Packed With Peaches

Packed With Peaches: An Unexpected Journey

** Read carefully and all the way to the end — a free 1.5L magnum of Packed With Peaches is at stake **

At Wiley Roots Brewing Company, we wear a lot of hats and play a number of characters — from plumber to janitor to spreadsheet jockey to photographer, these roles are as diverse as the way that we think about the beer we make. A lot of the time, we play the whimsical mad scientist who puts together crazy flavor pairings that shouldn’t work together; most of the time, we find a way for these pairings to play nice and wind up with a unique creation that makes you say “Damn – I didn’t think that could work”. At other times, we play the very traditional brewer role, paying excruciatingly close attention to the technical details during brew days in an attempt to ‘one-up’ our previous attempts.

But one of our favorite roles to play, is one that we only get to play occasionally. That is the role of the inspired, patient, and studious brett-lacto-pedio barrel shepherd. I say that we only get to play this role occasionally, because while our mixed-culture program is at the core of our brewing passions, we’re really not in the driver’s seat for these beers.

Since its inception, the mixed-culture program at Wiley Roots has intended to be a freeform expression of art-meets-science. We ferment these beers directly in the barrel in order to allow for the microflora to adapt over time to our specific environment — temperature fluctuations, humidity fluctuations, changes in hopping rates, and changes in batch-to-batch grain bills, are all factors that impact how our various cultures are expressed. We also employ a modified solera method for all of the beers in this program, allowing for batch to batch variability within the program.

That being said, we NEVER force a beer into a concept — every beer that is given life through our mixed culture program tells us what it wants to be. No decisions are ever made about adding fruit or adjuncts until the beer tells us what that decision should be. Rather than control the end result for these beers, we simply steward the process and influence the end result by pulling levers in the brewhouse — hopping rates, grain bills, knockout temperatures, and season in which the beer is brewed are all levers that can be pulled in order to layer a modicum of influence into the process.

Once the brew day is finished, we simply wait and listen with anticipation for the clues the beer will give us as to what it wants to be and when it might be ready.

Lord of the Barrels: The Fellowship of the Peach

Packed With Peaches is a prime example of this philosophy. The sour golden ale was brewed on February 25th, 2016 with a starting gravity of 1.059 Specific Gravity or approximately 14.7° Plato. The beer was hopped with 1 pound of aged hops for a 7 barrel batch — an incredibly low hopping rate in comparison to successive batches within the program. On September 6th, 2017, just over 18 months from the initial brew day, approximately 600 pounds of peaches were processed by hand and added into a stainless steel fruiting tank — we refer to this tank as Hoover #6. Once all of the peaches were processed and added to the tank, barrel #24, #26, #27 and #28 were racked onto the peaches and allowed to referment for another six months, after which the beer measured 1.000 Specific Gravity or 0° Plato and tasted phenomenal. Packed With Peaches was bottled on March 13th, 2018, allowed to referment in the bottle, and then laid to rest in our barrel warehouse for another three months before we knew that the beer was ready to be introduced to the world.

Lord of the Barrels: The Two Peaches

After every batch of beer, we assess the fruit remaining in the stainless steel fruiting tank once the first beer has been transferred off of the fruit. Most of the time, the fruit is considered spent and would not result in imparting additional character to another beer. In this case however, the fruit definitely had some more character to impart. So, we transferred approximately 100 gallons of our stainless steel fermented mixed-culture table beer onto the peaches for a second use. After approximately three months, the character imparted from the second use peaches was absolutely PERFECT for a sessionable, low alcohol table beer. Peach Table Beer was packaged on June 22, 2016, allowed to referment in the bottle, and then laid to rest in our barrel warehouse for another approximately two months before the beer was ready to be introduced to the world.

Lord of the Barrels: The Return of the Bottle

In order to streamline this release, approximately 70% of the available bottles Packed With Peaches and Peach Table Beer will be available by purchasing an online voucher through Brown Paper Tickets. Vouchers be available for purchase beginning August 13th at 10:00 AM. The remaining 30% of the bottles will be reserved for on-site release on August 17th at 12:00 PM. Both Packed With Peaches and Peach Table beer will also be available on draft in the Wiley Roots Taproom beginning on August 17th. For those purchasing a full allocation online (2 bottles of Packed With Peaches and 3 bottles of Peach Table Beer), we will enter your name into a drawing for a free 1.5L magnum bottle of Packed With Peaches.

Pricing for Packed With Peaches and Peach Table beer are $22 and $11, respectively, for 500mL bottles. A little over two years ago, we included the very first batch of Packed With Peaches as part of our beer membership program experiment called “The Catacomb Society”. One 750mL bottle of Packed With Peaches was included in the $160 membership, with a handful of additional bottles being available for $22 per bottle. Packed With Peaches was never sold to the public. We learned a TON with regard to Packed With Peaches as a result — first off, you can’t expect to hit fruiting rates around or above three pounds per gallon without incurring SUBSTANTIAL loss rates. Secondly, the beer must undergo an involved straining and filtration process in order to remove pulp and fruit particulate from the beer. If care is not taken to remove these components, nucleation sites are introduced when the bottle is uncapped (or uncorked) and the bottles will gush. Both of these lessons were learned and taken squarely on our collective chin for the 2016 Catacomb Society Membership — we felt the lower pricing was the right compromise, because our members gave us a level of support above and beyond that of the general public.

With this first release being such limited member release, we only charged our cost plus a small percentage, as a benefit to our loyal members. Since 2016, the cost of producing the same beer has increased with labor, production, and ingredients. This years Packed With Peaches is also in a smaller bottle format to increase availability and to find a balance between sharing a bottle and being able to drink one alone. This smaller format has a nominal decrease on the cost of packaging materials, but asymmetrically increases the labor cost as a result.

We believe that the price for Packed With Peaches and Peach Table Beer reflects our commitment to producing the best quality beers possible, with the best ingredients we can buy, without cutting corners by using concentrates or purées. If we do use either in our beers, the pricing and bottle description will reflect the lower cost of ingredients. We are proud to stand by every word we print on our beers because, as our friends at Laws Whiskey House have stated:  “THERE ARE NO [FUCKING] SHORTCUTS”.

Below are the detailed bullet point rules and guidelines for this release. Please read them carefully.

• Online sales start on August 13, 2018 10AM

• Save this address: https://packedwithpeaches.bpt.me

• • Bookmark it, email it to yourself, or write it in a note on your phone. It will be here if you forget and we will email it out to you if you’re on our mailing list the day of the release, but this is your notice to have it ready at 10AM.

• Cost:

• • Packed With Peaches is $22 per 500mL
  • Peach Table Beer is $11 per 500mL
  • All bottle vouchers include tax in the price

• Limits & Bottle Counts:

• • Packed With Peaches – Limit 2 per person
    • 460 Bottles Available Online

• • Peach Table Beer – Limit 3 per person
    • 300 Bottles Available Online

• • Both beers will also be available on draft in the Wiley Roots Taproom at 12:00 PM on August 17th.

• Proxies:

• • To make sure locals don’t get shut out of online sales, we will not permit proxy pick-ups. All individuals picking up bottles must present a valid, state-issued driver’s license that matches the name for the online purchase. Please do not buy bottles for your significant other, friend, relative, or anyone else unless those people will be picking up their bottles. If you cannot pick up bottles within the pick-up window (see below), please do not purchase bottle vouchers. Conflicting orders will be deleted/refunded.

• Bottle Vouchers

• • You are buying bottle vouchers. Vouchers may be exchanged for bottles during the pick up window. Vouchers are not gift cards and do not hold a cash value. Any voucher that is not redeemed within the pick up window, will not be refunded.

• Valid ID

• • Bottle vouchers must be presented with a valid ID that matches the name and ID number on the ticket. Expired, hole punched, or otherwise damaged IDs will not be accepted, even with DMV paperwork.

• Pick Up Window:

• • August 17, 2018 – September 2, 2018
  • That is 16 days to pick up bottles. If you cannot pick up during this window, please do not buy vouchers online.

• On-site sales start on August 17, 2018 12PM

• • Packed With Peaches
    • $22 per 500mL bottle
    • 20 gallons available for taproom pours;  $6 per 4 oz pour
  • Peach Table Beer
    • $11 per 500mL bottle
    • 31 gallons available for taproom pours; $8.00 per 12 oz pour
  • All prices include tax

• On-site limits & bottle counts:

• • Packed With Peaches – Limit 2 per person
    • 200 Bottles Available On-Site

• • Peach Table Beer – Limit 3 per person
    • 100 Bottles Available On-Site

• Release day logistics:

• • Please don’t line up before 9:00 AM
  • Lines will begin forming in our recently acquired “Unit C” (indoors)
  • Bathrooms will be available starting at 10:00 AM
  • We will begin handing out tickets for bottles at 10:00AM
  • Bottles will be available through the bottle station and draft pours can be purchased at the taproom bar.
  • Valid state-issued IDs matching the online transaction will be required to redeem vouchers purchased through Brown Paper Tickets online.

Sign up for our email to receive a reminder the day of the release and during the pick up window:  wileyroots.com/wileymail