Episode Fourteen - Matt's Blending Bonanza

Season 1, Episode 14 - This week, a show four years in the making. Matt shares four different sours that he brewed in 2010, along with a final blend of the four beers.

This week on the show, we’re going “back in time”, so to speak. We recorded this episode back in June with Denise Ratfield, but it never made it to the interwebs. Well, it’s finally here, and it’s pretty great.

We kick the show off with two stellar beers from Jester King Brewery out Austin, Texas. The first beer on deck is a farmhouse ale called El Cedro, made with Citra hops, aged on Spanish cedar spirals, and bottle conditioned with brettanomyces.

The next beer on deck was brought to us by Andrew Bell, Matt’s co-worker at The Bruery, who purchased it at Jester King during one of his recent trips to Texas. Nocturn Chrysalis is an oak-aged sour ale made with Marion blackberries from the state of Oregon. This is a rather remarkable beer—almost akin to eating fresh pie. Even though it’s made with blackberries, dark cherry notes are present in the beer, and they blend nicely with the tart and sweet characteristics.

Feature: Homebrew – Matt’s Sours

The last half of the show was very exciting for us. Back in 2010, Matt made 10 gallons of wort and split it up into 2.5 gallon carboys, all of which were destined to become different sour ales that were to be blended to make one final sour. Doing something like this is quite ambitious, and takes time and patience. These beer are evidence that time and patience really do payoff when it comes to homebrewing.

Three of the four ales were soured with different strains and blends of bacteria from different yeast providers, White Labs, Wyeast, and East Coast Yeast. The fourth (and best of the bunch) ale was inoculated with dregs from different bottles of commercial sour ales that were all pitched into a yeast starter.

Matt talks about the entire process from brewing to blending while we discuss the different qualities in each of the beers, and then share our thoughts on the final blend.

See you next week! Make some sours! …and be patient.

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