De Bij

After blending “Four Winters” in the fall of 2017 (our upcoming MT3 blend), we selected three additional barrel, one per year from the same coolship batches as were selected for Four Winters, to blend together to form the base of De Bij. The beer was then refermented with 5 lbs/bbl of apple blossom honey (from Staude’s Apple Blossom Acres in Watertown, WI), before being conditioned in the bottle with more of the same honey for nine months prior to release.

The result embodies the typical complexity of a three-year blend, but also provides a crisp fruity funk and delicate floral honey notes that linger pleasantly on the palate.


Yield: 100 magnums, 426 750mL, 205 375mL

Oude Suiker

For the first release in our “Oude Suiker” series (spirit barrel-aged spontaneous beer), we began with an exceptionally expressive Méthode Traditionnelle barrel that had aged for 30 months. The beer was then transferred into five freshly dumped 10-gallon brandy barrels from Old Sugar Distillery and allowed to rest for an additional year. The small format barrels afforded their contents increased contact with the spirit-soaked oak, which infused notes of vanilla and caramel into the already mature base. Over the course of a year, evaporation in the barrels further concentrated those flavors and intensified the complexity of the beer, giving way to an immensely decadent spontaneous beer.


Yield: 111 750mL, 145 375mL

Release Details: 750mL bottles will be sold to Magnum Club only, and 145 taproom bottles will be available for on-premise consumption beginning the release weekend.

Braambes en Vlier

This Forager Brewing collaboration began life as the spontaneous beer used in Glory in the Morning, a three barrel blend of different vintages of Méthode Traditionnelle (MT) beer. Prior to packaging Glory in the Morning, roughly 50 gallons was split off and transferred to a punchdown barrel where it was refermented on 2 lbs/gal of wild blackberries and a small portion of wild elderberries, both harvested in the woods of Minnesota by our friends from Forager Brewing Co. The barrel was punched down twice daily to re-submerge the fruit cap that floats to the top due to the CO2 produced during the refermentation, with the goal of increasing fruit contact with the beer. The result is a three-year spontaneous blend bursting with fruity, tannic, and subtly spicy flavors from Forager’s fruit contribution.

172 x 375mL taproom bottles will be available for on-premise consumption.

Framrood Vintage 2017

This release represents the third iteration of Framrood, our Méthode Traditionnelle (MT) blend aged on 2 lbs/gal of red raspberries from a local Wisconsin berry farm. The spontaneous barrels used in this blend were mostly 2-years old, but we also chose several 1-year old barrels, as well as a single 3-year old barrel. While blending, we aimed to build the complex flavor profile that’s become a signature of previous Framrood releases, but also sought out barrels with mellow acidity and oaky characteristics to balance the natural acid content of the fruit. The result is a conceptual continuation of prior batches that shares their vibrant fruit-forward nature and funky complexity, but also builds upon their successes by employing the blending experience gleaned from making this beer annually.

Yield: 1,667 bottles
“2017” indicates the year the beer was blended and the fruit harvest season.

Bière de Coupage

“Bière de Coupage” is a phrase that first shows up in French brewing texts from the 1800’s, and is used to describe the process of blending old and young beer together. Over the years, this method of making beer has taken many forms and has been utilized for a variety of reasons. One of the oldest notable examples comes from England and Ireland, where porter brewers would age a portion of their product in oak tanks until it developed vinous characteristics and reblend it back into fresh porter to add complexity. Another common example is the blending of darker sour ales around the Flanders region to control the acetic acid content and flavor profile. Perhaps the most well-known is the blending of old and young lambic in Belgium to deliver a consistent product and balance the complementary flavors present in different vintages of beer.

In recent years, “Bière de Coupage” has become synonymous with a style of beer as much as the historical method, and is most typically used to describe a blend of young, hoppy saison with older spontaneous beer. Because most lactic acid bacteria (particularly lactobacillus) is sensitive to the presence of hops in beer and will not produce acid when the IBUs are too high, the bitterness derived from hops and the complex flavors and acid profile from a mixed culture are rarely found together. One way around this is to blend a hopped beer (typically a saison) with a more mature sour beer (often a spontaneous one). This is exactly what we’ve done with our Bière de Coupage, and what others in America (Jester King, Perennial, Zebulon, American Solera/Evil Twin, Amos Browne, etc.) have been experimenting with over the past few years.

We are pleased to be part of the resurgence of this method, and are particularly excited about this one particular style of beer that it’s able to produce (and thankful we now have the barrel stock and foeder capacity to attempt it). For the blending, we began with 250 gal of our Foeder Saison and added to it a blend of four barrels of 1 year-old 100% spontaneous MT (Méthode Traditionnelle) beer, and a small portion of 3 year-old MT beer. The result has a fresh liveliness, brightness, and mild supporting bitterness from the young foeder beer, and a mature acid profile, musty oakiness, minerality, and overall flavor complexity from the old spontaneous beer. Despite being unfruited, we also get big notes of under ripe peaches, stone fruit, and a grassy earthiness. It should continue to develop for years in the bottle, and we hope you enjoy this beer as much as we do!


Yield: 1,278 bottles, 15 kegs

Release: June 8th 2018

2018 Beer Schedule

There are a lot of beers conditioning in bottles at Funk Factory and some special projects in barrels or foeders soon to be bottled.  Releases are subject to change as beer are ready when they tell us, but this shows you what we have in the works and when we plan to release them.

We will be putting up further description of each beer, and I'm sure there will be other beers added.

For those of you who have followed this blog, you know how true it is when I say "this has been a long time coming".  We are finally at a point where we have a mature and revolving stock of Méthode Traditionnelle barrels and will release a 3 year blend!  We filled 116 MT barrels this year (7,000 gallons).  We used ~60 from previous years to blend, fruit, cut (more on that to come), or rest in spirit barrels.