BBR Kvass and Barrels

A few weeks ago Nathan and I recorded a double dose of interviews with James and the gang for the Basic Brewing Radio podcast.  Both episodes have since been posted.  The first interview covers the three kvasses we brewed (and I'm sure you've heard enough about).  We sent samples of each down for the guys, and they seemed to enjoy them.  The second interview goes into our group barrel aging projects.  The samples of those seemed to be appreciated as well.  James always does a great job keeping the interview focused and moving (and editing out my um's and ah's.)

Speaking of barrels, on Saturday Nathan and I brewed a dark saison at McKenzie's Brew House (winners of three of the last four GABF gold medals for saison).  Today half the batch is going into a three barrels to funk/sour over the next few months (where they'll be fed various sugars).  Their bottled saison was as funky and complex as anything I've tasted from Fantome, and the sour Baltic Porter was a revelation in complex woody/fruity funk.  While we were up there we procured one of their apple brandy barrel already had one beer aged in it.  The current plan is to start another solera with a strong golden sour. 

In other barrel related news we're just about three weeks out from bottling the porterish-stout that has been sitting in a second use bourbon barrel for the last year or so.  Next in will be a moderately strong malty brown.  The Belgian pale/single in the wine barrel is being lapped because it is still a bit sulfury, and not sour enough despite more than a year of bugging. 

More on all of those things later.

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