From Jester King:
We’re excited to introduce our latest beer — Jester King Bière de Miel. Named after the classic style (honey beer), Jester King Bière de Miel was brewed, fermented, and naturally conditioned with raw, Texas wildflower honey. We sought to take the classic style and impart a sense of place in the beer through wild fermentation with naturally occurring yeast and souring bacteria harvested from the Texas Hill Country.
Jester King Bière de Miel is the product of a very long, slow fermentation during which the diversity of microorganisms in the beer were allowed sufficient time to impart unique aromas and flavors. Originally brewed on December 3rd, 2013, Bière de Miel spent approximately five months in a stainless steel tank slowly fermenting and maturing. With wild fermentation at our brewery, we don’t always know when a beer will be ready. The analogy we like to use is that a farmer can’t plant her/his crops in the spring and say, “I’m going to harvest them on the third Monday in September.” Nature doesn’t behave that way. We give the microorganisms all the time they need, then they tell us when the beer is ready, not the other way around.
On brewday, we added raw, Texas wildflower honey from Good Flow Honey Co. in Austin, Texas late in the boil. After the first several weeks of fermentation, we added more honey to the beer. Finally, the beer was 100% naturally refermented in bottles, kegs, and casks using more of the raw, Texas wildflower honey. In addition to the honey, Bière de Miel was brewed with Hill Country well water, malted barley, malted wheat, and hops. It is 5.8% alcohol by volume, 3.2 pH, has a finishing gravity of 1.003, and is suitable for vegetarians but not vegans. It was bottled on April 24, 2014.
The artwork for Bière de Miel was done in-house by Josh Cockrell of Jester King. It features our Head Brewer Garrett Crowell riding over the Texas Hill Country on a giant bee. The verse on the back of the label for this beer was written by Garrett as well.
Jester King Bière de Miel will be released at Jester King Brewery this coming weekend. It will go on sale when we open on Friday, June 6th at 4pm. It will remain on sale by the glass and in 750ml bottles ($12 per bottle, limit 3 bottles per customer per day) all weekend long. It should remain available at the brewery during the following weeks while supplies last. We have approximately 250 cases of bottles to sell (12 × 750ml). While we don’t anticipate having enough of the first batch of Bière de Miel available for it to go into statewide distribution, we will send some outside our brewery for special events and to select bars and restaurants. We currently have our second batch of Bière de Miel already fermenting.
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