Wild Heaven Sours and Height by Brad Hodnett

The following is a post from guest blogger, Brad Hodnett:

If you’ve been to Wild Heaven Craft Brewery as of late or seen any of your friends pictures from there, you may have noticed the three large tanks behind the sample pour bar. As a volunteer at the brewery, I know I got asked about it a lot. Well, in a few months, hopefully, we’ll all be able to taste this exciting series of new beers from the whole grain craft brewer in Avondale Estates just outside of Decatur. Most exciting to lovers of Belgian style sour and funky beers is that these three beers were transferred straight from the tanks into different French wine barrels and have had a strain of Brettanomyces added to them for further complexity and flavor.

Two of the beers were specifically brewed by Brewmaster Eric Johnson and Head Brewer Jake Adams to be Belgian sour style beers. These two beers have been placed in the several different styles of wine barrels, and a different strain of classic Brettanomyces has been added to each beer. The other beer uses all Rauch Malt in the recipe and will be called “Fünken Rauch”. Jake tells me that it will take a few months for the Brett to do its job, but he expects the Fünken Rauch to be the first one that is ready for distribution.

For now, when you go to a tour at Wild Heaven, you will see racks of barrels behind the sample tasting taps and confidently tell your friends that they are French oak wine barrels filled with beer and ready to throw down some funk like Georgia native James Brown.

Also, coming much sooner from Wild Heaven will be a featured release of “Height of Civilization”. This amazing beer is the breweries English style Barleywine that was aged in tequila barrels for several months. It had a great debut at the “Secret Stache” beer fest and will be available in large format bottles in stores within the next month. This will be the first time that Civilization will be available in bottles.

So, start watching for updates on Wild Heaven’s social media. In the next few months, you will be able to taste the first Brett and Belgian sour style beers from this Georgia gem. Til then, be on the look out for Height of Civilization as well.

We tour at Wild Heaven this Saturday. Buy your tickets now: