Last week at the brewery, we had another Ribstone Creek first.
We cried in our beers as we watched, for the first time, beer go down the drain. Our FirePit Wit never made it to Alberta pint glasses.
How could this happen? Our Witbier was meant to be a one-batch summer seasonal. Anyone who has or does brew beer knows, yeast is a picky little micro-organism and, in this case, the biggest reason why we had to say goodbye to a beer we wanted to love.
Not unlike most types of farming, yeast farming is an art in itself and as a brewery still in its infancy we are always refining our processes. We attempted a new in-house yeast propagation technique on our new pilot system. Fermentation started vigorously then slowed to the point that it wouldn’t finish out. We attempted to rouse the yeast to get it going again, but weren’t able to bring it back from the dead.
We refuse to put out products that we are not proud of and can't stand behind. So down the drain our FirePit Wit went.
Now that we know what we know, we may look to try it again in the future but for now it is back to brewing our other great beers.
Aaron Hogarth
Head Brewer, Ribstone Creek Brewery
