We grew 100% of the grain in this beer right next to the brewhouse at Wheatland Spring.

Sometimes a destination presents itself along the way.

In December 2020, we brewed our Estate Barleywine with two row barley we grew here. It was custom craft malted into a melange of tasty roasts for this beer and we brewed within days of the grain being malted. A long brew on a cold December day, the smell during mash in and boil was incredible.

When you have this level of quality, uniqueness, and freshness in your malt for a high gravity beer, our thinking went, you’ve got to parti-gyle. And so we did. We fermented the second runnings and transferred the beer into oak barrels.

We then did something unusual for us. Instead of making a call well ahead of the brew, we decided to leave open possibilities for what this beer might be one day. The idea was: we have a great beer made with high quality, one-of-a-kind ingredients, so we’re going to let it guide us. Months and months of patiently sampling and observing as the beer developed its own character in barrel, the answer presented itself: Stock Ale.

Well over a year went by when we pulled the finished beer from the barrels. We inoculated the finished beer with our house mix of brett cultures before bottling and it’s been conditioning for months since. We expect Fortuity to continue developing over time as the yeasts continue their journey in bottle.