A lacto starter gone awry, a new manoeuvre we call ‘the black sparge’, a fermentation left in the barrel room and forgotten. These are the ingredients that came together to make the beer we call Thaddeus.

A collaboration last fall with our friends at Gladstone Brewing called for a lactobacillus starter, a sour black Saison was to be made. The morning after pitching lacto into 20 ish Litres of wort Scott and Cedric came in to find a vigorous fermentation happening, a sign that wild yeast had gotten in and taken over. Instead of dumping and restarting, Scott put that 20L in the barrel room to see what would happen.

A couple of months later when they revisited that vessel, a strong flavour of stone fruits (think cherries, plums) was detected and Scott and Cedric decided to investigate these flavours. A turbid mash was concocted with a dash of midnight wheat at the end of sparge, as Cedric is so wont to do these days, and into this was pitched our wild -yeast- lacto- starter. A new age version of the Oud Bruin style becomes a classic Townsite brew.