My brother in law lives in Eugene, Oregon. While he has come to visit us multiple times we had never came to him... so long story short, we went to Eugene this summer. I hadn't been to Eugene since my freshman year of highschool when the football team piled into busses and made the long 8 hour trek from Spokane, WA to Eugene for football camp. While we had fun at football camp, Eugene is actually a lot more fun when you aren't getting your ass kicked for 8 hours a day. Imagine that!
Like any good homebrewer would do, I had done my research on the local beer scene and was excited to explore all the great breweries Eugene had to offer. Coincidentally, I had my mens fishing trip in Montana coming up a few weeks after Eugene so I had planned on finding some top teir brews to take to Montana and share on the river with the fella's. Eugene did not dissapoint! I ended up with a selection of bottle conditioned farmhouse ales and brett saisons that had been aged on various northwest fruits. They were all great beers but the standout was a farmhouse ale aged on sour cherries. As someone who isn't on board with the recent sour craze I found this slightly tart beer incredibly refreshing. Instead of the puckering sour that is trendy these days, this beer just had a kiss of tart from the cherries. It was delicious, complex, refreshing and all around amazing. So that moment did it for me, I was going to make a farmhouse ale with sour cherries!
The first challenge with any recipe is to figure out the ingredients and imagine how that blend is going to taste. I had my sour cherries but what about grains and hops?
Well I had wanted to try spelt for a very long time. For those out of the loop, spelt is an ancient variety of wheat that was a staple in the mediteranean around 5,000 years ago and was also used to brew beer in those days. I heard it gives beer a little nutty, spicy, sweet malt flavor. Sounds good, never used it, I'll take 1 lb (11.11%) please. For base malt I decided on pilsner, it would give me a crisp refreshing flavor without competing with the other ingredients, 8 lbs (88.89%) please.
Hops were a little trickier. I wanted something that would complement the tart but not be dominate enough to cover the yeast phenolics. A noble hop would have worked but I settled on Centennial. I knew it would be easy to go overboard but I wanted to keep this beer Americanized and Centennial is both crisp and refreshing while also being a nod to the northwest inspiration of this beer. The key would be to not go too bitter. Bitter and tart didn't sound good in my mind, but the aroma and flavor of Centennial with a little tart sounded heavenly, so I stuck with a 20 minute addition and a flame-out adddition to hit about 22 IBU. A whirlpool was discussed on brew day but we elected to keep it simple, if you want to get crazy with the hops knock yourself out.
For yeast I wanted to try Jovaru Lithuanian Farmhouse Ale from Omega Yeast Labs. I was under the assumption that the local brew store still had it... wrong! I had to settle for Lallemand Farmhouse which will do fine. If you are making this beer use whatever saison or farmhouse yeast you please, this is about inspirations, not rules.
What you will end up with is a slightly tart, extremely pale, very refreshing beer. I am recommending 1 OZ of Montemorency Cherry concentrate per gallon but that is going to be dealers choice. This beer is so pale that it was hard to believe we had hit our preboil OG during mash, it was basically as clear as tap water but with a slight hue of yellow.
I brewed this one with Greg and we kept checking and double checking and sure enough we had hit our numbers even thought the wort was so clear and pale. You can see how pale it is in the image taken during boil.
Anyways, that's how the below beer came to be. You could brew it without the sour cherry too, the beer gods will be pleased either way. Enjoy, keep brewing and let your experiences inspire your art.