Cory King, head brewer at Perennial Artisan Ales, announced in February that would add an entrepreneurial element to his workweek by starting his own brewing company, Side Project Brewing. After a half-year wait, King is almost ready to make Side Project Brews available to the public; his first three beers will be released Sept. 28.
Using the facilities at Perennial, King produced small-batch ales, all aged in wine or spirits barrels and mostly barrel fermented. The Origin, Side Project’s first batch and first barrel, is a hefty blend (It clocks in at 14.3 percent ABV.) of Imperial stout, black oat-wine and Baltic porter aged for 20 months in a Rittenhouse Rye barrel with Madagascar vanilla beans. The second beer, Saison du Fermier, is a robust, chardonnay barrel-fermented saison with “the paler color of modern saisons, yet it is balanced with the brightness, depth and rustic character of [yeast strains] Brettanoymces and Lactobacillus found in traditional saisons.” This farmhouse ale is 7 percent ABV.
Finally, Brett Project #1 is the first in a series of beers fermented and aged in wine barrels with different Brettanomyces strains. The series explores “how single strains of Brettanomyces ferment and condition a Saison malt bill.” All three ales are unfiltered, unpasteurized and bottle-conditioned. They will only be available in 750-milliliter bottles and sold at Perennial Artisan Ales, located at 8152 Michigan Ave., in the Carondelet neighborhood of St. Louis.
Subsequent Side Project releases include more from the Brett Project series, as well as a wheat saison aged in a chardonnay barrel, a blonde American wild ale fermented in chardonnay barrels and aged with white peaches, and a Flanders-style red ale fermented in chambourcin barrels and aged with blueberries.
This article appears in August 2013.