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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

On the road home

Rick Bonino

Ramblin’ Road is bringing a taste of Seattle’s Belgianfest to Spokane tonight.

For First Friday, the Belgian-inspired brewery is tapping its Kerouac soured imperial farmhouse ale, one of four barrel-aged beers it poured at the annual Belgianfest last Saturday (pictured above).

It was Ramblin’ Road’s second trip to the festival. Two years ago, as a fledgling nanobrewery, it finished second in sales to Elysian by a mere three tokens – before running out of beer.

It missed out on last year’s event because it was busy opening its full-scale brewery and taproom. This year, it returned with plenty of beer – seven styles in all – and placed second again, to Black Raven, out of 42 participating breweries.

 “The beers over there this year, everybody pulled out all the stops,” says owner/brewer Brian Guthrie. “It was cool to have ours well-received.”

The Kerouac (8.5 percent alcohol by volume) has been aging for six months in Barrister Winery merlot and sangiovese barrels with yellow plums, wild Brettanomyces yeast and Lactobacillus bacteria.

“It has a really nice red wine character, some good Brett funk and you definitely get the plums, too,” says Guthrie.

He’s only tapping a 1/6 barrel – about five gallons – starting at 4 p.m., so there are no guarantees the beer will be around after tonight. But more barrel specialties are on the way.

“Our plan is to try to get all the festival beers on at the taproom, in limited quantities, over the next month or so,” Guthrie says. Barrel beers will continue to show up once or twice a month after that, he adds.  

As beer is pulled out of the barrels for kegging, it’s replaced by fresh beer to further age.

“Eventually, the age of each barrel is going to be years old,” says Guthrie. “It will be fun for folks to see how they develop over time.”

Ramblin’ Road also is pouring a larger batch of its spring seasonal, Plowed (6 percent ABV), a tart, funky farmhouse ale fermented with both Brett and regular saison yeast.