Introducing Jester King / Live Oak Brewing Co. Foudreweizen

From Jester King:

We’re very excited to introduce Foudreweizen, our second collaboration with Live Oak Brewing Co. in Austin, Texas! Foudreweizen is a farmhouse wheat beer fermented in an oak foudre. It was created by taking Hefeweizen wort brewed at Live Oak, moving it across town to Jester King in portable tanks, racking the wort into an oak foudre at Jester King, pitching the wort with Live Oak’s Hefeweizen yeast, then allowing it to slowly transform and mature over the course of months in the presence of native yeast and bateria alive in the walls of Jester King’s foudre.

Foudreweizen took the DNA, so to speak, of one of our absolute favorite beers in the world — Live Oak Hefeweizen — and allowed it to fundamentally transform through mixed culture fermentation with brewers yeast and native microorganisms from the Texas Hill Country. The transformation was indeed dramatic! For the first few weeks, the beer was very reminiscent of Live Oak Hefeweizen, and had a lovely clove character. But as time progressed, and native yeast and bacteria became more dominant, the beer became funky and developed barnyard aromas. After two months in the foudre, a tartness began to emerge as lactic acid producing bacteria began to convert organic compounds into organic acids. Finally, Foudreweizen continued to develop more funk and acidity as it matured in bottles, kegs, and casks during the two months prior to release.

Foudreweizen, as well as our first collaboration with Live Oak called Kollaborationsbier, was born out of a desire to take some of the best made wort or beer that we know of, and take it in interesting directions through the unpredictable beauty of mixed culture fermentation with native microorganisms. Live Oak does such a number of things extremely well, quite better than us in all honestly. So it was an honor to work with them, and have the privilege of using their skilled creations as a jumping off point for some fun and exciting fermentation experiments.