{"id":108935,"date":"2025-02-25T10:36:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T10:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/recipes\/category-a-b\/beer\/let-the-beauty-we-love-be-what-we-do-so-cal-craft-beer-blog\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T10:36:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T10:36:46","slug":"let-the-beauty-we-love-be-what-we-do-so-cal-craft-beer-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=108935","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLet the Beauty We Love Be What We Do\u201d \u2013 So Cal Craft Beer Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

A Meditation on Beer and Texas<\/h2>\n

by C. C. Hansen<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Today\u2019s blog post title comes from a short poem by the 13th century Sufi poet known as Rumi. The poem\u2019s next line reads, \u201cThere are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.\u201d (From Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing<\/em>, translated by Coleman Barks.) Both lines describe Jester King\u2019s approach to making beer.<\/p>\n

\n

Jester King is a brewery, pizzeria, and goat farm on a beautiful ranch in the Texas Hill Country on the outskirts of Austin. We make food & drink tied to a time, place & people and are a welcoming place for people of all ages to enjoy community, fun & hospitality in a special setting.<\/p>\n

Jester King Brewing Home Page<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, Jester King isn\u2019t the only brewery that makes the Hill Country its home. In today\u2019s post, I\u2019ll focus primarily on a recent visit to Jester King, but I\u2019ll also introduce a couple of other worthy brews from the region that I had the good fortune to sample. <\/p>\n

But first, some thoughts about Texas.<\/p>\n

Texas Terroir<\/em><\/h2>\n

The Texas I learn about from current news reports is very different from the Texas I know from friends and relatives who at one time or another have made it home. Ken, one of my early creative collaborators (in SoCal, then New York), moved to Texas to become artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center. A gifted chef I knew in New York, David, was born in Houston. Roberto, an extraordinary Filipino-American chef\/graphic designer I had the good fortune to work with here in So Cal, was raised in San Antonio. <\/p>\n

My daughter the Elusive Isabella performed in several videos \u2014 love letters to Los Angeles, actually \u2014 produced by the husband and wife team behind BreatHHelmet<\/a><\/strong> who are both Dallas natives (Tip: \u201cLA Fish Flow\u201d A rap from Guy Man<\/a><\/strong> and \u201cEyEris BoUche for women<\/a><\/strong>\u201d are classics from this series). In my day job as a writing professor at the University of Southern California, I\u2019ve gotten to know and love tons of students who hail from Texas, many of whose parents have roots in all kinds of distant shores of this world.<\/p>\n

I first visited Texas when my daughter, Francesca, was looking at colleges. We had a lot of fun and a lot of good BBQ on that trip. Though she ultimately got her degree from UCLA, she and her husband bought their first house in Dripping Springs, TX a few years ago and have put down strong roots in the area, with a thriving kitchen garden and menagerie that includes a dozen chickens, a couple of dogs, and \u201ctwo cats in the yard<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The point is, all these associations inform my appreciation and enjoyment of the beer that I sample when I visit, which I recently did again over the holidays.<\/p>\n

Jester King Brewing<\/h2>\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

While visiting Francesca and her family for the holidays, we invited our good friends Mike and Nina to join us at Jester King<\/a><\/strong> for some fellowship and beverage. Mike and Nina are So Cal natives who joined the most recent exodus of Californians to Texas. Interestingly, Mike and Nina are wine people. Beer isn\u2019t their thing. Luckily, Jester King includes wine and cider on their menu, making our ex-pat friends happy campers.<\/p>\n

Spontaneously Fermented Beer <\/h3>\n

Jester King is known for its sour beer creations. I wrote about Sour Beer<\/a><\/strong> in general on a previous post. Today I\u2019m going to go a little deeper into the process that Jester King uses. On their \u201cSPON Beers\u201d page<\/a><\/strong>, the brewers explain that, \u201cSpontaneous Fermentations [are] 100% spontaneously fermented beer inspired by authentic Belgian Lambic & Gueuze. We chill the unfermented beer overnight in our coolship and allow native yeast to work its magic. A true reflection of Texas terroir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Jester King coolship, courtesy of the tastytales.tv blog<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cCoolship\u201d? According to the Brews Brothers<\/a><\/strong> at CraftBeer.com,<\/p>\n

\n

What\u2019s old is new. Coolships (koelschips in Flemish), dating back for centuries, are appearing in a growing number of craft breweries in what may be a mini-coolship fever, propelled by the explosion of interest in Belgian brewing styles and a harkening back to traditional brewing.<\/p>\n

Brews Brothers, CraftBeer.com<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re interested in learning more about coolships and this brewing tradition, I encourage you to read the entire article. I\u2019ll just add that the authors describe coolships as \u201cgiant brownie baking pans.\u201d \u201cYeasts are naturally everywhere,\u201d the Brews Brothers tell us. \u201cIt was not until 1857 and the work of French scientist Louis Pasteur, that the fermentation process was understood. He discovered the key role of yeast as the micro-organism responsible for alcoholic fermentation.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrewers learned that local yeasts settle on the wort after it cooled,\u201d the Brothers continue, \u201cdevouring the sugars and assiduously multiplying\u2026. This process is known as \u2018spontaneous fermentation\u2019 because there is no infusion of modern laboratory-created yeasts. These local yeasts provide terroir, a sense of place.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, What Did We Drink?<\/h3>\n

On this particular visit, only the Elusive Isabella and I were drinking beer, and each of us ordered two brews. We traded tastes and joined our large group in consuming mountains of Jester Kings\u2019 extraordinary pizza selections.<\/p>\n

\n

A word of to the wise: brewers are masters of yeast. Pizza dough involves yeast. If a brewery makes its own wood fired pizza, jump on it!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cLoncito\u201d (b\u00e9chamel, mushrooms, sausage, gruyere, garlic, parsley, chives, tarragon) and \u201cPyrus\u201d (sage oil, Swiss, gorgonzola, spiced pear, and bacon) went particularly well with the SPON beers we ordered.<\/p>\n

BBA Moderne Dansk<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\"
Left<\/em> 2021 Moderne Dansk, right<\/em> Staked Plains Pils<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This 6.7% ABV brew was aged in Balcones Bourbon<\/a><\/strong> barrels, then refermented with Danish Stevnsb\u00e6r cherry juice from Frederiksdal Kirseb\u00e6rvin in Denmark. My paternal grandfather was born in Denmark, and that\u2019s a part of her ethnicity that the Elusive Isabella is particularly fond of.<\/p>\n

Flavor? Wild, sweet, sour, complex. Thoroughly enjoyable. Thought: would make a great reduction for a Cantonese-style pork dish prepared in a wok\u2026<\/p>\n

Staked Plains Pils<\/h4>\n

Crisp, refreshing (what other words are there to describe a well-made pils?) with a hint of prairie and sunshine, this lager is brewed with 100% Texas malt from the Llano Estacado (image of said llano<\/em>, below, courtesy of Wikimedia).<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
The Llano Estacado is in northwest Texas (and New Mexico). Also known as \u201cThe High Plains,\u201d you might have heard of Clint Eastwood\u2019s 1973 Western, High Plains Drifter<\/em>, which is presumably where the Stranger (played by Eastwood) is from\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

13th Anniversary SPON<\/h4>\n

Special blend of 1 year, 2 year, and 4 year spontaneous ales<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n
\"\"
Left<\/em>, 13th Anniversary SPON, right, <\/em>JK Hazy IPA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

You know how they say you see your life flash before your eyes when you\u2019re close to death? Tasting this 13th Anniversary SPON allowed me to experience the history of this brewery in the blink of a \u2026 tastebud<\/em>? Well, with our first, second, and third taste, we got a rush of impressions, encompassing variations of sunshine, rainfall, soil quality, amber waves of grain, and trellises of fragrant hops, spanning the years under all kinds of conditions.<\/p>\n

Initial impressions were quickly followed by a bouquet of subtle essences from all the oak barrels in which all the spontaneous ales were fermented. I flashed on the hands of the farmers and brewers and distillers, vintners, and coopers who had labored to fashion this celebration of 13 years in business, 13 years in place, soaking in all the genii loci<\/em> \u2014 transient and permanent beings co-habitating the spaces in which this sublime pour came into being.<\/p>\n

JK Hazy<\/h3>\n
\n
\"\"
Jester King is home to an impressive number of goats. Due to a lack of head butting, we assumed that all goats in this photo were female. The brewery\u2019s goat herdess, Lissa Rowe, corrected us: \u201cThere\u2019s males in there, too,\u201d she explained, \u201cthey\u2019ve just had their \u2018trouble nuggets\u2019 removed.\u201d New favorite euphemism<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Hopped with Galaxy, Sabro, and Strata. <\/p>\n