Happy old Goat year
So this is how the Year of the Goat ends – not with a bang, but with a Sahti.
The traditional Finnish juniper beer was Wednesday’s 52nd and final offering in Iron Goat’s 2015 weekly release series, themed after the Chinese Year of the Goat. (That actually runs into February, but they started early.)
Along the way, tasters were treated to everything from such floral and fruity concoctions as a hibiscus gose and strawberry rhubarb saison to a Hatch pepper IPA, bourbon-barrel Belgian pumpkin ale and an obscure German-style Kottbusser pale with oats, honey and molasses.
For the fruity, sweet-tart Sahti, co-owner/brewer Greg Brandt used both juniper boughs and berries along with rye and some souring bacteria. He couldn’t find authentic Finnish breadmaker’s yeast, so he blended three other yeasts in an attempt to approximate it.
“Originally (co-owner/brewer) Paul (Edminster) and I thought we might not be able to come up with enough different beers,” Brandt says. “Once we got to 40, we realized we could go another year and still not do all the beers we wanted to do.”
“It was a really good exercise to explore some things we don’t normally do, using different processes and yeasts,” says Edminster. “It was more like an introduction to each style. Then we can decide if we want to go down that road again, and if we do, do we want to change it, and how much.”
Since none of the owners has to tend bar on Wednesdays, it also was a good opportunity to sit down and interact with customers, he adds.
“We got to try some crazier things and see instantly how people reacted to them,” says co-owner Heather Brandt.
Most were only 10-gallon batches (though a few big-batch seasonals and collaborations sneaked into the rotation), so the popular ones went fast; both the Azacca IPA in March and July’s imperial India red blew in under two hours.
Look for some of the favorites to return after the brewery moves into its new downtown space at Second and Adams sometime in March. The Goat crew plans to continue the tradition of new Wednesday releases – though not every week – and they’ll have 25 taps to play with, compared to the current 10.
The specialty batches will be bigger, meaning more for taproom customers plus some distribution to outside accounts, says Edminster. And with the weekly pressure removed, Brandt hopes to do more beers that require longer aging, like the sour that’s been sitting around for two years.
Collaborations with other breweries will continue as well, following previous projects with Oregon’s Ninkasi and Breakside. Next up is a gose with Everybody’s Brewing from White Salmon (in the Columbia Gorge), to be brewed in mid-January.