Yazoo / New Belgium Rufus

Yazoo / New Belgium Rufus

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Brewed by Yazoo Brewing Company

Nashville, TN, United States

Style:  Wild Ale

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A few months ago New Belgium approached us about creating a special beer for Memphis Craft Beer Week. As a fan of their sour beer work and interviewing Lauren Salazar last year I was pumped about working with her on this project. It began with a few emails between Lauren, Linus and me with ideas on what styles we could bring together and what we were hoping to achieve. Once we nailed down the target beer this project really kicked into gear. For our portion of this beer we brewed a white wheat and pale malt base beer mashed at 154F which was 100% fermented with 2 variants of Brettanomyces. The breakdown of the Brett blend is 75% B. Lambicus and 25% of a proprietary Brett pitched at 72F which self rose to 74F. We achieved 89% attenuation within 14 days of pitching into the stainless conical. Yazoo Portion Of The Blend – 100% Brett w/ Blackberries and Currants: We chose to fruit the beer with Currants and Blackberries. I felt like those fruits would go well with the characteristics Brettanomyces Lambicus gives (think cherry pie/dark fruit). Looking at our portion of the beer it is a crazy neon pink/purple color. Pictures simply don’t do it justice. Once our beer hit a stable gravity and we liked the flavor/aroma, it was time to blend…New Belgium sent us “Oscar” directly out of Foeder #2. For those who don’t know, Oscar is their dark sour base beer they use to build LaFolie blends and as an ingredient in some of their other Lips of Faith beers. The resulting collaboration between Yazoo and New Belgium is named “Rufus“… dry, wild, tart, dark fruit forward with a solid sour backbone and slight caramel malt finish. The beer will first release in Memphis throughout the week at these locations. A Nashville release will follow. As of right now there are no plans for a bottling run so this beer will be draft only in Tennessee.