Hello Premier Keepers,
At long last we are announcing your 2018/2019 Premier Keepers Magnum bottles! These can be picked up starting June 1st, the beginning of Quarter 4 and continuing through August 31st.
The Maison
You're probably familiar with this beer. It's one of our favorite beers to blend and share, and a fantastic representation of our local yeast and bacteria, the reasons why we have our brewery in this specific area.
The Maison draws a huge amount of inspiration, as with most of our beers, from Belgian Lambic brewing traditions and specifically Gueuze. It is always a blend of three different years of mature barrels, with an average age of two years in oak. This particularly lovely composition was bottled in July of 2018, and has been maturing gracefully since bottling in a cool and dark corner of our brewery. We believe that it has reached a peak readiness for enjoyment at nearly a year in bottle, though it can age gracefully for many years to come because of the composition and the large format. Decisions will have to be made.
Whenever you choose to open the bottle, we hope you enjoy it in good company and cheer. Perhaps, with friends and loved ones. Or, have a decadent afternoon sipping solo. Preferably in the sun.
The Serine: Keepers Reserve
For this last Premier Keepers release, we bottled a particularly delightful blend of mature spontaneous beer that was refermented with Syrah grapes from a favorite Southern Oregon vineyard. It is an incredibly small packaged quantity, and we are excited to share it exclusively with you, and exclusively in large format.
To make this beer, we tasted through numerous oak barrels that had been aging for a minimum of one year, and determined a harmonious and complementary composition to transfer into secondary oak tank with the excellent grapes from last year's harvest. After refermentation with the grapes, this was transferred into a third round of oak barrels for further maturation, aging and evolution. Finally, we transferred this new composition to blending tank, and blended in a bit more mature beer from old barrels to get the desired vinous grape intensity, complexity and acid balance.
While we will likely have two other Syrah grape spontaneous blends this year, this one was blended for you exclusively, and at a greater average age of the components. We also targeted a moderate level of carbonation, as we believe that for this blend it particularly benefits the overall complexity and vinous nature. It is delightfully funky, vibrantly fruity and vinous, and a composition that we are quite proud of. It has patiently matured for well over two years in oak, and is ready to enjoy now or continue maturing and evolving for quite some time to come.
Cheers,
The de Garde Team
