Za’tart

Rustic sour blonde ale with spices Friendship amongst craft brewers often expresses in the form of collaborative brewing, an opportunity to share ideas and influences and outside-the-box thinking (and beer). When CBC was invited to brew at the famed Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City in June with our good friend Steven Pauwels and his incredible team, we leapt at the opportunity. The resulting beer involved a complicated brewing process and yielded an elegantly simple beer. [wpex more="REad more" less="Read less"] Using a malt bill of pale malt, plus Valley Malt buckwheat, spelt, and rye, we mashed in the first batch of Za’Tart. We lautered the wort off the grain and inoculated with Boulevard’s house lactobacillus culture to sour the wort in the brewhouse for two days. We boiled and flavored the wort with Za’atar, a somewhat generic name for a blend of Middle-eastern herbs. Our particular blend contained oregano, thyme, and sumac. The resulting wort was then fermented with CBC’s house Belgian yeast strain. A second batch of Za’Tart was brewed without the brewhouse souring process and blended with the sour batch to create a nice balance of pleasing acidity. Za’tart pours bright golden in the glass, with a fruity acidity and an extremely subtle herbal note in the finish. The finish is crisp and dry with a lingering lactic acidity that begs for another sip. Cheers to our friends at Boulevard Brewing Company. And congrats to Boulevard on celebrating 25 years of great beer! Wine Stem $6 [/wpex]

Alcohol by Volume
4.7%

International Bittering Units
8.6