This Friday, we're releasing Ambient Roar - our NEW Mixed-Culture Beer.

Ambient Roar - Foeder fermented, mixed-culture beer w/prickly pear fruit, hibiscus & limes; bright, spiced, tart 5.6% 18 IBUs

Made as the official beer of Portland Farmhouse & Wild Ale Fest, this beer started off as a base of Pilsner malt, Kamut, spelt and einkorn. Kamut, spelt and einkorn are all ancient varieties of wheat. The einkorn was sourced from Bluebird Grain Farms in Winthrop, Washington. We used a turbid mash method during the brew day. This is where a portion of the mash liquid is removed at a certain temperature where the naturally present starch hasn't been converted into fermentable sugars by enzymes. This "turbid" stach-y wort is then heated to 180F and returned to the main mash to raise the temperature up to the next rest. This is repeated multiple times, resulting in a very complex wort, that when fermented with mixed-culture results in a more rounded and matured beer. This free starch helps to provide a food source for the mixed-culture microbes to slowly break down over time. Specifically the Brettanomyces. This process is what is commonly practiced in the modern production of Lambic in Belgium.

Our base beer was 100% fermented in one of our 30bbl American oak foeders until both the sugar content and pH were stable. We then pulled a portion of the base beer off into a stainless steel tank. In a separate brink, we added concentrated prickly pear fruit that we got from a grower in Arizona as well as high-quality hibiscus and limes, some of which we juiced. We let this medley steep with some of the base beer, pushing it back and forth into the tank until the flavor profile was where we wanted it. A very small amount of sugar was introduced by the limes and the prickly pear, so we let that ferment out. Once stable, the beer was then bottled and kegged and both went through a conditioning period to re-ferment, carbonate and homogenize into the beer it is today. While we are bummed that the festival isn't going to happen this year, we were too excited about this beer to not release it.