Jester King Introduces New Tired Hands Collaboration: Cloudfeeder

For Cloudfeeder, our intent was to create a low alcohol, highly drinkable beer, that when fresh, would exhibit characteristics similar to American India Pale Ale. When working with our mixed culture of brewers yeast and native yeast and bacteria, our beer presents relatively clean when it’s young, especially if we brew it with a fair amount of hops. As we’ve pointed out before, farmhouse ales were historically either very bitter or sour. On occasion, as we did with Cloudfeeder, we used a combination of hops, fairly high fermentation temperature (78F), and the absence of long-term aging, to create a beer that’s bitter and not particularly sour/tart — at least not yet. Time, temperature, and hops are the levers by which we aim to balance the acidity in our beer, all the while knowing that the microorganisms will ultimately “decide” the character of the beer.

Cloudfeeder was brewed on March 21, 2016 at Jester King with Hill Country well water, malted barely, malted spelt, oats and hops. It was fermented with our mixed culture of brewers yeast and native yeast and bacteria harvested from the land and air around our brewery. It was then refermented with Pennsylvania honey and zest and juice from Texas limes and grapefruits, and dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe hops. Cloudfeeder was packaged on April 11, 2016 and 100% naturally conditioned in bottles, kegs, and casks. At the time of packaging, the beer was 3.8% alcohol by volume, 4.2 pH, 51 IBU, and had a gravity of 1.001 (0.25 degrees Plato).