Jester King NOT Releasing 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite Due To Acidity Issues

Original release info is here, and now this unfortunate update from Jester King:

2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite Not Released

As it turns out, we’ve decided not to release 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite. We’re really disappointed this is the case, but the beer is a little too acetic (vinegary)!

One thing we really pride ourselves on is making drinkable beer. Beer is the greatest social beverage in human history, in large part because it is so drinkable! In our opinion, if you can’t drink one glass of beer, and be eager to drink another, the beer isn’t drinkable.

There’s a lot that goes into making a beer drinkable, but one thing that’s important for the style of beer we make is soft acidity. All our beer is fermented spontaneously or with a mixed culture of yeast and bacteria. The bacteria in the fermentation creates acid. For our beer to be drinkable, the acidity has to be soft and mellow, otherwise it is hard to drink. This is just our opinion, but it’s one we really cling to really tightly. We get referred to all the time as a “sour brewery”. That’s fine. But we don’t create sourness for sourness-sake. We see sourness as a component part in an overall flavor profile, which creates balance and drinkability in the beer. We brew, ferment, blend, and condition our beer with an eye towards soft, mellow acidity.

Despite our best effort to create soft acidity, sometimes it doesn’t work out. We keep our barrel room at cellar temperature, keep our barrels full, purge our barrels with CO2, and discard harshly sour barrels, all in an effort to make drinkable beer with soft acids. But mixed fermentation can still be fickle, and sadly, 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite is a victim of being a little to acetic. There’s acetobacter in our mixed culture, which given the chance will create harsh, vinegary flavors. We try to keep it at bay with the aforementioned techniques, but like we wrote, it doesn’t always work out.

We actually went all the way through the process of blending and packaging 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite, but just before we were going to release it last fall, it tasted just a tad too acetic to us. By no means is it a bad beer or over the top acetic. But it’s just not up to our standards when it comes to making delicious, complex beer that’s also very easy to drink. Our plan is to take 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite and actually make malt vinegar out of it. We’ll see how that goes!

So sorry to disappoint. We wish we could release the beer. But ultimately if we did, we’d be doing you and us a disservice. This won’t be our final attempt to make Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite, so hopefully we’ll be able to release it in the future. On a more positive note, our photographer Tyler Malone / The Second Shooter took some beautiful photographs of 2017 Sherry Barrel Atrial Rubicite, posted below.

Cheers,

Jeffrey Stuffings
Founder, Jester King Brewery