05/01/2026
Introducing A Hand At Dusk - a mixed culture saison conditioned on Elephant Heart plums from my pals at . Bottles are available starting today in the tasting room at .
Initially brewed in 2021 as a mixed grain saison base, the wort was cast out directly into one of my fruiting barrels. Inside the barrel were Elephant Heart plums, a delightful and fragrant variety full of vibrant, juicy plum flavour. I had received these plums a week earlier and left them to undergo carbonic maceration within the barrel. After the week had passed, many of the plums were breaking down and the juice was beginning to undergo alcoholic fermentation.
I sent the wort, a rye-heavy grist composed entirely of Meccagrade malt, directly onto the fermenting plums and let it ride for a few weeks. This is a form of spontaneous fermentation (since no yeast was added) and I figured letting it ride with the clearly somewhat alcoholic tolerant yeast from the fruit skins would result in an interesting experiment of a beer.
Turns out whatever microbes were on the fruit skins were only mildly alcohol tolerant - the fermentation stalled out around 2% ABV. This is common with wild yeast, most strains you find will have not evolved to tolerate much alcohol. So I threw in some of my house culture at the time - around 8 strains of brettanomyces, saison strains, lactobacillus, pediococcus, and definitely some other things. This culture immediately went to work and finished the ferment, but I let the fruit and beer rest together in the barrel for another 8 months or so before bottling.
That house culture at the time had a very strong pediococcus strain (isolated from Cantillon gueuze!) and during conditioning the beer became very "sick". Think slimey and texturally very thick. It also didn't carbonate even a little bit, which was super frustrating.
It took about two years for the ropey texture to clear, and another two for the beer to approach an acceptable level of carbonation.
The beer is quite sour, harkening back to the old school Temporal house character. The plums are still expressive and vibrant, and the carbonation is soft.
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