Strangebird gets stranger: Releasing barrel-fermented beers
Strangebird gets stranger: Releasing barrel-fermented beers
Rochester brewery known for its expansive offerings keeps pushing the envelope with new series
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When Strangebird opened earlier in the pandemic, I called the team there a “beer and culinary supergroup.” And during its first 18 months, the brewpub in the former Abundance Food Co-Op on Marshall Street has certainly lived up to that billing.
As I wrote in the D&C, the team is “bound by a shared belief in patience, artistry, and process.” Brewers Micah Krichinsky, Eric Salazar, and Nicki Forster just continue to deliver inventive and thoughtful beers.
Plus, the food from chef Nate Stahl and his team has almost eclipsed the beer. Everything has been that good. The brewery even tied with Brooklyn’s Grimm Artisanal Ales for brewery of the year at the most recent New York State Craft Beer Competition, the largest and most prestigious competition in the state.
With a focus on wood-aging and yeast-driven beers, the brewery’s next step shouldn’t really be a surprise. A wood-aged cream ale? A lager fermented in oak? Strangebird is getting weirder with the release of Pastime, a barrel-fermented hoppy lager.
It also shouldn’t be a surprise considering the influence and work of Salazar, a pioneering figure in wood-aging and wild ales from his 20-plus years at Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing.
It’ll get released in the coming weeks. (The date will be announced on social media.) And it follows Strangebird’s barrel-fermented cream ale called Whale Herder earlier this month. (It’s still on draft at Strangebird’s brewpub.)
It was brewed up special for Roc Brewing’s recent Celebration of Cream Ales. (And to be clear, we’ve seen other wood-fermented beers locally, especially in oak foeders, but this is the first ongoing series devoted to the practice.)
“Instead of fermenting it in a (steel) fermenter, we ferment it in a barrel,” said Krichinsky, Strangebird’s head brewer. “We didn’t create something new here. We just have enough cooperage to hold a batch of our beer.”
“It’s not in the barrel long enough to oxidize like you’d normally see,” added Forster.
“It’s not barrel-aged, it’s barrel-fermented,” Krichinsky concluded. “It spends a couple weeks in the barrel, just a couple weeks in neutral oak.”
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Roc’s cream ale celebration provided the inspiration for oak-fermenting different, and often unexpected, beers.
“We wanted to do something special for the folks at Roc,” Krichinsky said. “Plus, you don’t want to barrel age a cream ale, that makes it not a cream ale. That makes it something else. But barrel-fermenting a cream ale, that’s possible. We did that. It worked out really well. We enjoyed it a lot.”
For the latest barrel-fermented release, Strangebird teamed up with Pastime Skateshop. The wood-fermenting adds a whole new dimension and complexity to the lager, Krichinsky said.
It really mellows and softens the body and imparts an underlying oak character with tannins and notes of vanilla, Krichinsky said. Clocking in at 5.3 percent alcohol, the beer still features that textbook crisp lager finish.
“Eric Salazar can ferment whatever he wants in a barrel,” Krichinsky joked. Needless to say, expect more unexpected barrel-fermented beers in the future. Plus, Pastime features another brilliant and vibrant label from local illustrator Chad Grohman.
“We’re going to do a lot more of these, because they’re so much fun,” Krichinsky said.
Also of note and slightly unrelated, I keep driving past Monroe Avenue’s Nine Spot Brewing and keep seeing progress in the brewery buildout. Once Nine Spot opens, it’ll be an easy walk away from both Strangebird and Roc. More on Nine Spot soon.
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