About Those European Collaborations…

BSS slowly cooling in 't Gaverhopke's koelschip

Back in April, I spent roughly one week in both Belgium and Denmark brewing a number of ales at a dizzying rate in two different breweries. In Belgium, I worked with Bruno and Gudrun at ‘t Gaverhopke in Stasegem to create a beer we are calling Bittersweet Symphony. BSS is a 7.8%, blonde, Double IPA brewed with a touch of caramel malt, wheat, a blend of my favorite citrus-forward hops, and fermented with ‘t Gaverhopke’s house yeast. A side note: ‘t Gaverhopke uses a koelschip to cool their wort down en route to the fermenter. Speaking as a brewer who has always dreamed of using a koelschip (roughly 29km away from Roselare, no less!), this was a very cool experience. BSS has arrived stateside in bottles and kegs. Our good friend Brian at 12% imports, made sure to funnel a fair amount of the draft beer (okay 4 out of 5 kegs!) into the Philadelphia area. I know for sure that Station Taproom in Downingtown, Pa will be one of the few bars that will be pouring this magical trans-continental double IPA. I will likely be enjoying it there the day that Sean taps it. More on this in a future post.

The pellicle on BladeRunner!

From Belgium I traveled by car, plane, train, and then ferry (in that order) to the island of Fanø in Denmark. Over the course of the next three days Ryan and I proceeded to brew three Saison’s with our house Saison yeast: Do Saison’s Dream of Electric Yeast, TUFF GHOST, and Wachu Saison. As it stands, Wachu Saison (our far-east coast farmhouse ale) has been bottled and kegged and will arrive in the US within the next month or so, TUFF GHOST is still slowly fermenting away within the confines of Italian red wine barrels (waiting to be bottled and sent stateside in four months!), and well, DSDOEY? has been mostly all drank-up… with the exception of a few kegs slated to come to America, and one rum barrel’s worth of this dark, floral saison that is slowly fermenting away with a melange of yeast and bacteria. We are calling the rum barrel fermented version, BladeRunner. BladeRunner will be hand-bottled and some will likely make it stateside at some point (see also: I don’t know when).

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