Odd Breed Wild Ales

Welcome

Odd Breed Wild Ales will be one of just a handful of breweries in the country focusing exclusively on producing wild ales that are fermented and aged in oak. While our passion for beer expands to many styles, we view oak aged wild ales as the ultimate, most complex type of beer. Surely, choosing to focus exclusively on wild beer production invites an element of surprise and inconsistency that most brewers prefer to avoid. There are considerably more variables at play with wild beer production compared to production of typical ales or lagers, and the potential for creating a bad batch is considerably higher even for the most skilled brewer. Wild beers take a long time to produce, and working with oak instead of stainless steel is more labor intensive and requires more skill. Choosing to make wild beer, and just wild beer, was not an easy decision, and financially speaking, is not a safe business decision.

So why are we doing this?  We could be like most breweries and make multiple styles from American ales to German lagers, and even dabble with barrel aging.  We could make IPAs since IPAs are the most popular craft beer style, and we could make some barrel aged wild ales on the side.  Surely that would be a safer business model.  But if we did that we would have to make compromises regarding the production of our wild ales.

Many of the requirements for producing oak aged wild ales are completely different than those of a typical brewery.  Producing typical beers and wild ales at a very high level would be analogous to starting a brewery and winery at the same time, and excelling at both.  We have chosen to focus all our attention on creating a brewery designed from the ground up to produce nothing but wild ales.

We have been working diligently to make Odd Breed a reality. In this blog we will tell you about our progress building our brewery and include construction photos.  We’ll tell you about our beers and some of our production techniques and how we coax certain flavors out of our yeast. We’ll share info about our travels and collaborations with our friends from other breweries.  We want our fans to know what we are up to, and we hope this blog keeps everyone informed.

January 25, 2017