A couple of weeks ago a new brewery was announced in Fort Collins (taking over the old Fort Collins brewery facility that I've visited and was arguably mediocre but with a huge selection and tons of free samples); the interesting part: they're specializing in a single style: Saison.
The "Funkwerks" brewery is opening in a few days with three Saisons: Regular Saison, a "White Saison", and a limited "Cherry Saison"$$ they're planning on eventually releasing a "light Saison", a hoppy Saison, and a dark Saison. -Very interesting sounds like they plan on being to Saison what Schneider was to German Wheat Beer. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="
funkwerks.com">
funkwerks.com
Chad Yakobson, an expert on Brettonomyces yeast fermentations on the Burgundian Babbel Belt forums, recently finished his Master's Dissertation on pure Brettanoymces beer fermentations (available here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="
www.brettanomycesproject.com/dissertation/">
www.brettanomycesproject.com/dissertation/) and is starting a very small Artisan brewery specializing in beers fermented with all sorts of interesting wild bugs (of course Brett will likely play a big part).
His fledgling nano-brewery is called "The Crooked Stave". <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="
www.crookedstave.com/">
www.crookedstave.com/
Both breweries should be producing pretty unique beers, but for the time being Chad Yak will be just using the extra capacity of the "Funkwerks" brewery to brew one beer every 3-4 weeks. (This is an interesting arrangement in and of itself.)
The funky and sour beers are definitely picking up some significant steam in the US, and there's now a 3rd American company willing to sell yeast and wild cultures to home brewers as another Burgundian Babble Belt forum member, "AlB" has launched his own yeast company, "East Coast Yeast". -They currently don't have their own website and their stocks and offerings must be viewed from Facebook at the moment: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="
www.facebook.com/#!/pages/East-Coast-Yeast/168646113149281">
www.facebook.com/#!/pages/East-C ... 6113149281
-AlB is a microbiologist who has been culturing all sorts of things sour and funky and is offering mixed Saison strains, Brett. He's most known for his "BugFarm" mixed cultures (lacto, brett, whatever he feels like and thinks would be interesting) that he used to propagate at home and sell annually to home brewers through the BBB forums.
I REALLY like seeing this "long tail" of beer emerge via small nano-breweries and even nano-yeast suppliers. Even if you don't like the sour and funky beers, it's an exciting model from the perspective of more beer options, diversity, and availability.
I'm astounded at how quickly all three of these developments have happened but it goes to show that people definitely see opportunities in Sour, Funk, Blended Beers, and of course the continuation of the barrel-aging trend.
I'm not sure I have much hope for the local, European, or global economy, but craft beer's future sure looks brighter than ever at least! (At least we'll have plenty of good beer to drink during the economic apocalypse!)
Adam
