THE LIFE CYCLE OF A BARREL-AGED WILD BEER

We’ve always envisioned our taproom as a place to come and drink the best mixed fermentation beers, so we recently launched our Cellar Menu in the taproom, featuring a rotating roster of past, cellared wild beer releases.

Wild beer takes time and develops at its own pace. At any given time we have dozens of barrels full of beer slowly maturing in the taproom and it can take anywhere from 3 months to 3 years for a barrel to mature. And as they do, we will constantly be releasing new creations.

Since we opened, we have released close to 20 different mixed culture wild beers and, little did you know, we secretly tucked some of each of them aside to cellar them. The new Cellar Menu brings back different cellar beers, as we check to see which ones are changing and taste even better after ageing in the bottles. Here’s the life cycle of one of our barrel-aged wild beers:

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Earlier in September, our team visited the historical Québec City for the 2021 Canadian Brewing Awards - a nationwide competition judging the quality of Canadian manufactured beer. We were very excited to receive the title of Brewery of the Year, but we also came home with 4 individual beer style awards for some of our barrel-aged wild beers.

  • ERLTON STREET, A Golden sour blended from a selection of oak barrels, 6.8% ABV (GOLD - Wood & Barrel-Aged Sour Beer)

  • FUNKMORPHOSIS, Belgian ale with Brettanomyces, 9.0% ABV (GOLD - Belgian-Style Brett Beer)

  • RUBY, MY DEAR, Red mixed culture sour beer with raspberries, 7.7% ABV (SILVER - Fruit Beer)

  • BORN TO RUN, Brett Saison dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvin hops, 5.7% ABV (BRONZE - American-style Brett Beer)

The beauty of these beers is they are all beers that we previously released (in some cases almost 2 years ago!), and we kept a small amount of each beer to cellar in our barrel-room, to allow them to grow and change over time.

Because of this, we have a very limited amount of these award-winning bottles and they are only available on our Cellar Menu for enjoyment in the taproom! Many of these are 750mL bottles, so they are best enjoyed with a friend or two!

We can never predict exactly what will come of our mixed culture wild beers as they age over time, but we can predict that they will change. Fruity flavours and aromas evolve, and new characters emerge and transform. The rustic or funky character of the beer will often increase with age, the bitterness can become lower, and the carbonation may increase slightly. We’re excited to have you along for the ride! #WildBeerTakesTime

Simon MacLeod