Introducing Fonta Flora / Jester King Wanderflora

We’re very excited to introduce Wanderflora — a collaboration between our wonderful friends at Fonta Flora Brewery and Jester King! Wanderflora is a 100% spontaneously fermented beer where we steeped foraged fennel and nettle from North Carolina and foraged false pennyroyal from Texas overnight in our coolship, as the wort chilled. We then aged the beer in oak barrels for 18 months, and in bottles and kegs for another five months prior to release.

Wanderflora is a very special beer to us. Not only was it made with close friends and was an exercise in patience, it also closely embodies our philosophy of making agriculturally based and foraged beers. In the spring of 2016, Todd Boera of Fonta Flora traveled to Jester King. He brought North Carolina grown raw spelt and rolled oats, along with foraged fennel and nettle. We then walked the land around Jester King to see what else might go well with these ingredients. We ended up adding foraged false pennyroyal from around the brewery.

We turbid mashed with raw well water, barley, spelt and oats, then boiled with whole leaf aged hops from the attic of our barn, and knocked out into our coolship. We setup a basket in our coolship with all the foraged ingredients, which steeped in the wort as it cooled overnight. The next morning, we racked the wort out of the coolship and into oak barrels for 100% spontaneous fermentation. After 18 months of fermentation/maturation, we blended and packaged the beer in bottles and kegs. We then allowed it to mature for another five months through 100% natural refermentation in the serving vessel.

We’re really honored and proud to release Wanderflora. We think it’s a wonderful representation of our commonly held principles and philosophy with Fonta Flora, and it was a great exercise in fun and friendship.

Wanderflora is 5.1% alcohol by volume, 20 IBU, 3.4 pH, and has a finishing gravity of 1.003 (0.75 Plato). It was brewed in April 2016 and blended/packaged in October 2017. The art for Wanderflora was created by Josh Cockrell and was inspired by Fonta Flora’s Sara Maya.

Wanderflora will be released when our tasting room opens at 4pm on Friday, March 9th. It will be available by the glass and in bottles to go. We have about 1,800 bottles available (750ml/$22). The bottle limit is six per customer per day. Wanderflora will only be available for sale at our tasting room.