Hello craft beer enthusiasts of Florida and beyond. Much has taken place since our last post and I will cover as much as I can.

First of all we just returned from the Craft Brewer's Conference in San Diego. There was a multitude of knowledge that Joe and I were able to absorb from this event. We also managed to absorb some really wonderful beers from the San Diego area and beyond. It helped considerably in putting together a more reasonable time line for the equipment and renovations that will be needed for the project to continue on. Some of the things that I will be discussing are technical brewing subjects and might make some of your eyes glaze over but I feel like they are worth discussing so I will throw them in here anyway. Might as well start with the equipment/process ideas that we have in mind first and then I will move on to other items of interest.

Since we are doing some high gravity beers, we have been discussing making some parti-gyle batches off the second runnings. It will take two mashes for us to achieve the gravity and volume that we are targeting for the high gravity beers so we thought it might be best to take the second runnings from each initial high abv mash and make another 15 bbls of small beer. We have been sourcing out a secondary kettle for this and are really close to working it out. Not only would this provide an additional seasonal to our repertoire of beers but it would be more efficient as it allows use to use all the sugar from both mashes instead of just dumping it down the drain.

Also, we had our brewhouse modified adding a HERMES option to the hot liquor tank. This will allow us to do multi step infusion mashing and will increase our efficiency in the brewhouse and will also allow us to make more authentic representations of a multitude of styles of beer that would be harder to pull off without this method.

The mash tun will also be steam jacketed. This will help to aid the above idea and allow us to get some "pseudo" decocted flavors in some of our beers.

Okay, on to some of the new products that we are going to produce. Wipe the glaze from your eyes and read up!! We are going to produce a cedar aged Saison. It will spend 6 weeks on cedar and then be bottle conditioned in 750 ml bottles. If you haven't ever tasted a cedar aged beer then get ready for this one. It reminds me a little of the character that Brettanomyces adds to beer but clean...not wild or musty...so it should be a very interesting beer for the adventurous.

Another idea that we have is a Guava Wheat beer. This beer will be produced with real guava juice and will weigh in at around 5.5 abv. The intriguing part about this one is that it will be fermented with a fruity Belgian yeast to add even more interesting characteristics to this already uncommon fruit beer. If you are expecting a clean fruit beer then hang up your hats because this one will interest even those of you who don't drink fruit beers with the addition of the added complexity of the byproducts of our Belgian yeast strain.

Stay posted. We will have more info coming soon.

 

 

         Cheers and take care,

          Wayne Wambles

          Head Brewer

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