On today's American Beer Review LIVE! review, Brian's feeling strong enough to tackle some wild beer. For this week's review we bust out the wine opener and pour ourselves some old school beer - Jester King Brewery's SPON. Three Year Wild Ale.
Jester King Brewery & DOOM METAL GOAT YOGA
2023 SPON. Three Year Blend
- 500ml Bottle, Tavour Crate
- 5% ABV
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On today's American Beer Review LIVE! review, Brian's feeling strong enough to tackle some wild beer. For this week's review we bust out the wine opener and pour ourselves some old school beer - Jester King Brewery's SPON. Three Year Wild Ale.
Jester King Brewery & DOOM METAL GOAT YOGA
2023 SPON. Three Year Blend
- 500ml Bottle, Tavour Crate
- 5% ABV
If you'd like to reach out to the American Beer Review LIVE! crew to give us a beer suggestion or to tell us we suck, you can reach us on any of our socials (in order of how often we check it).
You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/@americanbeerreview
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/abeerreview/
Twitter (Never gonna call it X, sorry) - https://twitter.com/abeerreview
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/americanbeerreview
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/american-beer-review-b257ab255/
Welcome to another episode of the American Beer Review Podcast.
Speaker 2:Good times for good friends requires good beer. Lucky for us, we know ethnic all three.
Speaker 3:We're a group of friends who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, giving us a jump start on our craft beer journey.
Speaker 1:Join us today. While, brian that pride myself on not getting to know other people, so do not put that on me, alec.
Speaker 3:So bananas, up until like the 60s, weren't entirely different species of banana.
Speaker 1:And Chad Hit me like a bacon bar Review some beer, talk about beer topics, whatever else comes up. We invite you to pour yourself a drink and hang out with us.
Speaker 2:For now, until the ATF shows up.
Speaker 3:Until we talk about it on the podcast and then somebody figures it out.
Speaker 1:I doubt that's going to be the thing that gets them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, zero calories and no sugar.
Speaker 1:I'm not mad about that. So, jester King Turns out I might have to check out some of those. Touch my mic and I will.
Speaker 2:Come on, that's all of us. That's all of us. We're good, I think it's. This is the last episode where we're using these mic stands. I'm getting like the non.
Speaker 1:Number one. It's not the last episode that we're using these mic stands, because Today this recording day is the last day, alright, yeah. A brewery that we I've talked about.
Speaker 3:Talked about.
Speaker 2:And they're kind of like the. So who we're talking about is Jester King brewing down in Austin Texas.
Speaker 3:Texas Hill Country. What did you just say? They call it Texas Hill Country, yeah, austin, no. So Austin is where they're out of, but they call themselves Texas Hill Country because they're not downtown.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're outside. No, it's quite a facility, like it's quite a place that I've seen just from videos and pictures and stuff.
Speaker 2:I forgot who it was that we had earlier. So this is Jester King's three year blend SPON spawn Yep. Spon an award, a gold medal at a Texas Beer Festival.
Speaker 1:Their Like last week. Okay, they have multiple spawns.
Speaker 3:A ton. I was trying to figure out which one this was, and I couldn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is kind of their main one. This is the three year age for three years.
Speaker 1:But each one is different. Okay so, because there's also like a spawn 13th anniversary there. And so the oh spawn three year blend 2023. Yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this was bottled on February 21st 2023. Oh yeah, so like I posted on Instagram, hey it's your birthday.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, blended on 221, 23. Yeah, okay, so I found it.
Speaker 2:And so on. Tavor the this year's version of this just dropped.
Speaker 1:Oh, we like it.
Speaker 2:I might add a few more, and we can sell them till next year.
Speaker 3:So this is a blend of 2020, 2021 and 2022. 100% spontaneously fermented beer. For just to keep spawn, we mix water from our well with local grains in a turbid mash, boil the wort for hours with age tops from the attic of our barn. Chill the wort overnight in our cool ship. 100% spontaneously ferment the beer with native yeast and bacteria and mature it for just for years in oak barrels before blending Natural ref fermentation in the bottle. The resulting beer is a unique reflection of the Texas Hill Country, the ecology of the Texas winter and the people of Jester King.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they do, they've got you know big old compound down there. They do, you can rent a place for events. They've got a restaurant. Well, jester King in, yeah, Do they really yeah, so you can go there and stay there, and they got and I want to say Restaurant. I mean it's just basically, if you want to go have a wonderful weekend just hanging out and kind of an ideal like farm setting and drink a bunch of I'm assuming tasty, tasty wild fermented beer.
Speaker 3:Well, it looks like almost every Saturday in the spring and I don't know how it goes through the summer they have doom metal goat yoga. Yes, yeah, they have goats. Well, they have goats, but I don't know. I know what doom metal is. I know what goat yoga is yes, but the commville goat yoga is that? I guess I could click on it. Is it goat yoga? You can buy tickets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's goat yoga with beer, pizza and goats in the beautiful Texas Hill Country.
Speaker 2:Save a pizzeria too, you got everything down there.
Speaker 3:We call upon the ancient lords of the underworld, doom metal masters and yoga practitioners of all skills set to bring forth the beasts every Saturday.
Speaker 2:Yep, nope, it is a piece of yoga, and this is metal Going through their website and kind of everything. It's very like. When you see like oh, here's some everything's bottled, you think it's very serious. But I think they have a very upbeat and kind of tongue-in-cheek culture, kind of everything. They're just having fun with it. It looks fancy, but you can have fun and be fancy at the same time. They do like an annually. They clear out their cellar and go here's, we're having a dusty bottle sale.
Speaker 3:Well, they shoot to get I think they said as organic as possible, as local as possible, as sustainable as possible. So they're not sacrificing quality to get their butt.
Speaker 1:Family friendly. I'm buying some more of these Family friendly, dog friendly Not pluses and they do tours and goat experiences you can book through their website.
Speaker 2:They have a full-time goat wrangler. We're just going to 30 seconds of us just doing this.
Speaker 1:It's pretty chill. Like I can get down on that and that's the thing that I think a lot of people who just don't have it very often maybe like get put off by the idea of wild ale, like that it's oh if you grab this because it looks like a lager-ish or a well, yeah, like a lager, Could be a blonde ale, and yeah, and it doesn't have a sour smell, but if you grabbed a pint of this. It's almost like there's like a honey, almost even smell or like a.
Speaker 3:But if you took like a slug of this, expecting it to be something light and crushable. You see.
Speaker 1:Do you actually kind of reminds me a little bit of is your guys a cider?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very in the cider lane. I'm getting that kind of this sour apple kind of little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what it is. Maybe is just like the it's also spontaneously fermented.
Speaker 3:We don't add anything to it.
Speaker 2:So whatever, and then it's whatever plants and trees that they have in the area that you get. You probably get some of that pollen in there too, and some of those yeast that live on whatever fruits are there. So you're getting that same thing as their spontaneous.
Speaker 1:And only 5%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the best part.
Speaker 1:Though you're not.
Speaker 2:But there's tons of flavor in there and it's not. I think kind of my scary thing when we started doing these wild yels is like, oh my gosh, it's gonna be, there's gonna be so many layers of flavor. I'm gonna going into this beer. I'm gonna have to like concentrate really hard on what to pull out, but they've all been. They're not simple beers because obviously there's just tons of steps it took three years to make this.
Speaker 2:They're pulling it out, they're blending it they're doing all these things, but to get to this unified flavor that they, that they want in a 5%. Usually we're hearing about these big processes and something that's barrel age and it's oh, it's 10%, and we fortified it with some other stuff, but these folks are just getting back to what beer was well and it's.
Speaker 1:It is super interesting because you look through like their list of stuff, I mean it's 90% farmhouse variations. I think I saw one stout I haven't seen. I've seen an alt beer, a few like wits, like those types of things, obviously some sour's but like okay. So there finally is like a. There was a Russian Peril stout, so finally there's a Rayler stout, a colch, but like I okay, and they do at least have an IPA, but it's an IPA.
Speaker 3:That's 3.8% yeah, tea IPA, I think something like that they're not called that, but there was a black.
Speaker 2:There was a blackberry beer they are talking about in their blog today.
Speaker 1:That was a table beer was there, petite something was a table beer is like 2.9. This is cloud feeder, but they okay, so they do have some other ones. But it is kind of interesting that, like I mean, you're very much not like oh, we got 17 IPAs and a couple of other things like, and it's always so fascinating to me when you get a brewery that is so well known, massive, has like tons of stuff going on, a still no, no beer in a box because it's like wine, I guess.
Speaker 1:But it's interesting to me that like you're massive, you're popular, you're well known, like it's. I mean it's awesome, like good for them. It just is not.
Speaker 2:I've heard these guys names for man when we started the podcast back up again you, I just saw everyone's while they just show up in the orbit and then all of a sudden, boom, they're on to board. It's like okay at a cart. Yeah, because we had to try it.
Speaker 1:I do wonder about wild ale and pizza together out of it some Neapolitan style pizza.
Speaker 2:Right, you're not getting a little?
Speaker 3:Caesar's pizza so you're gonna have an artisan pizza, some sourdough sourdough pizza.
Speaker 2:Do we got pretty?
Speaker 3:sure, if you walked in there and we're like I would like a pepperoni and cheese pizza, they would tell you to turn around no, I'm firing up my pizza sit with this. I guess there'd be some goat cheese they got some here.
Speaker 1:I will tell you they have tomato a little bit of you go to Austin right now, you can get the 2017 three-year blend and the 23 three-year blend, only side by side. Yeah, they have. I mean, when you look at their like tap, there's a ton of stuff on there. I mean obviously wine as well, but like lots of beers. But again you're like, let's see, there's three, three IPA, some stouts, different things, but like you, man, to be able to just try a bunch of this stuff. It's not cheap, though. Okay, wood-fired pizza, classic toe, tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. Yeah, I mean, you can do simple All day.
Speaker 2:All day. It's a complex beer, but it's a simple beer. It's complex to get to the bottle, but once you drink it, it's just. This is just a beautiful. That's a beautiful flavor.
Speaker 1:It's bright, I'm kind of hungry for some pizza.
Speaker 2:I can order some. It's not gonna be wood-fired.
Speaker 1:No, it's not gonna be probably like.
Speaker 3:You want more Top off, yeah.
Speaker 1:Put some in there. I don't know that I want.
Speaker 2:Let me forget, in the bottom of the bottle, in there?
Speaker 1:12 ounces is probably about the right amount for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well that's when. I saw them in the bottles. I'm like if Chad's got a 750 of this, like, oh yeah, if this was 750, I wasn't.
Speaker 2:This was gonna be a standalone episode. They did start.
Speaker 3:Is it anyway Standalone recording day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a Illusions. Michael they to where did start offering beers in Friggin' men, 500 mils. So there might be a beer coming in that's in a 500 mil. What's my? What's my? A wine bottle 750. It's a quart, yeah. So we're gonna be recorking it or drinking a little bit more beer. But a lot more wild ales are starting to show up in bottles.
Speaker 1:Milliliters to ounces.
Speaker 3:Well, if you're going through all of the process to then bottle and blend and everything, this is a lot of work for a 12 ounce yeah.
Speaker 1:But what I saw from their pricing even though if they're pouring like tap or whatever they're doing, a lot of them are not You're not getting 16 ounces even in any of this stuff. One of their like Imperial Stouts was like 11 bucks for like an 8 ounce or I think it just goes to show. I mean, part of it is just what the process takes for what they're doing and the amount of stuff that goes into it.
Speaker 2:You know so when you have a certain amount of cachet and people are coming to your place. It's like every tap. If you want to come here, this is the price. But if I'm, it's like Dr Pruhall If I'm going out to a destination place to go have all the tasty beer, it's kind of a sunk cost.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, for sure. I mean it's worth it to go and do the experience If I'm going to.
Speaker 2:Austin and I would love to do smaller tasting. That way I can try more, yeah.
Speaker 1:How close.
Speaker 3:Is it to Austin, though? I don't know, I don't think it's like an easy Uber out there if you're down in Austin. They got a car, they do have a hotel, but I don't think Like downtown Austin you'd go. So I don't. If I'm in Austin, I'm going there. Is it 30 minutes out? 45 minutes out of Austin, maybe?
Speaker 1:But Very, very tasty Sort of I don't know anywhere else in Austin to like make a downtown Austin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess Austin City Hall. Ah, 35 minutes which if you had a car is fine.
Speaker 2:An uber out there is gonna be a little spendy, but if you're spending the night out there, if you've had it as part of your plan, you ran a car at the airport and you drive out spend the night.
Speaker 1:It's alright, you can take the bus. It's gonna take you eight and a half hours.
Speaker 3:Oh, because it's got that's just like it's like a bus. Now wait.
Speaker 2:No, it's like I can run a horse right, I could ride a horse right from the airport, not in Austin.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no yeah, um 500 millimeters is 16.9 and that makes sense now that I said it cuz 375, 12, there you go.
Speaker 1:So Okay, so I yeah, so you don't need to worry about Bringing too much cork in it, and no deal with that, so you could.
Speaker 3:So those not on the video. It's fully corked and capped. We'd get a wine opener to get this one out, is that?
Speaker 1:the first one We've had it, there's, there's three more.
Speaker 2:There's actually three more stacked up in the fridge now, so we're gonna have to go leave you all leave, but that's our first two corked, one right Nice branded.
Speaker 3:Yes sir, King cork Kind of got to, I got to keep it now.
Speaker 2:Um, we'll start a collection.
Speaker 3:It may have been our first corked.
Speaker 1:I guess that is our first we haven't done any wax sealed ones on the podcast either. That is a we did pick. We did pick one up a few weeks ago, but that is a complete pain to try and.
Speaker 3:I just don't have the white wax cutter on a bottle opener.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2:I have a protein propane blowtorch. He does melt the wax.
Speaker 3:Don't do that. That would ruin the beer you're gonna cook usually it's over a cork.
Speaker 1:It's still over a cap.
Speaker 2:It's over a cap.
Speaker 1:But yes, you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's from professional, just saber it off. No, yeah, no listen they gave us more than one. I can like I can screw one up.
Speaker 1:I also claimed for a while that I was a professional driver. Turns out I was a hotel valet, so I don't think that's quite the same thing, it's a mantis, it's whatever you put on your LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:This makes me good. I got paid to drive so.
Speaker 1:Or did I get paid to park? I guess we used to drive paid not to hit anything.
Speaker 3:That one, that one is definitely right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're a car shepherd, you're shepherding your flock of cars.
Speaker 1:To and fro. You know, I do one at a time, though.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm lost the analogy, you know what else?
Speaker 2:you shepherd goats and guess who has goats? Just a king, well. So what do we think of the beer today, since we are supposed to be reviewing the beer, you are yes, um, I think it's really well done.
Speaker 1:Beer I like. It is not like I said, it's not overly sour, you get a little hint of it. You get Kind of, like I said, like a sweetness, like a Fruityness to it. To me it's still probably like a seasonal type of thing to have 12 ounces at 5%, though I wouldn't mind having some of that on like a nice, like you talked to last episode about. Oh, oh, sitting at 70 degrees and having a frickin 10% triple IPA. I would rather have this, probably.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes well, you're gonna spend the same amount of time drinking it, yeah, versus your nerfs in the 10%, because you're going this is 10%. I do not need to finish this in 30 minutes versus this, you're not gonna.
Speaker 1:It's just the flavor slows you down a little bit, which is not a bad thing. It's just like it's gonna give you a little pause.
Speaker 2:This is a If you were being extra bougie when you were mowing your lawn on your wedding on more.
Speaker 1:I can't order writing.
Speaker 2:Lawn mower beer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is that like show off it's the like, but to me it's also like the I accomplished something, like I did something, and it's pop in the cork. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like you're, that's. The only thing, too is like you got to put in that extra work to even access this one.
Speaker 2:So you're saying I should grab a few of these for the winner of the nest car leak. Take a bottle of this do not know.
Speaker 3:So that's where I was gonna rank this one. I might like cooks her, andre. Hello, I forgot that whatever one I bought didn't have a oh Cork in it, so we got like the, the white one that you got to like. Yeah, we go out and we're just spraying it all over the place. Yeah, my rating on this one would be I Would not give this to somebody on the hopes that they would like it, because somebody took a sip of this and we're like, yeah, I don't really like it went to like dump it out.
Speaker 3:I'd be like, how dear you. Yeah, yes, do not waste that beer. I will take your germs and amoebas to finish it when I win this year's fantasy NASCAR. This is what you're sitting. Is your spring?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will present this to myself. Yes, you go. Where's my phone? I need to edit the cart now Before it gets all snapped up. The show it showed back up this week, this year's version.
Speaker 1:Well and it's, it's tough because it's like, yeah, like with a wild, ale I mean you're not getting.
Speaker 2:It's probably not gonna be this flavor again. It's gonna be close if they're blending it to approximate it.
Speaker 3:Oh man, and they've got a ton of great looking flavors on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's kind of the fun thing about that Like and probably one of the reasons where I more believe like a just for kingwin. It's like, oh, we have X amount of beers on on tap. Like well, you kind of have to Like because you're literally getting something different each time, every season. Like, yeah, I mean hearing the process of what it is to try to like recreate. Hey, we're trying to recreate the same beer, but we need different malts or we need different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need laboratory conditions, yeah and then this it's like no man like we. Literally, we can do the exact same thing, put the exact same malts, all that, some stuff, but when you're doing a spontaneous fermentation like Well, in some of them, who knows what's gonna happen?
Speaker 3:They blend, they re-ferment with addition. So they're like closer to or is, I think, this one's three years of just wide open spontaneous fermentation, but like the shishou and fuyu persimmon. So it's a three year spontaneously fermented, and then they add those in for the re-fermentation, so you're in a little more of a piece of baseline Do you want my today's realization that I'm kind of a moron?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, spawn. Yeah, you just now got that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Is Chad still thinking through it? I think so.
Speaker 1:Spontaneous oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, huh, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Today I learned that.
Speaker 1:A little bit. I really like it. Again, I think like it is definitely not a style of beer I'm drinking every day. Oh no, I'm not drinking probably multiples of them. I do wonder how, like, even if you had, like I'm thinking like a flight of three it's kind of your max on even being able to kind of really, yeah, get a solid differentiation, understanding of the differences, like I think you would burn yourself out.
Speaker 2:Yeah On this, even though, how good it is, I would only want one, because then I'm selfish and I want to go try all the other. Yeah, wonderful tasty things they're doing.
Speaker 3:That's what you elsewhere, even to Brian's point, is like a flight of three different ones. Yes, would probably be enough. Before you go, I'm no longer catching nuances. It's still good.
Speaker 1:It's like when you have a sour in your flight, like do not do that one before the longer, like you're ruining your palate, like you're not gonna get. You. Don't just go lightest to the darkest. No, I've learned the places that still are like yeah, it's just, I'm like no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3:Restromper or recent yeah, primarily.
Speaker 2:Like, like, like well, we'll talk about a later breweries that don't want to do flights. Oh, that's a topic for another day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have thoughts.
Speaker 3:We'll bring it up, all right. Well, for this one, we all racked and stacked right, oh yeah, okay, our glasses are empty, then, and we'll catch you guys next time.
Speaker 1:If you've enjoyed what you just heard, make sure you subscribe to get new episodes when they drop, and don't forget to leave us a review. If you want to see what we're drinking, we're not on the pod. You can follow us on social media at a beer review. Feel free to send us any beer suggestions that we can make Chad go buy off of divorce. Bye.