Almanac Beer Co.

mperial stout brewed with Sightglass coffee, cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, chili flakes and sea salt

We love blackberries. Tart, sweet and complex but guarded by thorny branches, these alluring fruit have been a favorite of ours since we added them to our very first beer. This sour blonde ale is infused with loads of coastal Blackberries from Swanton Berry Farm in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains and aged in wine barrels for many months. Pair with duck dishes and summer salads.

Raspberries and sour beer is a magical pairing that creates something more than the sum of its parts: a perfect summer day in a glass. Our version of a Framboise draws inspiration from the farmland in the Santa Cruz mountains, where windswept hills have warm days and cool nights that result in tight, red berries with complex flavors and a ruby red-color. Combined with our sour blonde ale, the final blend highlights huge fruit flavor and the bounty of Coastal California. Pair with pancakes, seared duck breast and summer fruit tarts.

Our juicy high-summer plums were grown and picked by Blossom Bluff Orchards and added to oak foeders filled with mixed culture Brettanomyces farmhouse ale to age. Prior to packaging, we finished the beer with a huge dry hop of El Dorado and Azacca. Like a caterpillar going into its cocoon, these ingredients enter the barrel as one thing and emerge as something entirely new.

Peach de Brettaville is a harmonious marriage of fruit and beer, bringing together our love for brett saisons and farm fresh fruit. We brewed our Saison Dolores and fermented it with twelve different brettanomyces strains, and aged it in wine barrels and our foeders with plenty of juicy peaches and nectarines. After months of maturing and blending, this saison has developed a balance between earthy funk and stone fruit sweetness with a dry, white wine-like finish, perfect for pairing with creamy cheeses and braised pork. Our Farm to Barrel beers focus on the eons-old tradition of aging beers in oak barrels, and our de Brettaville saisons expand upon this tradition by highlighting the magical properties of wild brettanomyces yeast. We start by brewing a bright and aromatic farmhouse ale with a blend of twelve “brett” yeast strains. After a vigorous primary fermentation, the beer is racked into wine barrels to mature. In cask, the beer takes on the complex flavors of the oak, and the brettanomyces yeast creates an exotic melange of earthy funk and tropical fruit flavors. This wild ale is alive in the bottle and will continue to mature for years.

Vanilla Cherry Dogpatch takes everything you love about our regular Dogpatch Sour and turns it up to 11. We started with our base red sour ale and added a ridiculous amount of Bing, Rainier and Montmorency Cherries to each barrel for a juicy, intense cherry flavor that exudes summer. Then we added in whole Madagascar vanilla beans, building on oak’s natural vanilla flavor. The final blend creates a delicate balance of fruit and oak that keeps you coming back for more. Pair this summer sipper with game bird, fruit sauces and still-warm pie.