Jester King Releasing 2021 Blackberry Grisette / 分 桃 (FĒN TÁO) Recipe / Blueberry Wine

From Jester King:

We’re pleased to release our latest fruited Grisette — Jester King 2021 Blackberry Grisette! It’s brewed with well water, Texas-grown malted barley and wheat, and a blend of Bobek and aged hops. Primary fermentation was in stainless steel with our mixed culture, followed by fruit re-fermentation with blackberries, and 100% natural conditioning. 5.3% abv.

Head to the brewery to get a glass or purchase bottles to go (750ml/$18) onsite in the Jester King shop. Also available to-go: https://bit.ly/3JdAlxD. We have about 1,600 bottles available. 11 bottle limit per person. Shipping/delivery illegal in Texas.

Artwork by Joshua Cockrell. Photo by Jess Attie.

分 桃 (FĒN TÁO) RECIPE

April 7, 2022

Happy National Beer Day! In honor of this holiday, we’re sharing the recipe for Jester King 分 桃 (Fēn Táo) — Barrel-Aged Wild Ale refermented with Texas Hill Country peaches. We’ve been making this beer for around 7 years and it’s one of our favorites. We love the character of Texas Hill Country peaches expressed through wild fermentation. It’s a relatively simple recipe and process too. Good ingredients and patience combine to create a delicious beer with this recipe. Enjoy!

SPECS

• 5 gallon batch
• OG 1.043
• FG 1.003
• ABV 5.3% (before fruit refermentation)
• IBU 16
• Brewhouse efficiency 75%
• 60 min. boil

WATER

We like to show off the terroir of our own Trinity Aquifer well water at Jester King. We recommend going with your own unique water profile, even if it’s municipal water. Carbon filtration for municipal water is recommended, but we’d recommend rolling with the mineral profile "as is".

GRAIN

• 7# pilsner malt (we use Llano Pilsner from Texmalt)
• 1# malted wheat (we use Denton County Wheat Malt from TexMalt)
• 0.5# flaked oats

HOPS

• 1.0 oz. of Goldings (4.5% AA) at 60 minutes

YEAST

Our mixed culture was created by blending saison strains with yeast cultivated from the land and air around the brewery. We recommend co-pitching Wyeast 3711 French Saison and White Labs WLP565 Belgian Saison I with either yeast cultivated from flora or the air around your location, bottle dregs from a favorite funky beer, and/or Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale Blend.

FRUIT

• 20# of peaches

• We get ours from Vogel Orchard in Stonewall, TX. We encourage you to experiment with your own local peaches if you can.

PROCESS

• Primary ferment the wort at 72F until fully attenuated

• Rack to secondary and allow the beer to mature for 8-12 weeks. Taste regularly to see how the funk and acidity is developing. You can add a few grams of oak cubes if desired.

• De-pit the peaches and macerate them. We just put on rubber gloves and squish them with our hands. Add the peaches to two five gallon carboys. Rack the beer onto the peaches. Allow refermentation to occur over 3-4 weeks. The beer should be totally dry with a gravity around 1.003.

• Rack the beer off of the peaches, preferable through a mesh filter to remove any fruit solids.

• Bottle condition to 3.0 volumes.

We’d love to see photos and videos of your progress and final product. Share with us by tagging #JESTERKINGFENTAO on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Cheers! Questions? Email [email protected].

Photo by Granger Coats.

We’re excited to release this year’s batch of Jester King Blueberry Wine! This wine is 100% blueberries fermented with our house mixed culture. We don’t add anything else but blueberries and yeast.

After the crush, we did primary fermentation in stainless steel, then pressed and racked to neutral oak for six months. We blended and packaged the wine still. 7.9% abv.

This year, the blueberries came from Michigan instead of Texas. The 2021 Texas freeze severely reduced the quantity of blueberries we were able to get from Texas growers. The Texas-grown ones we were able to get went to Colour Five and Recented, our collaboration with Pinthouse. We hope you enjoy our latest wine from Jester King! More to come…

Head to the brewery starting April 12, 2022 to get a glass or purchase bottles to go (750ml/$30) onsite in the Jester King shop. We have about 400 bottles available. 11 bottle limit per person. Shipping/delivery illegal in Texas.

Artwork by Joshua Cockrell. Photo by Jess Attie.