Spring Tonic Bottle Release
The next bottle release at the brewery is the return of Spring Tonic, available for online reservation on Monday, May 29th at noon! This bottle-conditioned sour beer was brewed without hops, and bittered and flavored with spring greens harvested from our garden and local ginger. This beer possesses a sharp lemony tartness countered by the zing of the ginger and balanced out with greeny bitterness from the dandelion and carrot tops. We brew this beer at the beginning of spring when those greens start to pop out of the ground and it is one of our favorite beers! It's packaged in 330 ml bottles at 4.4% alcohol by volume and is ready for your enjoyment now or can be kept in your home cellar for several years.
Tickets to reserve the beer are $1 per bottle and you may reserve up to 12 bottles (or a 1 case) for $12. The bottles themselves will be $10 each when you come to pick them up at the brewery with a reservation, or $12 without. Tickets go on sale Monday, May 29th 1st at noon and will be available for reservation online until Wednesday, May 31st at midnight, or until the reservations are filled. After that, bottles will be available on a first-come first-served basis at the brewery. To secure a bottle (or a case!) make sure you reserve ahead of time. Our reservation fees are donated to a great cause. This time we'll be sending money to LEAF Food Hub, a brand new online community supported agriculture endeavor in Southern Illinois that brings local farm-grown produce and products to customers and businesses in a click -- it's EASY AND AWESOME and one of the coolest things happening in food in Southern Illinois! We are so happy to be able to support them with our reservation fees this month.
You may pick up your bottle during our normal business hours starting Thursday, June 1st through July 2nd. We have very limited space so any bottles not claimed by July 2nd must be forfeited. As always, you will be asked to show ID and your ticket when you come to purchase your bottle. THANK YOU!
Brewing a seasonal gruit ale entirely without hops and relying on wild-foraged dandelions, field clover, and garden carrot tops creates a rustic flavor profile you simply can't find in modern commercial craft beer. That natural herbal bitterness cuts right through the malt foundation, giving it that crisp, earthy bite early farmers used to rely on after long winter months. Was reading an engaging write-up on ancestral beverage brewing, foraging native herbs, and seasonal homestead traditions over at Veer Game Login this morning, and skipping standard hop pellets to let local backyard weeds dictate the bitterness makes each spring release taste like a direct snapshot of the forest floor.
That sharp hit of fresh local ginger working against natural lactic acidity is what keeps this sour ale from tasting flat or overly medicinal. A lot of historical botanical brews end up tasting like muddy herbal tinctures, but that ginger warmth gives it a clean, zesty finish that wakes up the palate immediately. A home fermenter on Jai club login was dissecting wild rhizome fermentations, balancing sharp lacto sours, and spice infusion ratios yesterday, and having that bright ginger zing linger after every sip is what makes grabbing a fresh 330ml bottle well worth the road trip out to the woods.
The bottle-conditioning process on these small-batch farmhouse ales means the beer evolves dramatically if you stash a couple of bottles in a dark cellar for a year or two. Fresh off the bottling line, you get crisp citrus notes and bright herbal aromatics, but extended cellar aging allows wild yeasts to slowly chew through remaining starches, bringing out leathery, complex funk notes. Stumbled into an interesting chat about home cellar temperature management, wild yeast evolution, and bottle conditioning on Raxi Win Login recently, and saving an extra bottle to pop open next spring is the best way to track how wild botanicals mellow over time.
Driving out to rural farm breweries where the botanicals are harvested just yards away from the brewhouse creates a sense of place that industrial taprooms can never duplicate. Standing outside surrounded by flowering trees while tasting beer brewed with ingredients dug from that same soil makes the entire trip feel like a genuine seasonal ritual. Picked up a really well-explained perspective on rural agro-tourism, community farm breweries, and seasonal foraging ethics via DmFirst Login earlier, and supporting small independent brewers who harvest their own bittering herbs keeps authentic farmhouse culture alive.
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