The Miscellanea Collection
The Miscellanea project started with a simple question: What if we did a mix culture fermentation with all the mix cultures we have available? This experiment in microbial pluralism would feature cultures from all our brewery friends with whom we collaborated. The project started late in 2015 with a single puncheon, we named the Super Friends Blend. Years later, the Super Friends puncheon was used to inoculate one our our new barolo casks. In the cask, the beer was allowed to develop unadulterated by brewer whims, while the only outside influence would be the addition of mixed cultures as they became part of the project. This post will explore the genealogy of the Super Friends Blend and the yeast that would end up comprising the Miscellanea blend.
Whiskers — collaboration with Central State Brewing
Like most Garibaldi bearded brewers Josh Hambright loves drinking rosé. So when he visited from Central State Brewing in spring 2015 with their house Brettanomyces stain (Brettanomyces indianapoligensis), we felt it was only fitting to brew a rosé inspired American wild ale and age it in one of our newly acquired puncheon barrels. After six months of aging with the CSB brett culture as well as our house mixed funk cultures and our house Lactobacillus culture, the beer went into the 2015 Festival of Barrel and Wood Aged Beers and emerged with a silver medal in the Wild Beer (Acidic) category. The puncheon did not officially become the Super Friends Puncheon until Cory King came visiting in September 2015 with a science tube full of Side Project’s funk cultures.
Bonaparte’s Revenge— collaboration with Side Project
We put the Super Friends puncheon back to work for our third or maybe eighth Side Project collaboration. Honestly we lost track. Always enjoy brewing with Cory King a) because he’s devilishly handsome and b) we make beer very differently. Obviously the basics are all the same and our approach isn’t THAT different but we do spend a lot of time making fun of each other over relatively minor, insider baseball choices. The biggest difference, though, is Side Project’s bugs are such strong acid producers and ours tend to be more floral/funky with moderate acid production. In fact, we’ve blended our individual house cultures with Cory’s several times and, for the first time, Side Project’s dominated. Welcoming his bugs into our barrel stock and figure out how to use it harmoniously was a hoot. Bonaparte’s Revenge drove home the whole point of working with collaborators — exposing each other to new ideas and pushing each other outside our comfort zones.
Radiolaria— collaboration with Jester King
The idea for Radiolaria was to showcase the blending of our terroirs through fermentation organisms. Since malts and hops more or less all come from the same place, yeasts and bacteria are really the primary way to express our sense of place. The beer was a session saison base with all the flavor fireworks coming from the mixed fermentation. The breadth of microbes featured in this beer included our house lactobacillus as well as lab cultures of farmhouse ale and Brettanomyces claussenii as well as the mixed culture from Jester King containing natively harvested cultures from the roof of the JK brewery and some wildflowers nearby along with no less than fours laboratory strains.
Ghost Lemons — collaboration with Allagash
When Jason Perkins, the long time Allagash head brewer, reached out and proposed we work on a collaboration together during Saison Day in 2018, we were honored as Allagash doesn’t collaborate with many breweries. But then we suggested the collaboration be a White beer, with the caveat that we don’t make it as well as Allagash and instead employee mix cultures and odd ball flavoring additions (pineapple oranges and field lemons from a guy in a church van in the parking lot). Surprisingly, Jason liked the idea and overnighted a culture of the Allagash house Brettanomyces strain to be commingled with the mixed culture used in Eek!. The slurry from this batch was the most current addition to the Miscellanea blend.
Miscellanea, Vol 1 (Fall 2018)
Upon opening Mousetrap and commissioning our barolo casks in 2017, the Off Color, Side Project, and Central State cultures form beers in the Super Friends puncheon and Radiolaria were saved and pitched into a new (to us) Super Friends Foedre. When the Allagash Brettanomyces strain was added in April 2018, the project took on a new moniker, Miscellanea. The mix of mixed yeast and bacteria cohabited the Miscellanea cask from October 2017 until the first packaging draw in Fall 2018. By collecting all these yeasts it’s almost the opposite to the letter of spontaneous fermentation, regardless we view it as homage to the sorts of lambics that led many of us down this path in the first place.
The beer emerging from the cask was ridiculously complex with over-ripe apricot, bergamot, cotton candy, old growth forest floor, and wisps of Nebbiolo grapes from the foedre itself. Alluringly tannic and dry complemented by moderate acidity and Hanssen’s Oude Gueze like, unabashed barnyard funk. For as how each of the microbes contributed to the final flavor, your guess is as good as ours.
Miscellanea, Vol. 2
The 2019 release is modeled more after a super saison with a lighter colored grist bill and a heavier addition of wheat to soften the body and round out the expression. As part of the ever expanding palette of house bretts, native yeasts and wild cultures we added a laboratory source of Brettanomyces clausennii and our native Hellbroth cultures. Vol. 2 retains the over-ripe apricot, bergamot, cotton candy and wisps of Nebbiolo grapes further punctuated by explosive notes of Mandarin orange and tepaché. Alluringly tannic and dry, complemented by moderate acidity, barnyard funk and Old World, Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc like minerality. Who said sequels can’t be as good?
The Future of Miscellanea
The Miscellanea blend will continue to evolve on its own over the next several years and we will continue to add different mixed cultures to the cask as they become available and make sense. What’s next exactly? We dunno. But we will let you know when Vol. 3 is ready.
