rosav, Author at Hildegard Ferments & Botanicals

Tepache Wild Ale

by rosav | Dec 4, 2024 | Beer, Drinks

Inspired by our time in Mexico a few years back, our take on Tepache returns every year. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Tepache is a lightly fermented beverage made from pineapple skins and piloncillo brown sugar.

Tepache ’24

We started with locally foraged organic pineapples from whole foods and refermented the flesh with Lux, their skins, and blended with our barrel aged Wild Ale we call Leroy.

Once our Tepache let us know that it was complete, we bottle conditioned with a bit of salt, sage, cassia bark (cinnamon) and piloncillo. We are really stoked on this version and hope you enjoy it too. Preferably on one of these nice sunny days and maybe even without shoes with sand in between your toes. Throw open the barn door to the pineapple party.

Gloria

by rosav | Apr 2, 2024 | Beer, Drinks

Gloria is our family of celebration beers, whether that’s the changing of the seasons, marking an important milestone, or just because we can all use a little more sparkle sometimes.

Gloria 2nd Anniversary

Celebrating two years of Hildegard! This bottling was made with some of the most incredible raspberries from Biringer Farm in Arlington. We refermented these on oak aged saison and blended it with some of our wild ale stock upon bottling. It expresses a vibrant raspberry fruit leather popsicle with some unexpected savoriness.

750ml bottle
5.4% abv

Gloria Festina Lente

To mark the coming of spring we are releasing our next Gloria blend, Festina Lente. In the fall of 2023, we got some beautifully inky Mourvedre grapes from our good buds at Barmann Cellars which they sourced from Sunland Vineyards in the Yakima Valley. We crushed and let these Mourvedre grapes natively ferment on the skins for a month before blending the runnings with our aged saisons. We then let this ferment slowly over the winter and conditioned with rose petals upon bottling.

We get lots of blackberry and rose hip jam with Lambrusco feels.

750ml bottle
7.3% abv

Gloria – First anniversary beer

To celebrate turning one, we made ablend of aged saisons refermented on Raspberries, Second-Use Cherries, and conditioned with Sencha Green Tea. A soft moderate acidity that exhibits a floral and mineral forward Raspberry fruit leather.

750ml bottle
5.6% abv

Time Studies

by rosav | Jun 21, 2023 | Beer, Drinks

What you’ll find here are experiments and explorations, hot takes and ideas that don’t quite fit in any of our other series.

Time Studies #3 – Vitus

Vitus, meaning lively in Latin, is our spritzy Lambrusco inspired beer made with inky Mourvèdre grapes and some second use Cherry + Santa Rosa plums for good measure.

Violets, leather, and diluted fruit loops

750ml bottle
7.1% abv

Time Studies Bon Voyage #2

Bon Voyage started its journey well over a year ago with a road trip to Hood River, OR, to visit Evans Fruit Farm to get perfectly ripe Bing and Montmorency Cherries. First these cherries went through carbonic maceration (a technique often employed in wine making) to preserve the fresh character of the fruit. After two weeks, the fruit was refermented on our barrel aged wild ale for 6 months and blended with some of our more expressive barrels.

Finally, we conditioned and bottled the blend with foraged Sitka Spruce tips and Burdock Root from Root Digger Herb Farm to lean into the high and low tones that the beer was naturally expressing.

Rich over-ripe sour cherry jam with subtle cocoa powder and an earthy cherry leather finish.

Time Studies #1 Tepache Wild Ale

Inspired by the flavors and our time in Mexico we set out to create our take on Tepache. We refermented pineapples and their skins with Lux blended with our barrel aged Wild Ale named Leroy.

Upon finishing, we bottle conditioned this Tepache Wild Ale with a bit of salt and sage for maximum refreshment. This is totally irreverent and is meant to be refreshing as heck and fun to drink.

Balanced and tart with a dry pina finish this is what you want to drink this summer!

750ml bottle
5.3% abv

Pomona Series

by rosav | Jun 21, 2023 | Beer, Drinks

We make Pomona as a nod to the deep roots of Apples and craft beer in Washington. Pomona is freshly pressed cider from wild and cultivated cider apples, cofermented with an actively fermenting saison. Each blend is a unique capsule of a year-long cycle of Apple blossoms, fruit, grain, and yeasts.

Pomona 2023 Blend

The 2023 blend uses cider apples from Jones Creek Farm in Sedro Woolley, WA and foraged fruit from untended apple trees in and around the Seattle area.

We let the apples sweat prior to milling and macerating. We then pressed and let the runnings natively ferment on apple and pinot noir pomace. Once primary fermentation slowed, we introduced our house saison to slowly ferment over the winter.

Come spring time, we blended, bottlede, and conditioned Pomona with raw wildflower honey. Tart fragrant wild apples with melon mousse finishing with a lively texture.

7.1% abv

Pomona 2022 Blend

The 2022 blend uses fruit from Jerzy Boyz Farm in Chelan, WA, City Fruit, and foraged fruit from untended apple trees in and around the Seattle area.

Last fall we crushed and let the apple must* macerate on the pomace for additional extraction and mingling time for the native yeasts. Then we pressed and introduced an actively fermenting saison. We let this slowly ferment over the winter.

In spring we bottled and conditioned the blend with raw wildflower honey and Cassia bark.

Gray Winds Series

by rosav | Jun 20, 2023 | Beer, Drinks

Gray Winds alludes to what we lovingly/despairingly call the dark season here in the Pacific Northwest. These annual inward journeys often result in transformations within the darkness and inspire reflections on the past and hopeful spells for the future. Gray Winds is our series of fruited blends and cofermentations that aspires to capture specific moments in time from seasons past and present them to the future.

GW #5 – Painted Sunlight 2023

2023 Painted Sunlight features delightfully plump organic peaches from Winding Road Farm in Everson, WA. These are refermented with our barrel stock of wild ale and when ready, joined forces with some Madeleine Angevine grapes and pomace from our friends at Barmann Cellars.

The result is a breezy overripe peach bellini party that finishes with a crisp minerale finale.

750ml bottle
5.7% abv

GW #4 – Sun Tracker

Sun Tracker is a blend of aged saisons refermented on Honey Punch Pluots, Shiro Plums, and conditioned on Lavender flowers. Sun Tracker alludes to the motion of plants in response to the direction of the sun. This movement is known as heliotropism.

This beer reminds us of strawberry popsicles. Walking through summer gardens. Brushing up against lavender shrubs. And also, drinking gin cocktails.

750ml bottle
6.7% abv

GW #3 – Painted Sunlight

Painted Sunlight is a blend of oak fermented gold ale and aged saisons that has been refermented on super ripe Saturn Peaches and White Pearl Nectarines.

During one of my first visits to the Northwest, I ate a peach for the first time. Now I’d had countless peaches in my life up until then but I had never really had a peach. This fuzzy beaut was at peak ripeness and biting into it was like a custardy stone fruit juice’splosion. Peach juice was on my face, running down my arm and made a sticky mess. It was glorious, a little obscene, and like how our 4 year old eats everything.

Painted Sunlight is inspired by this formative experience and starts with a soft creamy texture and is scented with peach perfume and warming spices. The acidity is bright and balanced along with peach rings and a side of marzipan.

750 ml bottle
5.2% abv

GW #2 – Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage uses A LOT of Regina and Montmorency cherries from Evans Family Fruit located in Hood River. Informed by traditional Lambic brewing methods but prepared méthode untraditionelle, the cherries were refermented on our oldest barrel fermented wild ale.

Brewed with a generous portion of raw wheat and aged hops, we partially cooled the wort in kettle before letting it come to room temp while slowly being influenced by the microbe magic in our brewery. Only then did we transfer the wort to the barrel, pitched our Hildgard and the Funky Bunch house culture and sent Bon Voyage on its long fermenting journey. The final blend introduces a young saison for freshness and fermentable sugars for conditioning.

Bon Voyage expresses rich cherry aromatics, cassia bark, rose, spiced pie crust, tame acid, and a cool damp cave.