Jester King Craft Brewery

We’re excited to announce our latest beer – Atrial Rubicite. Back in February of this year, we added several hundred pounds of raspberries to oak barrels containing mature sour beer. We then allowed the beer to re-ferment to dryness. The result is Atrial Rubicite, our first barrel aged sour beer to incorporate fruit.



Atrial Rubicite is made from well water, barley, wheat, hops, farmhouse yeast, native yeast from the Texas Hill Country, souring bacteria and raspberries. It’s 5.8% alcohol by volume, has a finishing gravity of 1.005 and is 3.36 pH. It is unfiltered, unpasteurized and 100% bottle conditioned. Atrial Rubicite is our first beer to be packaged exclusively in 500 ml bottles. The label art by Josh Cockrell is pictured below.



As of now, there’s been no release date set. We’re hoping that Texas law will soon change to make it legal for us to have an official release at our brewery. If the law changes, we’ll schedule a brewery release sometime soon.

As we mentioned, Atrial Rubicite is our first barrel aged sour beer to incorporate fruit. It won’t be the last. We love taking fruit that is highly aromatic and flavorful and fermenting it to dryness, so that the beer is imbued with the rich character of the fruit but is devoid of sweetness. With time we plan on developing a robust program of barrel aged sour beer with fruit. Eventually, we also hope to re-ferment our 100% spontaneous coolship beer with fruit.


Adrienne Ballou of Jester King helping make Atrial Rubicite

On Friday, May 17th from 6:30pm to 7:30pm at the Whole Foods Preston / Forest location in Dallas (11700 Preston Rd.), Jester King artist Josh Cockrell will be putting on an artshow displaying the art work behind our beer. He’ll be displaying over 40 original pieces at the show, including the originals from almost every Jester King label. The show is free and includes free sampling of several Jester King beers. Space is limited, so you can reserve your free ticket here:

http://www.acteva.com//booking.cfm?bevaid=235931



Here’s the link to the Whole Foods event page for the show:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/events?store=6546

After having been voted out of the Texas Senate and out of committee in the House, the bills that would allow Texas brewpubs to distribute and small production breweries to offer on-site sales directly to consumers have been scheduled for a full house vote this coming Friday, May 17.

The craft beer bills are part of a package of 5 bills, all of which need to pass in order for any to become law. To ensure that that happens, we need your help right away!

If you live in Texas, we ask that you please take a moment to email your Texas House Representative and ask him or her to vote FOR the entire package of craft brewery bills: SB 515, 516, 517, 518 & 639. Once again, all five bills must pass for any of them to take effect.

If you don’t know who your Representative is, you can find out here.

Your note doesn’t have to be long. Just tell your representative that you are a constituent in his or her district, that you care about this issue, and that you ask that he or she vote for these bills.

If all five bills pass the House with a two thirds majority and are signed by the governor they will become effective right away, while if they receive a straight majority but not a two thirds majority, they will become effective September 1, 2013.

Please do not contact your state senator—they’ve already done their job in passing the bills. Only the House vote and the governor’s signature are needed now.

For additional info regarding our support of the bills, please see our previous blog post on the topic.

We found a home for our aged hops, which we’ll use for our next winter season of coolship brewing later this year. Over the hot Texas summer these hops will sit in the attic of this old horse barn on our ranch and hopefully lose much of their bitterness as they age at ambient temperature. While the bitterness should dissipate, the hops should still retain their preservative qualities so they can mediate the organisms present during the long term, wild fermentation. Some of these hops will be used next winter when we resume our 100% spontaneous coolship batches. Some will age longer until the winter of 2014/2015 or perhaps even longer than that. We use our coolship in the winter so that cold night air will chill the unfermented beer to fermentation temperature.

The barn was built in 1941 using recycled wood from Mansfield Dam. It currently serves as a horse barn for the horses at Ceres Park Ranch, home to Jester King.


Hops in burlap bags in the attic of the horse barn

Strawberries from Marburger Orchard in Fredericksburg, Texas.