Dovetail has extended an invite to us for a really cool event. For those of you who haven't been, these guys make amazing lagers and know their shit. Definitely stop by if you can!
Dovetail Brewery turns two years old in a couple months. While we’re still a very young brewery, we’re inspired by hundreds of years of brewing traditions you can see at work in our brewery everyday. We make Plzen water. We decoction brew. We open ferment. And we use a coolship. We’d love to geek out and tell you all about it.
So, we would like to invite you to an Open Brew Day at Dovetail, where you’ll be able to see first-hand the process of how we brew our lambic-style beers, something we’re one of the first in the Chicagoland area to commercially produce. You can pop in and out as you please. We’ll have some snacks on hand, as well as a preview of our first spontaneous release, a Kriek-style beer you can read more about below.
Let me know if I can expect you during any of the days, so we know how many meat and cheese plates we should order (really, this is just an elaborate excuse for a meat and cheese plate). You may RSVP via this link: https://goo.gl/forms/hDUqbWaJmipLfuH82
Thanks,
JP (and Bill and Hagen)
DOVETAIL BREWERY LAMBIC-STYLE OPEN BREW DAY
April 11-12, 2018
8am-7pm: Mash-In; Turbid Mash; Lauter; Boil
10am: Emptying coolship from previous night’s lambic-style brew day, and into barrels
5pm: Wort pump over into coolship (AKA the Brewer’s Spa)
[Note: All times are in -ish. It’s a long brew day]
Repeat the same process the following day. You can spend both days with us; one day with us; or just join us for the pump over into the coolship on Wednesday, and come back on Thursday morning to see the coolship wort after a good night’s rest get pumped into barrels.
Our brewing season for these beers is short — and we take advantage of any day we can: if the temperature is too warm, the wort will take too long to cool — leading to non-pleasant flavors. On the flip side, if the temperature is too far below freezing, there may not be enough microbes in the air to kick start fermentation. So, our brewing schedule is subject to change due to unpredictable Chicago weather. If this is the case, we’ll have a standard brew day (which is still pretty fun!)
TASTING PREVIEW: DOVETAIL BREWERY KRIEK-STYLE BEER (Name TBD)
During these Open Brew Days, you’ll also be the first to preview our Kriek-style beer. The base of this lambic-style beer (60% pilsner malt; 40% unmalted wheat; aged hops; and cooled overnight in our coolship to capture wild florae) was brewed in the Spring 2016.
It then matured in barrels until August 2017, when it was racked over 2,300 pounds of Balaton cherries from the Leelanau Peninsula in Northern Michigan, which is also notable for its wine production. Approximately 100 pounds of cherries went into each barrel selected for the beer.
After waiting another year as the beer and cherries did their thing, we’re incredibly excited to finally release it, our second bottle release, and our first spontaneous beer. We expect to release it to the public around our the end of the summer.
