Written by Brandon Jones for Embrace the Funk
You’ve got a real type of thing going down – George Clinton
So back in July I mentioned 2 potential pieces of news I was excited about…one still needed to be confirmed, which was Linus Hall (Owner of Yazoo Brewing Company) and I were going to use one of my funky barrels to age a beer in. We talked a few times over the past year about doing some sort of funky “one off†project…well recently that project/news turned into something much bigger, better and funkier! Yazoo and I are teaming up to release an “Embrace The Funk Series†(as it will be called) of wild and sour beers!!! Yes Nashville, the funk is coming your way and soon.
New Barrel Gun
How soon? How about in 2 weeks at the 12th South Winter Festival? Those who were lucky enough to get tickets before it sold out in 15 minutes will be able to sample the first release: “Wild Child‖ Sue serves as the base beer: fermented with Brettanomyces and Yazoo’s house yeast …aged in a red wine barrel with dark sweet cherries and various souring microbes. This is the original single barrel batch that started the program a few months ago.
Let’s talk about the series as of now:
- Yes there are currently other batches we have built and brewed from the ground up “funk-tifying†right now. These are likely late 2013 releases. These batches are still very young, so I’m holding off on saying too much until I know we are rocking. But rest assured as of right now they are fermenting as I would expect. Big thanks to Corsair Distillery for letting Linus and I in last Saturday to brew on their 10bbl system (The smallest batch we can do at Yazoo is 40bbl).
- There are yet to be brewed beers that should see release earlier in 2013 than the ones above.
- Plans are draft first, but as the series grows and we acquire more barrels some of these will see limited edition bottle sales. I love bottles, so we will try to have some available soon.
- The Yazoo taproom will be your best bet for trying some of the test and small batches. Look for release info on Yazoo’s blog and the various social media pages. I have a lot of very cool mixed cultures and isolated cultures we are looking forward to using in these taproom only series releases.
Some Of The Wine Barrels
So there you have it. I’m very excited to bring you this series of beers…add to that I get to work with a longtime friend (and sour beer fan) on this project and this couldn’t be any better. The project should really give me some great “tech stuff†to write about for the website.  Fans of my Q&A’s, I’m still planning on doing those interviews too. Basically the website should get better all the way around as Linus and I work on each different beer.  Will there be some hang ups or a beer that didn’t turn out the way we expected? Yes and you can bet I will write about too.
So stop by the Yazoo booth in a few weeks at the Winter Warmer and chat with us about the project. Cheers!
***Update*** More pics and info here on Yazoo’s official blogÂ
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Purging a barrel with co2 right before transfer