New Braunfels Releasing Saison de Clementine Blend2 & Cosmic Dancer / Das Lokal

Saison de Clementine Blend2

Saison de Clementine was crafted with whole fresh clementines. 

The fruit was processed by first zesting the peel and then cutting the flesh into quarters. The flesh was open-fermented in barrel with Blondine, our 85% wheat Hefeweizen, and our mixed culture of wild yeasts and feral bacteria. The beer was pressed off of the fruit 3 times, with shortening fermentation times for each press. Once all 3 presses were blended together, the reserved zest was added back to the beer under CO2 pressure to extract the bright citrus aroma and flavor of the zest. For Blend2 we used roughly 4 times the zest to really enhance this beer. 

Saison de Clémentine is a bare expression of the fruit. Minimal processing and a love for the flavor of the fruit inspired a surprisingly drinkable and refreshing sour fruit beer. 

Blend2 consists of 60 cases of 500ml bottles and 9 5gl kegs. We’ll be releasing bottles in our taproom this weekend starting Thursday at 4pm. 

This will be our final release of 2017 for Saison de Clementine. 2018 will be available around March. 

barrel-aged sour black weizenbock

Cosmic Dancer

Cosmic Dancer is a big, rich black sour beer brewed with 5 malts in a modified decoction mash and primarily fermented with our German yeast strain. Secondary fermentation occurs in oak with our house culture of wild yeasts and feral bacteria. 

Early batches of Cosmic Dancer were aged in 15l barrels but for this release, Blend4, we used a couple of ex-wine barrels. Barrel 1 was aged 12 months and barrel 2 was 7 months. Blending the two barrels created a more distinct, complex richness that we haven’t achieved in previous releases and we will definitely be exploring on future releases for all of our barrel-aged beers. Bottles and kegs were dosed with fresh, unfermented wort and allowed to condition in their serving vessel.

We’re very proud to share this beer with you. As part of our commitment to bring only the best beer forward that we can, Blend4 highlights our new direction in a way that makes us very excited. 

For Blend4 we’re releasing Cosmic Dancer on June 15 in our taproom, Das Lokal.

We’ll have 6 5gl kegs to share and 45 cases of hand-filled 500ml bottles.