What do you do when you have too much beer?
You get creative.
That’s what we did when we found that we had some extra Funky Wit leftover. When we make our signature barrel-aged sour, we’ll produce a couple more barrels than we need. Because there’s always a chance that in the 18 months we let it sit, one or two will start to go off.
But one year into our latest batch of Funky, we noticed a problem (a good problem): this beer was too. damn. good. So we were faced with a choice – do we bottle it all once it’s ready? Or do we play around with the excess and gamble on something new?
As if that’s even a question – so we set to work figuring out what we were gonna do to make this batch special. And that’s when we found a nice big batch of California kiwifruits from Giumarra farms in Reedley, Fresno County. Kiwis are from New Zealand, right? So why not add some New Zealand hops as well?
We took a gallon off one of the barrels, added a few of the cut-up hairy green fruit, and dry hopped with some Nelson Sauvin hops. The hops add to the fruity character while balancing with a nice white wine like acidity. Plus, ya know, they’re from New Zealand.
Our brewers tasted the test batch, and new that this was the right way to go. We immediately bought 250 pounds of kiwis, added them to the four Sauternes wine barrels we thought would work best for this assignment, and threw in some hops. They sat in there for five months, and now they’re ready to go help you get fuzzy – starting this Friday.
