From the Brewmaster: A Very Special Beer - Part 1

Early to mid July is a really special time for Sarah and I.

First of all, Sarah's birthday is today, July 9th.

On July 14th, 2012, Sarah made me the luckiest man alive by marrying me here in Denver. The next day we left on a once-in-a-lifetime 3+ week honeymoon of Iceland and Scandinavia.

Exactly one year after boarding a plane to Reykjavik, Iceland, we signed a lease and took possession of what would become the Former Future Brewery and Taproom at 1290 South Broadway.  

Here we are nearly a year later and our dream of owning and running a brewery has been realized. Business is going well, we're making great beer that is only getting better and better, and we are ramping up our sour and wild ale program in a big way. 

I wanted to do something special and public to honor Sarah and everything she has helped us accomplish, and her birthday / July seemed like a great time to get started on the project. Since we own a brewery, I figured brewing a special beer would be the way to go.

Luckily for everyone, Sarah likes barrel-aged sours about as much as anyone on the planet, so that's definitely what we'll be brewing. We're going to call the beer "Bazeus" in honor of my (long story) silly nickname for her. 

The process will start today with plating and harvesting a specific strain of lactic acid producing bacteria that I've been wanting to work with for a while: Lactobacillus brevis.

Scanning electron micrograph of L. brevis. Courtesy of Jeff Broadbent, Utah State University.

If we treat this organism right, it will single-handedly create a wonderfully clean acidity. There are several differences between L. brevis and other common brewing bacilli that make it awesome. The big one is that brevis is reasonably highly immune to alpha acids, whereas L. delbrueckii (the most common Lactobacillus sp. for brewing) is strongly inhibited by wort with nearly any hops. Brevis is also heterofermentative, which means that it produces both lactic acid and ethanol. The strain we are using is also quite alcohol tolerant and very tolerant of low pH. 

For this beer, we'll also be using a mixture of two strains of Brettanomyces that were wild-harvested by FFBC in Denver - in fact, from Sarah and I's backyard! It has been a lot of work to harvest, isolate, culture, test, and characterize these strains. I think they will work nicely together to lend some slight funk, fruitiness, and additional complexity to this beer. It is pretty exciting that these are yeast strains that have never before been used in commercial beer, they definitely have distinct characteristics from the 4-5 commercially available Brettanomyces strains. 

As with all properly-done barrel-aged sours, this won't be ready for quite a while. I thought it would be interesting to kick off my "from the brewmaster" blogs with a series showing all of the steps that we go through to make a beer like this. Next up - Isolating and Growing L. Brevis. 

Until next time,

James Howat

Founder / Chief Beer Officer / Brewmaster

Former Future Brewing Company