fermented with a traditional Belgian Saison yeast which complements the spices really well. We're brewing that this Thursday, so it should be presented in about 6-8 weeks.

Cheers!