Traveling Barrel Program--Sloop Farmhouse
Sloop Brewing Company's 30bbl brewhouse
Our first brew was in January with Justin and Adam at Sloop Brewing Co. in Elizaville, NY. Justin and Adam make some of the juiciest, brightest sour beers around, and we were excited to work with them on this one. We brewed a pretty basic base farmhouse ale with a heavy addition of raw wheat and without any hops at all. We wanted to let the souring bacteria in the house yeast culture we have been developing to play a large role in the fermentation and the flavor of this beer.
Filling the barrels to bring back to Beacon.
Sloop let us ferment the majority of the beer in their tanks, and as the fermentation began to slow down, we roused up all the yeast in the tank and transferred everything over to our barrels. We filled 15 that day, shipped them over to our brewery and inoculated them with a variety of different blends of brettanomyces, souring bacteria, and wild yeasts. They’ve been slowly fermenting in our brewery since: they are brightly acidic with notes of white grape and sour apples, and it seems like they are just starting to turn the corner towards heavy brettanomyces funk. We’ll be blending these and releasing them sometime this summer.