Bonaparte's Revenge (750 mL bottles)

American Wild Ale with Mandarin Oranges and Orange Blossoms

Remember those big ass puncheons we bought? You know, the ones Whiskers came out of? Well, obviously we put them back to work a while back for our third or maybe eighth Side Project collab. Honestly, we've lost track. Always enjoy brewing with Cory King a) because he's devilishly handsome and b) we make beer very differently. Obviously, the basics are all the same and our approach isn't THAT different but we do spend a lot of time making fun of each other over relatively minor, insider baseball choices...like Cory's saisons are mashed in at a higher pH and he uses spelt constantly because he thinks the protein character combine to make his beers "fluffy" while we'll add 5% or so sucrose to saisons to f*ck with the yeast as they come out of the lag phase so they'll spit out more ester. The biggest difference, though, is Side Project beer is blended to be much more acidic than the beers we will typically blend. In fact, we've blended our individual house cultures several times and this is the first time Side Project's have dominated so strongly. Surprising since Side Project bugs are such strong acid producers and ours tend to be more floral/funky with moderate acid production. It's a hoot, though, to welcome his bugs into our barrel stock and figure out how to use it harmoniously with ours. The whole point of working with collaborators is to expose each other to new ideas and push each other outside our comfort zones and it's such a joy to continue doing so with Cory. Don't 100% recall if we cast wort directly to barrels or if we cast to stainless to homogenize cell count then racked to wood on day two...something we like to do when tank space allows. Base beer was brewed and barreled 14 months ago and citrus was added at 11 months. Brew ID was #187 if, like Ron Jeffries at Jolly Pumpkin, you still listen to gangster rap from the 90s on #FYRJ.