The Big Deal About Small Format
Let’s explore how less can be more. Our small format packaging concept goes beyond what packaging options are common in the market and instead focuses more on the beer itself. When we christened our second production brewery with our library of wild and acidifying mixed cultures, we started with a format widely used and certainly available, the 750ml bottle. But the large format bottle did not always best serve the beer inside. Sure large format bottles are great for bottle shares with friends, but what about when you want to crack a beer as a nightcap? Or are visiting a bar or taproom from out of town and want to taste through multiple, indigenous offerings without the expense or commitment of plowing through a couple pints of a single bottle of beer? The only thing that might make that commitment more difficult is if the beer inside has a high alcohol content, a high flavor profile, or unusual flavor profile. High gravity, wild, and acidic beer is not for everyone, but certainly a large volume of high gravity, wild, and acidic beer is not for anyone.*
Bear with me while I drink this beer and dissect the experience.** The anatomy of human senses, especially taste and smell, causes us to acclimate to stimulation intensity and potency. During the first taste, flavors and aromas will seem stronger than subsequent tastes. The experience of tasting a beer will change considerably over the course of the first few sips.
Along with your mouth and nose acclimating while drinking, the temperature of the beer increases and aromatics are expelled by the carbonation as the beer sits. Beers served ice cold will numb your mouth and make you miss many of the flavors (or lack thereof) in a beer. The volatile aromas of the beer physically change as it waits to be consumed. Sometimes the subtle changes caused by time and temperature can be a positive, sometimes not.
As we progress through the enjoyment of this beer, we may notice we also suffer from palate fatigue. Whether it’s because your taste buds get overworked or your brain responds differently to the same sensory information over and over again (or you just get drunk), our ability to distinguish between different flavors and aromas degrades the longer we go at it.
Yum! Many of the beers we design at the mixed culture production brewery intensify the effects of acclimation, the physical changes of the beer as it sits in your hand, and the changes in your perception as you compile lines of foam lacing on your glass. By a variety of different yeast and bacteria creating layers of acidity, fruit, funkiness, as well as phenols, alcohols, and oxidative characteristics, your palate might not stand a chance during a whole twelve ounces or more. The extreme example would be very much enjoying the first couple sips of a bottle only to pour the balance down the drain because it’s just too much. While we aim to brew nuanced beers which are not so over the top the only reason you finish them is out of a sense of commitment***, layer upon layer of complexity can lose their initial allure and seem pedestrian as the glass runs dry. By the last sip, all the creativity, planning, and effort our brewers put into the fermenter is just plain wasted.
In reducing the size of the package to one more appropriate for the liquid within, our aim is to enhance your enjoyment of the beer inside while giving you the option to crack another right away, wait until tomorrow, or roll the dice and see how the beer will withstand the test of time during extended aging. Extending aging opens up a whole new topic best explored another day… primarily due to this palate fatigue I got going on.
_____________________________________________
*I remember drinking boots of Berliner weiss and by lunchtime the next day having only had half a Pop Tart, one Underberg, and, like, ten Tums and blabbering about how we should get a wading pool for the back of the brewery. Why did they put Berliner weiss in a 2 liter boot? I asked them to, but that’s my own stupid fault.
**Feel free to play along at home: go to the fridge, crack a cold one, and test for yourself.
***Good for you!
