Last time we caught up with the progress of our mixed culture sour facility, the Overworks was merely four walls and a ring-binder full of ideas under the arm of Richard Kilcullen. Since then our amazing construction team have completed the building and we have added hundreds of barrels for our master of barrel fermentation to play with. So let’s take a quick rundown as to how things are going – and we kick things off with the largest arrivals of all…
Our main aim for the Overworks is for it to become a temple to the arts of ageing, so we are psyched to be able to have (gently) lowered into place ten 50HL Italian foudres and eight 100HL foudres. These giants have an equally weighty responsibility – they will be the vehicles for Richard’s Bretted saison, we have eight cultures on the go for our Overworks team to play with.
Speaking of which, as they get to work we figured you’d want to keep up with their adventures – so be sure and follow the brand new social media accounts as below!
BrewDog Overworks Facebook - BDOverWorks
BrewDog Overworks Twitter - @BDOverWorks
BrewDog Overworks Instagram - @brewdogoverworks
Alongside the mighty foudres are our new army of Spanish Rioja barrels; primed and ready for the complete range of different sours our Overworks team are ready to unleash. With the imminent arrival of a bespoke laboratory for the facility these barrels are destined to be the workhorses of our programme of alternative fermentation, pushing the forefront of blending as we dial in a series of different sour and wild beers.
As complex as our blending trials will be, the starting point for many of these amazing new beers is as simple as leaving a window open. We are set to harness the airborne wild yeasts that are all around us with our very own 50HL Coolship; Richard is already working with the local Ellon windblown flora so that we can get ahead and begin producing Overworks lambic-style sours.
As you can imagine, he’s hopping from foot to foot until the time comes for our first spontaneous fermentation to take place – with the weather getting colder the conditions are becoming optimal for the magic to happen. We are planning to brew the base beer in our Site 1 brewhouse and then let the wild yeasts and bacteria do their thing on dry, windy nights!
If you’re wondering how we are going to get the wort from our 100HL Site 1 brewery to the Overworks then the answer is very simple. Via an underground pipeline. Yep. We have finished pressure testing the pipe that now travels under DogTap and then the road outside to the new facility. All is good and we are very close to getting a true sour into those oak barrels.
With the Overworks lab facility planned and arriving soon we are pretty much ready to go. We are going to release the beers in custom 500ml capped bottles, which are being dialled in as we speak, and the Overworks’ own bespoke bottling line has arrived and is being installed at the end of this month. When everything is in place, Richard and his team can truly get to work.
If you’d like to keep up with them, check out those social feeds on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – and stand by for a further update when the beer is really coming on. Until then, if there’s a specific type of mixed culture sour beer you’d love to see spring forth from the Overworks let us (and Richard) know!
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