The Referend Bier Blendery

The Referend Bier Blendery Producer of 100% spontaneously fermented beer (always remembering to forget to add yeast since 2016).
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The Referend is exclusively dedicated to the production of spontaneously fermented beers, as practiced by ancient cultures and ushered into modernity by the lambic brewers of Belgium's Pajottenland. These beers are:
100% spontaneously fermented
[no yeast cultures are added at any point in the process]

Fermented and matured in oak barrels
[neutral oak imparts little flavor and a

llows the beer to breathe]

Unfiltered, Unpasteurized, Unsweetened
[to sustain the beer's natural essence]

Built for posterity
[bottles are capable of decades of aging]

Acidic and complex
[not basic.]

The cellar and blendery are located in Hopewell Township, NJ, home to The Sourlands.

This is just to say that, several decades prior to Gilles Deleuze penning Difference & Repetition, William Carlos Willia...
08/07/2026

This is just to say that, several decades prior to Gilles Deleuze penning Difference & Repetition, William Carlos Williams wrote "Multiplicity and variability are the fruits of knowledge."

While it is not the main point of either, we are monthly asked (in tones of wonderment usually, anger sometimes) how spontaneous fermentation can allow for replicability, how our beer can deliver the industrial ideals of repetition without difference, multiplicity without variability.

Of course, by design and by deference to nature, we cannot. That aim is a sterilization campaign. And who wants to spend their time in pursuit of lifelessness?

This Is Just to Say 2025
is our spontaneously fermented golden ale (brewed with floor-malted pilsner and raw wheat), aged in neutral oak barrels and refermented with 2025 harvest local PA yellow, red, and cherry plums before a natural refermentation in the keg.

Ready now.

"The plum survives its poems"
-Wallace Stevens

We've been serving spontaneously fermented beer out of porróns since the pandemic forced our Lawn Times pivot in 2020, w...
07/10/2026

We've been serving spontaneously fermented beer out of porróns since the pandemic forced our Lawn Times pivot in 2020, which is to say we can't not be open an hour early (3PM) for Belgium v Spain. We forced our own hand (as far from our mouths as possible to stream bright wild beer faceward by gravity). Porróns discounted during the game only, as they're already a ludicrously good deal as baseline to encourage sharing & friendmaking.

We've also got a fresh restock of conventional (non-derogatory) beer from our friends and we're celebrating two onsite bottle birthdays this weekend:
The Bees of the Invisible turns 7 today (Fri)!
Smultronilla turns 6 tomorrow (Sat)!

Normal hours until Monday, when we'll be exceptionally open in the upper barn with our dirty (old) projector with porrón...
07/04/2026

Normal hours until Monday, when we'll be exceptionally open in the upper barn with our dirty (old) projector with porrón service starting at 3PM (Portgual/Spain) and basketed bottles of spontaneously fermented beer come 8PM (US/Belgium).

Proud to report our barrel cellars are staying nicely cool: 69F in each (Cellar Bar with A/C assistance, our other smaller bankbarn cellar for strictly by its own natural merits). It feels good, come feel good!

"the fact that a lot of American history is nothing to be proud of, the fact that it makes you pretty sick, but my students didn’t want to hear any of that, the fact that they wanted everything to make a pretty picture, upbeat, feel-good, the fact that I tried to stay upbeat but it’s not that easy when you’re teaching history, the fact that “All there is is NOW” is not completely true, the fact that there’s before, and what’s next, the fact that the PTA says we should all be instilling patriotism, optimism and contentment in our kids the whole time..
the fact that the Hopewell people lived here for thirteen thousand years and didn’t wreck a thing, the fact that they just left a few arrowheads and gorgets lying around, the fact that they didn’t pollute the drinking water of millions of people, or leave radioactive waste that won’t be safe for three hundred thousand years, the fact that the Europeans managed to just trash the place in a few hundred years, the fact that that is kind of embarrassing if you think about it, the fact that it’s not much of a plan really, the fact that once you pollute everybody’s drinking water, you could say you don’t even really have a country anymore"
-Lucy Ellmann

We've got birthday bottles all weekend in the Cellar Bar!Ice-nine Cabernet Franc 2018spontaneously fermented golden ale ...
06/26/2026

We've got birthday bottles all weekend in the Cellar Bar!

Ice-nine Cabernet Franc 2018
spontaneously fermented golden ale refermented in the barrel with naturally cryoextracted Niagara Escarpment Cab. Franc icewine juice, which was added again to the blending tank for its natural bottle refermentation. 7 years old Friday!

Smultronstället 2020
spontaneously fermented golden ale refermented with individually triaged ripe local strawberries. 6 years old Saturday!

Globe Theatre: Riesling 2020
spontaneously fermented golden ale refermented with North Fork Long Island Riesling grapes, crushed and destemmed by us for a ten day open maceration and racked back to puncheons for additional maturation before bottling. Bottle refermented with Niagara Escarpment Riesling icewine juice. 5 years old Sunday!

(Birthday bottles are only available for onsite enjoyment, and are 25% off their vintage library pricing.)

Today's the day! (the longest day, a dad day, our solstice release)We're celebrating in and around the barn with chilled...
06/21/2026

Today's the day! (the longest day, a dad day, our solstice release)

We're celebrating in and around the barn with chilled beer and wine, new and old releases of old beer, new wine and old wine, pizza & poutine.

"…We all imbibe
the new freshness like a straw, a stem
takes us from there to there, like heaven."
-John Ashbery

Welcome to the Desert of the Real is our spontaneously fermented golden ale aged in sotol barrels. This first edition wa...
06/19/2026

Welcome to the Desert of the Real is our spontaneously fermented golden ale aged in sotol barrels. This first edition was barrel fermented and aged in a single Texas sotol barrel for 19 months before a natural refermentation in the bottle. Bottled Sep. 10, 2021 and finally releasing into whatever is left of the real world. 9.1% alc/vol thanks to spiritous oak.

This bottle will join Apropos of Everything in public release this Sunday/Solstice/Father's Day alongside two Cab Franc-based releases and pizza & poutine by

"if all information is available, it’s the end of history itself. We cultivate brain death... Have we forgotten that we must give a chance to downtime, that there is a virtue to the unproductive and that it must be respected?"
-Jean Baudrillard

Unless someone's out there flying well under the radar with their nature-embracing coolship practices (show yourself! sa...
06/16/2026

Unless someone's out there flying well under the radar with their nature-embracing coolship practices (show yourself! say hi!), there are only three American breweries that practice only spontaneous fermentation: de Garde (OR), The Referend (PA, formerly NJ), and Primitive (CO). Good company of intrepid/quixotic/principled people.

Apropos of Everything is a rotating collaborative blend of equal parts spontaneously fermented barrel-aged stock from each producer, blended for final complementarity by the bottling brewery. de Garde blended the first iteration, this is the second, and Primitive will create the third. Our blend, this blend, the second, is a blend of roughly 1, 2, and 3 year old spontaneously fermented golden ales, bottled May 31, 2025.

We're releasing our third of the bottles this Sunday for a Solstice/Father's Day release party, along with a special single barrel bottling and a couple new Therein Wine bottles. Pizza Plant barnside with their Neapolitan pizzas & (non-Neapolitan) poutine; all good things.

"the wind is part of the process
defines a nation of the wind—
father of many notions"
-Robert Duncan

"this world of microbes, which is nothing more than coagulated nothingness"-Antonin Artaud
05/16/2026

"this world of microbes, which is nothing more than coagulated nothingness"
-Antonin Artaud

Three new Cellar Bar wildnesses!The Way of All Flesh 2024is our spontaneously fermented pale wheat ale conditioned on th...
04/23/2026

Three new Cellar Bar wildnesses!

The Way of All Flesh 2024
is our spontaneously fermented pale wheat ale conditioned on the highest performing fruits from a given harvest year. For 2024 that was local yellow & white nectarines and Chambourcin grapes. On draft, bottles to come.

Quelle Metamorfosis 2023
is our spontaneously fermented golden ale conditioned on estate grown organic/unsprayed elderflower blossoms, 4 years old. On cask, different vintage bottles to come for Rememberers.

King, Queen, Knave 2025
is the first appearance of any iteration of our spontaneously fermented gruit, brewed four years ago with estate yarrow, chamomile, and honey locust pods, local honey, and here conditioned on 2025 harvest wild carrot flowers. On cask.

Last gold of the season, new beer for the season.Mont Sainte-Victoire Spruced '24-'25 is on draft in the Cellar Bar wher...
04/11/2026

Last gold of the season, new beer for the season.

Mont Sainte-Victoire Spruced '24-'25 is on draft in the Cellar Bar where it can be partaken of, or taken in hand to the out of doors to the biergarten and vineyard where the flowers and brightest new green leaves are, and where the birds know nothing of current events and are quick to let you know so. It can be partaken of there too.

Brewed in the spring of 2024 with local pilsner malt and quite local organically-grown raw buckwheat and spelt, spontaneously open fermented on estate spruce tips, aged for one year in one neutral oak puncheon, and conditioned on the next season's spruce tips from the same trees.

You can get it by the porrón if you're willing to wait for the foam to subside.

And as it's likely to be in the 80s (F) this week, and 30s (F) this evening, we're paddling away at our last golden ale brewday of season K.

Too much spring all at once, come and get it!

Address

407 Old Route 22
Kutztown, PA
19530

Opening Hours

Thursday 3pm - 8pm
Friday 3pm - 8pm
Saturday 1pm - 8pm

Telephone

+16094740443

Website

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