{"id":23236,"date":"2020-01-07T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=23236"},"modified":"2020-01-07T08:14:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T16:14:03","slug":"belching-beavers-coolship-runnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2020\/01\/07\/belching-beavers-coolship-runnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Belching Beaver\u2019s cool(ship) runnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While Belching Beaver Brewery<\/a> <\/strong>is largely known for everyday styles and its fan-favorite Peanut Butter Milk Stout, the North County business sports an extensive barrel-aging program. Headed by barrel master and R&D brewer Peter Perrecone<\/strong>, that niche component is in a state of growth after installation of a coolship at its original production facility in Vista.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wide, open-top vessel, the coolship\u2019s purpose is two-fold. As its name suggests, the metal container holds hot wort (unfermented beer) transferred to it from Belching Beaver\u2019s 15-barrel brewhouse while it cools (an overnight process). Its open-air nature also allows wild yeast and bacteria present in the atmosphere to get at the wort. Those organisms are what ferment and lend exotic, unique flavor to the resultant \u201cwild\u201d beers as they age away in oak barrels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI plan to use it to make m\u00e9thode traditionelle<\/em> beers, which is as close as you can get to making lambic and gueuze in America,\u201d says Perrecone. \u201cEach beer from our coolship will have its own unique branding, and we will use the beer description to specify where the parts of the blend came from, be it our coolship, oak foeders or oak barrels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is what I\u2019ve been working toward my whole sour-brewing career,\u201d says Perrecone, who was the inaugural brewer for originally all-wild Vista operation Toolbox Brewing<\/strong> before departing the business in 2015. \u201cI see this project as adding another layer to the Belching Beaver cake. This is fun and exciting and not something that a lot of breweries are currently doing in Southern California.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Perrecone and the new coolship<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As it stands, of the 150-plus operating brewhouses throughout San Diego County, the only other operation equipped with a coolship is El Cajon\u2019s Burning Beard Brewing<\/strong>, which began utilizing that vessel just over a year ago. There are many reasons for the scarcity of this piece of equipment. Producing spontaneously fermented beer requires militant quarantine procedures where clean beer, and the apparatuses used to produce it, must be kept completely separate from those infested with bacteria and bugs (which could irreparably infect them). This requires separate rooms, equipment and even clothing, which equates to added expense. Plus, these beers take years to produce with no firm time tables or guarantees that they will turn out as desired. Separate packaging mechanisms are required, as well, and such beers\u2014due to labor and the aforementioned expenses\u2014have significantly higher price tags, making them a tougher sell to consumers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also makes for a tough sell to business decision makers, but not in Perrecone\u2019s case. \u201cGetting our CEO Tom Vogel<\/strong> and brewmaster Troy Smith<\/strong> onboard was easy. We never shy away from investing in the quality of our beer,\u201d says Perrecone. Even with support from above, the sour beer specialist acknowledges the slowdown in nationwide sales of barrel-aged specialty offerings. \u201cWe produce just enough to hit our markets, but not overload them with these beers. We\u2019re focusing on m\u00e9thode traditionelle<\/em> and spontaneously fermented beers to take our program to the next level. We\u2019ve found barrel-aged beers of all styles are still in high demand. At the end of the day, I believe this was a good decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belching Beaver\u2019s coolship was officially \u201cchristened\u201d on December 26 with a \u201cnice, long brew day.” Perrecone and assistant brewer Keith Porter<\/strong> made a traditional turbid mash that required three hours of boiling before transferring the wort to the coolship, where it cooled without incident and was transferred to barrels to ferment. The hope is that the beer will be ready to share with the public by 2021, but there is no way to know, and Perrecone, whose plan is to produce one-, two- and three-year blends in the classic gueuze tradition, says he won\u2019t rush the beers that grace his coolship. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Belching Beaver Brewery is largely known for everyday styles and its fan-favorite Peanut Butter Milk Stout, the North County business sports an extensive barrel-aging program. Headed by barrel master and R&D brewer Peter Perrecone, that niche component is in a state of growth after installation of a coolship at its original production facility in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beer-news","8":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/coolship01b.jpg?fit=720%2C402&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"North County brewery adds spontaneously fermented beers to product line","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-62M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}