Chaos is a Friend of Mine is a beer brewed in the pursuit of mimicking the flavors and aromas of a Belgian Lambic. We begin with a traditional grain bill composed of pilsner malt and raw wheat, which is then boiled for an extended amount of time with aged hops. The wort is then fermented and aged in neutral French oak barrels with our diverse house culture. The chaos from the many different organisms and countless different strains competing for dominance takes off, and after 9 - 14 months in the barrel, we introduce the power of blending to bring order back, ultimately creating a beer that's greater than the sum of its parts. Funk takes center stage in this brew, with notes of barnyard, stone fruit, and aged hops. A balanced and clean acidity make this beer tart, yet extremely palatable, with a full body and crisp dry finish.
Come in Grape, Your Time is Up' is a seasonal series based around the grape harvest. In fall we collaborate with various wineries to create beers that blur the lines between wine and beer. We first created a blend of one year old lambic-inspired base beer, then let that beer sit on whole grapes for 8 weeks to go through a secondary fermentation. This golden beer has sweet perfumy and floral aromas reminiscent of a dessert wine. The flavor is tart and crisp with some tannic and oak qualities, finishing fairly dry with a lingering fruitiness.
Inspired by the unique flavors of Mexican candy, Dia de Los Mangos is a blend of one year old barrels aged on mango and tamarind for 8 weeks and infused with Ancho, Aleppo, Aji Amarillo, Guajillo, and Habanero Chili. Aromatics of chili dominate while mango and funk ethereally float through your olfactory. Tropical fruit flavors follow backed by a solid lactic acidity, finishing spicy while staying pleasantly drinkable. A unique beer to say the least.
Belgian-Style Sour Ale Aged in gin barrels. One year lambic-inspired beer was put to rest in French oak wine barrels that previously held late harvest Semillon wine followed by Blinking Owl gin for a duration. We received these amazing barrels and selected two lambic-inspired barrels that contained beer with balanced profiles of funk, acidity and fruitiness to ensure that the gin and barrel character could be well integrated. We aged our beer in these barrels for around six months before extracting character we wanted out of them before bottling. We’ve never seen a beer change so much during conditioning and go through so many phases over nearly a year but surely has been worth it and created a unique beer full of flavor and texture. The nose is candied lemon peel, lavender, rosemary and undertones of golden raisins and funk. Upfront on the palate is the botanical gin notes and lemon zest that leads into the mid palate of white wine, sweet apples and pear. The beer finishes with classic lambic-inspired funk, dried apricot, oak tannins, light acidity that fades into a clean finish and a touch of warmth.
This blend is an expression of both Beachwood Blendery’s and Horus Aged Ales cultures. A single batch of 6 oak barrels of lambic-inspired base were fermented and aged in barrels for two years before being blended. The extended aging created amazing nuance in all aspects giving this beer amazing flavors, aromas and textures reminiscent of the gueuze beers that inspired it.
Belgian-style sour ale with rye fermented and aged in oak rye whiskey barrels created in collaboration with Cellador Ales.
This blend is made up of some of the best barrels found in our Blendery. A portion of the blend was racked on to 600 lbs of rhubarb for 24 hours; this shorter extraction time ensured that we got the best rhubarb flavor without pulling out much of the unwanted vegetal character. The beer was then blended together with a barrel of apricot beer and re-fermented for a month before packaging. The lambic-inspired base is at the forefront with earthy funky notes with floral apricot character intertwined with tart rustic rhubarb. In the flavor the rhubarb appears first with its distinct tart crispness fading into pleasant stone fruit notes with a light acidity that finishes with amazing complexity from the lambic-inspired base.
This is our second collaboration blend with Garage Project, some of the nicest and most creative and inspiring people in the industry. This time around Dave Bell their head brewer came by to do spontaneous brew with us in February 2018. Garage Project had been playing around with the idea of using fruit and the microbes found on them to create beers, we were intrigued by this to say the least. With that idea in place we decided to brew a batch into the coolship first, let the wort cool overnight and add a small splash of loquats to each barrel and let things happen. After two years Dave was able to swing by on his trip across the states and taste the barrels from that batch. Out of the six we selected two of them that stood out as being special and unique from the others and decided to package them together as they were. This is a beer you want to drink slowly and spend some time with it as you’ll notice it open up as it warms bringing out a wild array of different aromas. Upfront aromas are lemon and orange peel, melon and funk shifting into aromas of mint, honeydew melon, guava and light sage. The flavor is dried apricots, melon, lemon, oak and funky lambic-inspired flavors with mild acidity, oak tannins and a long lasting stone fruit finish.
This beer takes inspiration from Umeboshi which is often translated into English as 'Japanese salt plums'. Distinct bright fruitiness and our house funk dominate the aromatics followed by flavors of juicy plum and melon. Mouth watering acidity is rounded out by the sea salt and finishes dry with a aftertaste reminiscent of sweet tarts.
Beachwood Blendery is a small batch beer producer established in 2014 by the same creative minds behind the award winning Beachwood Brewing. Beachwood Blendery has embarked on an undoubtedly geeky quest to recreate the Lambic style beers of Belgium. Our beers are produced using ingredients, equipment, and brewing methods that are both steeped in tradition and admittedly modern.
The more traditional methods involve the use of un-malted wheat, aged hops, a koelschip placed in the rafters, spontaneous fermentation, neutral French Oak wine barrels and puncheons.
The modern approach uses non-traditional ingredients, including unconventional grains and tropical fruit, and involves keeping a mixed house culture constantly propagating and developing in our incubators.
All of this occurs in our custom-designed barrel room, built to mimic the daily temperature and humidity fluctuations of a Lambic brewery in Belgium.
The first beers produced by Beachwood Blendery, aptly named 'The Propagation Series', were variations of Brett Saison and Berliner Weisse brewed and blended to test how the different yeast and bacteria performed in the Beachwood Blendery environment. The results of this experiment have been factored into what have become Beachwood Blendery's signature Lambic-inspired beers. These core brands all involve beer that has been fermented and aged in oak barrels for 9 months to 3 years with a wide variety of microoganisms, that shape the tart, funky, and complex flavors we've come to desire. Yes, these beers take an exceptionally long time to develop, but we think that it's well worth the wait.
Cheers,
The Beachwood Blendery Team
Ryan Fields is an exceptionally talented and creative brewer whose working knowledge of brewing comes from his time spent with some of California’s most acclaimed breweries. Ryan’s introduction to brewing began at Lost Abbey in San Diego, where he was able to work with one of the nation’s most prolific barrel programs. Under the tutelage of Tomme Arthur and crew, Ryan went on to develop a great understanding of funky, sour beers. After four years with Port Brewing / Lost Abbey, Ryan took the position of Head Brewer for Pizza Port San Clemente. It was here that Ryan started to not only perfect his craft of brewing, but also experiment with his own small barrel program. In 2014 Ryan joined the Beachwood Blendery project to become the Head Brewer and Blender, and the match couldn’t be any more perfect. Alongside his practical experience, Ryan brings with him a degree in physics, an intimate understanding of yeast and bacteria and his mighty banjo.
Beachwood Blendery labels are developed in collaboration with one of our longtime favorite artists, Thomas Campbell. Thomas, an acclaimed international artist and filmmaker, splits his time creating at his studio in Northern California and traveling the globe partaking in exhibitions and filmmaking. His artwork will be featured prominently throughout our core line up of Lambic-Inspired Ales.
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