Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Brett loves the wood

Cellar 3 operation keeps the wild yeast under control

Four foeders inoculate Green Flash beers with brett at Cellar 3.
Four foeders inoculate Green Flash beers with brett at Cellar 3.

Green Flash opened the doors to its Cellar 3 barrel-aging facility in Poway on May 16, giving the public a glimpse of the sort of wild-yeast experimentation barrelmaster Pat Korn has been developing over the past two and a half years. For the grand opening, 15 of the tasting room's 24 taps were assigned to brett beers, sours, and other barrel-aged efforts.

Place

Cellar 3

12260 Crosthwaite Circle, Poway

Strictly speaking, the 12,000-square-foot space is not a brewery. That work is still done at Green Flash's Mira Mesa home base, where brewmaster Chuck Silva continues to craft Green Flash releases made primarily using strains of Saccharomyces, better known as brewer's yeasts. However, portions of those beers — or at least the pre-fermented wort — are diverted to Poway via truck, and pumped into massive wood foeder (pronounced fooder) barrels to ferment with Brettanomyces, or brett, the wild-yeast strain most commonly associated with Belgian-style ales.

Sponsored
Sponsored

"The whole idea of having the foeder is that you're getting consistent mass inoculation for the 25–30 barrels you're going to fill out of it," says Korn. "It's trying to be consistent with something that's called wild."

The word "consistent" comes up a lot when Korn discusses the challenges of wild yeasts, which are a big reason brewing requires obsessive cleanliness to succeed, particularly when wood barrels are involved.

"The brett loves the wood," Korn points out. "It stays in the wood forever — it's almost impossible to get rid of."

That's a driving factor in Green Flash opening this secondary facility — to reduce the risk of contaminating their regular roster of beers. The internationally distributed brewer has also expanded its barrel program from about 40 barrels to 550 and counting, thus deepening their pursuit of sour ales. "We were just doing brett beers [in Mira Mesa], because sours were just a whole other headache that you had to deal with," Korn says.

In the quest for consistency, he worked with local yeast purveyor White Labs to isolate a signature brett strain used in all of his barreling efforts, which he describes as having a "very lemony, verbena, pineapple flavor." He's dedicated one foeder entirely to sours, another to Flanders style ales, and two to funk beers. Once a beer has spent a week or more fermenting in a foeder, it's transferred to smaller, 225-gallon barrels where secondary fermentation begins, sometimes with lactic-acid-producing bacteria Lactobacillus or Pediococcus, often with fruit purée added to feed them.

Of the 15 Cellar 3 beers available at the grand opening, most were variations of individual beers, each having received different barrel treatment. For example, for Natura Morta, a 100% brett-fermented saison aged in wine barrels, three varieties were on tap: blueberry, strawberry, or cranberry. A fourth aged with plum will be bottled in coming weeks. And while a first release of bourbon-aged Silva Stout spent time in Heaven Hill barrels, a future release is aging in barrels that once contained Woodford Reserve.

Inspired by similar large-scale barreling efforts by Firestone Walker and New Belgium, Cellar 3 marks the largest barrel program undertaken thus far in San Diego, a bet that San Diego's beer tastes are evolving as consumers' palates become more sophisticated. In doing so, Green Flash CEO Mike Hinkley has given Korn the freedom to experiment and occasionally fail, all in pursuit of "something different."

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Pie pleasure at Queenstown Public House

A taste of New Zealand brings back happy memories
Next Article

Syrian treat maker Hakmi Sweets makes Dubai chocolate bars

Look for the counter shop inside a Mediterranean grill in El Cajon
Four foeders inoculate Green Flash beers with brett at Cellar 3.
Four foeders inoculate Green Flash beers with brett at Cellar 3.

Green Flash opened the doors to its Cellar 3 barrel-aging facility in Poway on May 16, giving the public a glimpse of the sort of wild-yeast experimentation barrelmaster Pat Korn has been developing over the past two and a half years. For the grand opening, 15 of the tasting room's 24 taps were assigned to brett beers, sours, and other barrel-aged efforts.

Place

Cellar 3

12260 Crosthwaite Circle, Poway

Strictly speaking, the 12,000-square-foot space is not a brewery. That work is still done at Green Flash's Mira Mesa home base, where brewmaster Chuck Silva continues to craft Green Flash releases made primarily using strains of Saccharomyces, better known as brewer's yeasts. However, portions of those beers — or at least the pre-fermented wort — are diverted to Poway via truck, and pumped into massive wood foeder (pronounced fooder) barrels to ferment with Brettanomyces, or brett, the wild-yeast strain most commonly associated with Belgian-style ales.

Sponsored
Sponsored

"The whole idea of having the foeder is that you're getting consistent mass inoculation for the 25–30 barrels you're going to fill out of it," says Korn. "It's trying to be consistent with something that's called wild."

The word "consistent" comes up a lot when Korn discusses the challenges of wild yeasts, which are a big reason brewing requires obsessive cleanliness to succeed, particularly when wood barrels are involved.

"The brett loves the wood," Korn points out. "It stays in the wood forever — it's almost impossible to get rid of."

That's a driving factor in Green Flash opening this secondary facility — to reduce the risk of contaminating their regular roster of beers. The internationally distributed brewer has also expanded its barrel program from about 40 barrels to 550 and counting, thus deepening their pursuit of sour ales. "We were just doing brett beers [in Mira Mesa], because sours were just a whole other headache that you had to deal with," Korn says.

In the quest for consistency, he worked with local yeast purveyor White Labs to isolate a signature brett strain used in all of his barreling efforts, which he describes as having a "very lemony, verbena, pineapple flavor." He's dedicated one foeder entirely to sours, another to Flanders style ales, and two to funk beers. Once a beer has spent a week or more fermenting in a foeder, it's transferred to smaller, 225-gallon barrels where secondary fermentation begins, sometimes with lactic-acid-producing bacteria Lactobacillus or Pediococcus, often with fruit purée added to feed them.

Of the 15 Cellar 3 beers available at the grand opening, most were variations of individual beers, each having received different barrel treatment. For example, for Natura Morta, a 100% brett-fermented saison aged in wine barrels, three varieties were on tap: blueberry, strawberry, or cranberry. A fourth aged with plum will be bottled in coming weeks. And while a first release of bourbon-aged Silva Stout spent time in Heaven Hill barrels, a future release is aging in barrels that once contained Woodford Reserve.

Inspired by similar large-scale barreling efforts by Firestone Walker and New Belgium, Cellar 3 marks the largest barrel program undertaken thus far in San Diego, a bet that San Diego's beer tastes are evolving as consumers' palates become more sophisticated. In doing so, Green Flash CEO Mike Hinkley has given Korn the freedom to experiment and occasionally fail, all in pursuit of "something different."

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Trophy truck crushes four at Baja 1000

"Two other racers on quads died too,"
Next Article

Trump names local supporter new Border Czar

Another Brick (Suit) in the Wall
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader