Today we’re releasing our second batch of Colonel Toby, our collaboration with The Kernel Brewery in London, England. We call Colonel Toby “a hoppy little farmhouse ale”, because…well…it’s really just that. We love making beers that are either dry and tart, or dry and bitter, and Colonel Toby definitely falls into the latter category.
So how do we go about making beers that fall into these two general categories? Not to over simplify things, because mixed culture fermentation constantly throws us surprises, but for the beers we want to present dry and bitter, we brew with more hops and ferment warmer (78F and above) in a stainless steel tank for a relatively short period of time (a few weeks). The pH of the beer at packaging is usually above 4.0. By contrast, the beers we commit to oak are hopped at lower rates and go through a long, slow maturation at cellar temp (around 60F). They typically end up around 3.4 pH and have perceivable acidity.
As we’ve mentioned before, our inspiration stems equally from breweries like Brasserie de la Senneand Brasserie De Ranke, who make wonderfully elegant beer that’s dry and bitter, as well as from breweries like Jolly Pumpkin and Cantillon, who make spectacular beer that’s more acid-driven. Sometimes this gets forgotten in the shadow of our barrel aged fruit refermentations and our 100% spontaneously fermented beers, which is fine. We get pretty excited too about blending the worlds of wine and beer through our use of fruit, or making beer without even pitching yeast using a coolship (which is still pretty magical to us). But sometimes it’s fun to remind people that a major part of our roots come from drinking beers like De Ranke XX Bitter, De la Senne Taras Boulba, and Dupont Avril.
Anyhow, we hope you enjoy this year’s Colonel Toby! It really is just a simple little hoppy beer, which we hope is befitting of The Kernel Brewery and all the wonderful work they’re doing.
Cheers,
Jeff Stuffings
Colonel Toby Batch 2 was brewed on October 16th and 17th with well water, Crisp Maris Otter, rolled oats, Cascade hops, and fermented in stainless steel with our mixed culture of brewers yeast and native yeast and bacteria. Prior to packaging on November 20th and 21st, it was dry hopped with Citra and Centennial. Colonel Toby is 3.0% alcohol by volume, 54 IBU, 4.4 pH, and has a finishing gravity of 1.001 (0.25 Plato).
It will be released on Friday, December 15th at 4pm at our tasting room and will be available by the glass and in bottles to go (750ml/$9). We have about 6,000 bottles available. There’s no bottle limit, and it will be distributed beyond Jester King by our friends at Flood Independent Distribution. Art by Josh Cockrell. Photography by Tyler Malone / Second Shooter.
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