Introducing 18th Street Brewery / Jester King Multifarious

We’re excited to introduce Multifarious, our collaboration with 18th Street Brewery in Hammond, Indiana! For Multifarious, we sought to achieve complex results through a very simple process. We took the classic, comforting texture and aroma of oatmeal stout, added a different dimension with smoked malt, and let it slowly evolve through mixed culture fermentation with native yeast and bacteria. It was brewed with the mindset of creating a beer that is subtle, succinct, and above all — drinkable. It’s no secret at this point that we’ve been intrigued for quite some time now with subtlety, simplicity, and restraint. We often measure our work by asking the question, “Would we want to drink a full glass of this beer, and then ask for another?” In working with 18th Street Brewery on Multifarious, we feel we were able to achieve this!

Multifarious was brewed on November 18th, 2015 with raw Hill Country well water, malted barley, malted wheat, oats, and hops, and was fermented in stainless steel with our mixed culture of brewers yeast, and native yeast and bacteria harvested from the land and air around our brewery. It is 100% naturally conditioned through refermentation in bottles, kegs, and casks. At the time of packaging, Multifarious was 6.6% alcohol by volume, 34 IBU, 4.2 pH, and 1.005 specific gravity. It was packaged on January 5th, 2016.

Multifarious will be released when our tasting room opens at 4pm on Friday, March 25th. It will be available by the glass, as well as to go in bottles (750ml/$12). Approximately 2,700 bottles are available. There is no bottle limit, and we expect some of the batch to see distribution in Texas beyond Jester King through Flood Independent Distribution.

Working with Drew Fox of 18th Street Brewery on Multifarious was a real treat and honor. It was extra special as well to collaborate with a brewer who shares some of our Midwestern roots. We look forward brewing at Drew’s brewery sometime later this year!

Jeffrey Stuffings, Drew Fox, Ron Extract

The artwork for Multifarious was designed in-house by Josh Cockrell. Here’s Josh’s commentary on the artwork:

“Multifarious is essentially the form of a human skull created by the arrangement of various fantastical microorganisms. At the top of the skull, representing brain activity, thoughtfulness and creative effort, we have the colorful mixed culture. The eye sockets/nose are stylistically represented with text that spells out ‘multifarious’. Below this, the teeth and mouth of the skull is made up of a nearly inactive, greyed, homogeneous, and expressionless conglomerate of what is essentially cultured brewers yeast. This represents the thoughtless and devouring consumerism that plagues humankind and the beer industry alike. And why is it in a skull? Because skulls are *&#$@ brutal and this is a brutal reality I am addressing here.

The word Multifarious has relevance to both the beer and the artistic voice in multiple ways. The beer is certainly a more obvious connection. It is the mixed culture fermentation of a collaboration recipe involving two breweries with different locations and backgrounds. But the word has social relevance as well. I wish for it to stand as an allied voice that speaks to create a space for something other than the dominant culture I am a part of. I think the name Multifarious speaks well to what can be said. It is a call to recognize and preserve the diversity that exists within our world. Pacification through homogenization has been a tool to subdue true equality. There is a quote I ran across while researching the creative for this beer that I liked a lot: ‘The day of peace and oneness is over, the day of the great fight into multifariousness is at hand.’ Peace so often equates to a pacifism that results in inactivity. I want to fight for the representation of others. While I can’t in good conscience create a representation of another culture with my own voice, I can call out to peers to respect, recognize, and fight for these voices to have more space in this world.”

Multifarious glassware