From the Beer Writer: In collaborating with the team at URBN St. Brewing Co. as part of the Beer to the Rescue charity campaign raising funds and awareness for the Lupus Foundation of Southern California, I had the favorable opportunity to reunite with two cherished cohorts from my days at Stone Brewing Co.—brewmaster Callaway Ryan and co-founder Alex Carballo. Both kindly jumped into the funds-for-fermented-fluids fray (now that’s some alliterative poetry), which was very kind. I am a huge fan of URBN St.’s flagship farmhouse ale, so I was happy to hear Ryan would be employing the use of his house saison yeast. After we determined the time frame for the release of URBN St.’s Beer to the Rescue offering, he and I decided it would be good to bring in some honey and herbs to convey a somewhat autumnal flavor palate. Ryan took that and ran with it in a big way, eschewing dry-hopping in favor of heavy spicing in the style of ancient brewsters. The result is a big, Gruit-style ale evocative of something one might have come across in Germany as far back as a century ago.
From the Brewer: “I’ve wanted to brew a Gruit-style beer since I started seriously studying beer. There are so many different flavors one could put in a beer other than hops to balance out the malt. It’s an extremely old style, but at 9% alcohol-by-volume, this beer is definitely a modern interpretation. We brewed the base beer with floor-malted Bohemian Pilsner malt, Summer hops, a good deal of honey and our house saison yeast. After fermentation, I flavored the beer with tarragon, oregano, sage and ginger. We used more tarragon than anything, as its anise-like flavor plays really well with our yeast’s phenols. I’m really happy with how the beer turned out, and brewing it for a good cause only makes it better.”—Callaway Ryan, Brewmaster, URBN St. Brewing Co.