Monday, Jul 13, 2015 @ 03:38 pm
The day has finally come...
After months of preperation, planning and toiling, we will finally be releasing for a limited time in our Taproom, the beer created by the winners of our Community Sourced Beer competition, called Joule Cat, on Friday July 17th at 5pm.
This all started in the winter of 2014, when we wanted a way to connect more closely with our roots as home-brewers and inspire each other to create new and exciting beers; whether it be in your basement or in a production brewery. We wanted to give someone in the home-brewing community an opportunity to brew their creations on a larger scale and taste the fruits of their labor without investing the money and resources in building their own brewery. That's when we reached out to the community and asked the home-brewers in our area to drop off some of their finest wares for sampling by our team.
The entries started flowing in right away and ranged greatly in variety from light to dark in the form of a Farmhouse Saison, to a Cherry Irish Cream Stout mimicking a cream liqueur. Not only were we impressed, but blown away by what we tasted, but there eventually came a time when we had to select the one we found to be the best.
The winner was Lauren & Matt Mueller’s Jolakottur Specialty Beer
Jolakottur, which we are told is Icelandic for yule cat, was a truly special beer. Quoting from the creators own description, “Vaguely based on a Baltic Porter design (though drier than some). Into this we added bourbon soaked oak, vanilla bean, toasted coconut and dark belgian candy sugar.”
When running across a homebrew description like this, things tend to go in one of two ways. Either you get a franken-beer with huge flavors overpowering each other and begging your taste buds for an immediate break or you get something unexpectedly brilliant. Unexpectedly brilliant is what we found. The oak, vanilla bean, coconut, and even bourbon were all delicately balanced and each flavor was received lightly at their specified times throughout the tasting experience.
Between the creativity and the flavor, this beer was our clear winner.
Then it was time for the brew day!
Then the real fun began. Matt and Lauren got to come in and brew their special creation on our pilot system with our Head Brewer, Derek. It is a technical process to to scale up a brew, and fine tune the flavors on a larger system, but everyone worked together to make sure the beer stayed true to Matt and Lauren's vision. Below are some pictures from the brew day, and let's just say it's an understatement to say that we are excited to try their creation this Friday, straight from the tap. See you there!
Stay tuned for more info on our next Community Sourced Beer competition, which will include specific style guidelines, in Fall 2015! Slainte!
