Introducing Jester King Kvass
November 23, 2016
This Friday, November 25th, when our tasting room opens early at Noon, we’ll be releasing Jester King Kvass. Our Kvass is a farmhouse ale brewed with bread from Miche Bread in Austin, Texas!
Miche Bread, which is owned and baked by Sandeep Gyawali, is truly delicious and inspiring. We felt an immediate kinship with Sandeep upon learning about his process. He mills his flour in-house using heritage grains, and he allows the bread to naturally leaven for several days with native yeast and bacteria, thereby creating all sorts of interesting flavors and aromas. Given our own use of Texas barley and wheat, and our spontaneous fermentation with native microbes, we knew we had to work with Sandeep somehow. Making a Kvass together seemed like a natural fit. Kvass is a low alcohol fermented beverage made with bread. It has been around in Eastern Europe for centuries.
We brewed Kvass with Sandeep at Jester King on July 19, 2016 with well water, malted barley from Blacklands Malt, malted rye, hops, and 140 pounds of Miche Bread in the mash. We then fermented the low gravity wort (1.023 / 6.0 Plato) in stainless steel with our mixed culture of brewers yeast, native yeast, and native bacteria. We then packaged Kvass on August 22, 2016 and allowed it to naturally referment in bottles and kegs. At the time of packaging, Kvass was 3.4 percent alcohol by volume, 25 IBU, 4.2 pH, and had a gravity of 1.002 (0.5 Plato). The label art was created by Josh Cockrell of Jester King. Sandeep wrote the back of the label.
Kvass will be available by the glass and at bottles to go starting at Noon this Friday, November 25th at Jester King. We have about 3,000 bottles available (750ml/$13). At this point, we don’t foresee Kvass being available outside of Jester King aside from special events.
We hope you enjoy this small, earthy, very drinkable little beer. A whole lot of love went into making it. Big thanks to Sandeep for working with us and making incredible bread!
— Jeffrey Stuffings, Founder
Jeffrey Stuffings, Sandeep Gyawali, Sean Spiller
Miche Bread before going into the mash
Miche Bread in the mash
Sandeep adding his bread to the mash
Back label written by Sandeep
