Who's got the funk?

Today, while many of you were likely asleep, resting up for your barbecues, I was hard at work. I was in the brewery in Pittsburgh filling some barrels of beer with the help of the guy who will be taking over my post. The last barrel that we were supposed to fill came up short. And that's when things got exciting. 

It's unbecoming for a doctor in good standing with the community to myself to admit a thing like this, but there are some things about brewing that still just get me going. And taking a perfectly good beer like the Imperial Irish Red we moved today and just funking it up so good is one of those things. I don't know if there will be a time in my career when this stuff gets less fun. I sure hope not.

That barrel of beer was about a third empty, and we need to make it all the way full in a day or two in order to prevent a serious bit of oxidization. We did purge it with co2 before we filled it to be safe, but wood is porous and soon there's gonna be too much atmosphere in our beer. So we hatched a plan.

As I mentioned before, I spend a lot of time working on and pondering other sour and wild beers. And just so happens, we've got a strain of wild yeast that needs a new home. The other brewer mentioned that a really clean brett character would be great in this beer, and even though that sounds like an oxymoron, I tend to agree. We've got just the boys for the job, and will be adding the yeast strain along with a similar beer to the barrel tomorrow to make something new and hopefully very tasty.

That beer won't make it to Oklahoma, and due to the nature of wild yeast, it will probably never be replicated exactly the same ever again. I probably won't get to taste it in all it's finished, funky glory.

That is the coolest thing I've ever heard of. The idea that you can take a barrel and a few million misunderstood but well meaning wild yeast cells, and with a little love you can keep putting out unique beers that change by the batch. Drinking a beer that is totally unique, and can't be replicated is another one of those things that really gets me going.

A lot of breweries don't like having wild yeast in their facilities. That's understandable. Those little fellas, even though they're just trying to help, can often make their way into places they're not wanted. And once you've got a tank infected with wild yeast, it's pretty hard to get it out. And you probably ruined a batch of beer finding out you had the wild yeast in there in the first place. 

I bet it'll be even harder for a gypsy like me to find a place for my sour and wild stuff. if breweries are hesitant about taking the risk with their own products, they will very likely be hesitant about taking the risk with mine. 

I've never been one to shy away from hard work, and I will hopefully be giving some kind hearted wild yeast of my own a home and a healthy meal sometime in the near future. That way when people ask who's got the funk you can say "Doc. Doc Buckman's got the funk."