On Friday, July 13th Elliott Bay Brewing releases its first spontaneously fermented beer at Brother Barrel in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood. The beer is referred to simply as Cabernet ’17. This beer won a gold medal at the 2018 Washington Beer Awards in the Belgian and Wild Sour Beers category.
“Cabernet is our first spontaneously fermented beer at Elliott Bay,” says Dan Ashley of Elliott Bay Brewing. “Using only the native culture of yeast and bacteria that were present on the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes themselves to ferment our sour golden wort, we fermented this beer in used red wine barrels from Cuillin Hills. The result is a brightly acidic, slightly funky spontaneous beer.”
This beer spent six months in the barrel, a syrah and mourverde barrel from Cullin Hills Winery of Woodinville. It was spontaneously fermented using Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from Red Mountain, which provided the wild yeast.