Why would Gabe Gordon build “a temperature-controlled barrel room inside a 100-year-old downtown Long Beach building”?
Here is the reason: “Starting this fall, Beachwood Blendery will produce beer using ingredients, equipment and brewing methods that are both steeped in tradition and admittedly modern. Gordon, Julian Shrago and Beachwood Blendery’s Barrelmaster Ryan Fields (an award-winning brewer formerly of Lost Abbey and Pizza Port San Clemente) are embarking on an undoubtedly geeky quest to create American-style lambics.”
This grand sour experiment will take time as good lambics do but the wait will be broken up into phases. “The first year will see what will be called the “Propagation Series.” These beers will be made to test how the different yeasts and bacteria preform in the Beachwood Blendery environment. The results of these experiments will factor into what will become their signature lambic-style beers.”
Then the “Blendery will begin producing a contemporary series of flavored lambic-styled beers, flavored not with traditional flavors like cherry (kriek), raspberry (framboise), peach (peche) or blackberry (cassis), but instead tropical fruits and spices inspired by Gordon’s many surf trips around the world.”
Then the coup-de-grace, “three years after opening—an American-made “gueuze”, blended from a selection of one-year-old, two-year-old and three-year-old “lambics”.”
The brewing begins this month with the first releases arriving by mid-2015.
One last quote to ramp up the excitement, “A tasting room attached to the Blendery will open at the same time as the first release, with 10 taps of house beer as well as wine from the vineyards whose barrels were used to ferment the beer.”
With Barrelworks humming up north, the Blendery will add to California’s destination status for aged wild beer. Maybe an appellation is in our future.