Terroir. It’s the term winemakers use to describe the unique flavors, beyond those of the grapes themselves, imparted to their wines by the location of their vineyards, and brewers are increasingly using the term to describe similar distinguishing characteristics in the beer they make. For Austin, Texas–based Jester King Brewery, the idea became reality in the form of mixed-culture fermentation, where wild, airborne yeast found at the brewery site on the edge of Texas Hill Country became part of a “cocktail” they use to ferment their beer—one that includes a mix of more conventional Saccharomyces _yeast, _Brettanomyces, and a few beneficial bacteria for good measure.
“A lot of breweries [in the United States] are making very similar beers, and it makes sense with them using the same yeast suppliers, the same malt suppliers, and hops suppliers,” says Jester King Brewery Founder Jeff Stuffings. “It’s a minor frustration of mine going place to place without finding beer that has some uniqueness and individuality to a particular place. That’s the whole motivating factor behind our beer.”
With that in mind, Stuffings sat down after a few days of beer immersion at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival in Denver and shared his pick of six influential and inspiration beers.
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales Calabaza Blanca (Dexter, Michigan)
When I lived in Chicago, Jolly Pumpkin was the beer that bridged and pulled me away from drinking Natural Light and Old Style. I was part of Americorp—the federal volunteer program—teaching in Chicago. I started drinking Goose Island as I discovered craft beer, but Jolly Pumpkin launched that to another level. It represents that which our whole philosophy centers around—mixed-culture fermentation.
We’ve talked about homogeneity and uniformity in the craft-beer world, and if anything has pulled the industry in that direction, it is pure-culture fermentation. Certainly there are good things to be had by that—consistency, the ability to make a lot of beer in a really short amount of time. Those aren’t negatives, and I would never say there aren’t astounding beers that can be made with pure-culture fermentation. In fact, some of the beers on my list are fermented with pure cultures.
But to me, the uniqueness and the individuality in beer come from mixed culture. In many ways, it’s removing the brewer as the brew “master.” To paraphrase Jean Van Roy of Cantillon, the brewer becomes “a companion with the beer.”
That’s very much part of my philosophy, to create an environment for yeast and bacteria to go in different directions—sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes somewhere in-between—and we balance everything through blending.
But to get back to Jolly Pumpkin. It was the first mixed-fermentation beer I ever had, and it blew me away. It helped convince me that I wanted to pursue that style of beer making, but do it in Texas, with the ingredients around us.
Calabaza Blanca has more of a tart note to it that I find quenching and refreshing, and that’s why it’s my favorite Jolly Pumpkin beer. I know Ron Jeffries has mentioned making that beer in the summertime when the lactic-acid bacteria is a little more vibrant and produces that quenching acidity. I like the fact that Jolly Pumpkin beers, and similar beers such as those from Casey Brewing and Blending (Glenwood Springs, Colorado) and a lot of other great producers, focus on softer acids. I’ve had a fair number of beers here at GABF that are more harsh and vinegary, but I think that ultimately a beer just has to be drinkable, so balancing acid is a big part of what we do. Time, temperature, and hops are the three variables we work with along those lines.
Brasserie De la Senne Taras Boulba (Brussels, Belgium)
Another highly inspirational brewer for us would be Yvan de Baets from De la Senne. If I were putting together a Frankenstein beer [a mixed-culture beer], I might take the mixed-culture fermentation from Jolly Pumpkin, but I would take principles of dryness and bitterness from De la Senne. Their beer is really well attenuated and actually quite bitter. I tend not to like sweet.
I had some really awesome culinary-inspired beers today [at GABF] that I think were wonderful in small amounts, but generally, to me, I equate dryness and bitterness with drinkability. Dry, tart, and bitter are our three favorite flavor profiles, and De la Senne has them in spades. It’s dry, it’s very bitter, it has some nice yeast complexity, and I think it’s one of the most drinkable beers out there.
A little side note—one of the things about our brewery is that we try to be a great location not just for our own beer, but for breweries or wineries who have similar philosophies. We feel a deep camaraderie with brewers and winemakers around the world—sometimes more than we feel with our friends in Texas. At times, that attitude has made us a bit of a black sheep in Texas. Not everyone loves us for that reason. We’ve tried to break down laws to make it easier for out-of-state beer to get in, and that hasn’t rubbed everyone the right way.
We sell beer and wine from fifty or sixty other breweries and wineries. We think it adds to the appeal of coming to our place. But the bottom line is, to put it coarsely, we think it’s good for business to have some other wonderful breweries there. We want to build the category of beers that tilt upon the axes of dry and tart and bitter and native yeast.
Brasserie Cantillon Classic Gueuze (Brussels, Belgium)
I’d put Brasserie Cantillon in the same category of inspiration as Jolly Pumpkin—again, using microbes that are specific to a particular location to make beer. In the thousands-year history of beer making, there’s a very small sliver of that history where pure culture rules the day. Before that, there literally was no pure culture because it was impossible to do.
Lambic brewing might be the oldest-known modern style of beer making. There’s a certain magic to a beer where we can just let the wort sit out overnight and it turns into great beer. Not all the time, but it can turn into a great beer. It’s amazing.
We’re careful to respect the appellation of “lambic.” It’s a minor frustration or pet peeve with us in the American industry to see American beers referred to as such. American brewers are starting to get it that they shouldn’t use that term, but we’d rather just totally disassociate ourselves from the term out of respect to those breweries.
Another aspect of spontaneous fermentation we discovered is the influence of aged hops on beers such as Cantillon Gueuze. In our beer, it’s been something we’ve tended to focus on. Now we have a program to age our own—we purchase low-alpha hops, take them out of the airtight sealed bag, put them into a burlap sack, throw it into the attic of the barn, and let the hops sit up there for about a year. From a sensory perspective, we’ve just really grown to love those characteristics in beer. Not that this is our primary motivation, but centuries ago there weren’t wet hops shipped from Yakima by FedEx, so most beers historically probably used older hops. We’re drawing a bit of inspiration from the Franco-Belgian part of the world, but primarily we like the sensory characteristics of using aged hops.
One of the other things I love about Classic Gueuze is that it’s unfruited. The beauty of Cantillon Classic Gueuze has to do with the aged hops, the minerality of their water, the yeast characteristics, and the bacterial mix in fermentation.
Our fruit beers by far draw the biggest crowds, but taking another page out of the lambic-makers books, we basically take our beer that’s good but lacking in certain things—maybe it’s a bit flabby in its acidity or its character is in some way lackluster—that’s the beer we add fruit to. In a way, we’re refermenting the beer with fruit to enhance the character. When I drink Drie Fonteinen Intense Red, for example, the fruit overshadows the beautiful characteristics from their gueuze. For that style, I tend not to prefer kriek or framboise. I tend to prefer the unfruited gueuze or the still lambic.
Brasserie Dupont Avril (Tourpes, Belgium)
Avril’s low ABV is huge. I love IPA like most people, but when I drink them I typically prefer a session pale or a 5–6 percent IPA. I’ve consumed a bit of double IPA here at GABF, and much of it comes across a bit like hops-infused vodka. I get a lot of alcohol, which I find distracting. It’s not an off-flavor, but it detracts from the drinkability, and I don’t enjoy it as much. So I really like lower-ABV beers because I think they taste better.
Dupont’s Avril is just one of those beers with beautiful yeast characteristics and a nice hops presence, and it’s really, really easy to drink. I can consume a lot of it. I love to drink low-ABV beers so that I can focus on the most important aspect of beer, which is a conduit to good conversation. In the end, to me, that’s the most important thing about beer—it’s a social vehicle.
Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project Wild Wild Brett Rouge (Denver, Colorado)
WWBR is in the same vein as Jolly Pumpkin. I discovered Jolly Pumpkin first, but WWBR helped show me what different types of microorganisms beyond Saccharomyces could do. I have to credit Crooked Stave and Chad Yakobsen for the _Brettanomyces _Project, which was eye opening, and the Wild Wild Brett series beers are not only some of the first I tried, but also some of my favorites. Chad and his beer influence what we do. And I’d pick Wild Wild Brett Rouge over the other Wild Wild Brett beers due to its nose—it’s beautiful.
A beer by our neighbor up the road, Prairie Artisan Ales (Tulsa, Oklahoma), isn’t in my six-pack, but through their use of _Brettanomyces _combined with citrusy American hops, they have uncovered flavors that range from fresh fruit like you might get out of an IPA to overripe and rotting fruit (which I kind of like). Overripe fruits are a flavor element of WWBR that really appeals to me, and we aim for some of that as well in some of our beers.
Live Oak Brewing Pilz (Austin, Texas)
I love the majesty of mixed-culture fermentation, but I also appreciate the cold, calculated, engineering aspect of beer making. In our state, no one does it better than Live Oak. As far as specific takeaways go, I’d say two things—obviously, we’re not making German or Czech styles, but the simplicity in malt bills is something we picked up from them.
For example, we have a farmhouse amber beer we simply call “Ambrée,” that was a holdover from my homebrewing days when I used to associate malt complexity with number of malts. The first version we did of that beer had four base malts and four specialty malts. Live Oak does a Vienna-style lager with three malts—Pilsner, Vienna, and Munich—so we rethought our malt bills and decided to take Live Oak’s approach and make that style of wort the base for our mixed-fermentation amber beer rather than the kitchen-sink malt bill. That, and we did our first single decoction mash thanks to inspiration from Live Oak.
I just love to drink Live Oak Pilz. It combines dryness, bitterness, and malt character in an extremely quenching and drinkable beer. They’re also really nice people.