Black Fury is the most aggressively sour beer New Braunfels Brewing crafts. Brewed as their farmhouse dunkelweizen, Schwartz, with 4 malts and a distinctive chocolate palate, they aged Blend5 of Black Fury in small, 15 gallon barrels for 11 months. The smaller barrels encourage a quicker oxygen uptake, lending this beer a dynamic sour and oak character.
This year New Braunfels Brewing started with 24 barrels to blend. They selected barrels that had a pleasant mix of tart, oak and funk. Some barrels exhibited acetic notes more than others and for 2018 they dumped those barrels to encourage a silkier tartness over the brash sour notes of acetic vinegar. New Braunfels Brewing also added 150 gallons of the base beer fermented with their mixed culture and blended together in steel with the beer from the barrels for two months. The idea was to attempt to tame the aggressive barrel character and promote a drinkability that New Braunfels Brewing believes was lacking in previous releases.
If you’ve tasted this beer before, you’ll notice a distinct smoothness to this release, which has Head Brewer Nathan’s fingerprints all over it. Its part of New Braunfels Brewing’s new focus on balance and a deeper understanding of the nuances of their mixed culture.
In the end, New Braunfels Brewing blended together 350 gallons of finished beer into what they feel is a distinctive black sour creation that is complex, dynamic and unique, while maintaining a drinkability for Blend5 that makes this their proudest release of Black Fury to date.
For their 2018 release they have 80 cases of 500ml bottles and 30 kegs available exclusively in our taproom this weekend.
Hours are Saturday 11-10p and Sunday 1-7p.
Next week this beer will make it around TX, to Louisiana and to San Diego.
Terry Bunch
