We’re happy to announce that we are releasing our second batch of Super Ultramega Hyperforce today at 4pm! Super Ultramega Hyperforce is a farmhouse ale with dried tarragon, ginger salt, and refermented with cantaloupe.

This beer was brewed in July with Texas Hill Country water, malted barley from Blacklands Malt, and rolled oats. Ginger salt was added to the boil. It then fermented in stainless steel with our mixed culture of native yeasts and bacteria, then refermented with cantaloupe. The dried tarragon was added post-fermentation to preserve the aromatics. The hops vary in this beer. Cascade and Sorachi Ace were used for this batch.

Super Ultramega Hyperfoce is crafted to be a food friendly table beer, thus appropriate that it inadvertently comes out during the holiday season! It is packaged in 1.5L Magnum bottles meant for sharing at the table. We hope you enjoy!

Super Ultramega Hyperforce has an ABV of 3.8% and will be available by the glass and as bottles to go (1.5L/$26). There are around 3,000 bottles available. This beer will see some distribution.

We sometimes forget the key word of agriculture is "culture" -- the myriad of learned experiences unique to countless societies around the planet. We share our humanity through dance, music and art, but we must also share it by working together for the development of plants, animals, and food.

To help toward this end, we recently hosted our first ever international farmer here at Jester King named Luke Barbuto. Luke is an alumnus of the esteemed homesteading institute in Victoria, Australia called Milkwood. Milkwood is headed by Kristen Bradley and Nick Ritar (hugs and kisses to you both), and teaches vital skills on permaculture. Their ability to persevere through drought conditions and their understanding of healthy soil are crucial to us here in central Texas. Thanks to Milkwood, we got hooked up with Luke, who worked with us here at Jester King this summer/fall at our farm.

We're pleased to announce that our next Founder's Tour & Guided Tasting will be this Saturday, December 22nd from Noon to 1:30pm! Jester King founder Jeffrey Stuffings will take guests on a private tour of the brewery, followed by a guided tasting of rare and vintage Jester King beers.

- Guests will receive a welcome pour of one of Jester King's farmhouse ales.

- The tour will progress through Jester King's brewhouse & fermentation hall, barrel room, and coolship loft.

- After the tour, guests will join Jeffrey in a private outdoor space on Jester King's grounds for a guided tasting.

- The guided tasting will include the following beers from Jester King's cellar (4 oz. pours):

2015 Amicus Mortis

2014 Provenance Tangerine & Clementine

2016 Omniscience & Proselytism

2016 SPON Raspberry & Cherry

2015 Black Metal Farmhouse Imperial Stout

- Tickets are $40 (plus Universe service charge) and include a complementary Jester King stemware glass. Tickets can be purchased here:

PURCHASE TICKETS

Today at 4pm, we'll be releasing our latest batches of Noble King Hoppy Farmhouse Ale and El Cedro Hoppy Cedar-Aged Farmhouse Ale!

Noble King, along with Le Petit Prince, is about as simple, straightforward expression of place as we're capable of achieving through beer. We brew with well water and local grains, boil with noble varieties of hops, and ferment in stainless steel with our mixed culture. The result is a hoppy, bitter, dry, unspiced, well-attenuated, balanced, medium-strength farmhouse ale that we love to drink.

El Cedro is one of the earliest beers we brewed. We remember tasting a cedar-aged beer from Cigar City's Humidor Series, thinking it was really delicious, and decided we wanted to work with cedar as well. We thought the resinous, slightly evergreen aroma of the cedar would meld well with citrusy American hops. The funk from our mixed culture ended up adding an interesting over-ripened fruit note.

Noble King has an ABV of 5.9% and will be available by the glass and in bottles to go (750mL/$13). El Cedro has an ABV of 6.5% and will be available by the glass and in bottles to go (750mL/$14). There are no bottle limits on both Noble King and El Cedro.

For SPON Day on Saturday, December 8th, we'll be releasing 2018 SPON Three Year Blend, 2018 SPON Still and 2018 SPON Shiraz & Cabernet Sauvignon!

We're pleased and excited to announce 2018 SPON Estate Peach — our first-ever beer refermented with fruit grown at Jester King!

Back in 2014, we planted a peach tree right next to the brewery. We don't actually know what variety of peach tree it is, but we do know it's an early fruiting tree. Its peaches are low in sugar content, high in acidity, and very aromatic. We've watched the tree slowly grow over the past four years. It has taken a beating from high winds and deer eating its leaves, but has still managed to survive. Within the last two years, it has felt like the tree has been on fast-forward growth. We just looked up one day and saw a fully-grown, robust peach tree right beside the brewery.

This Friday at 4pm when our Tasting Room opens, we will be releasing our 4th batch of Foudreweizen, a collaboration with Live Oak Brewery in Austin, TX!

For this beer, Live Oak brews the wort for their Hefeweizen. The wort is transported to Jester King and placed in one of our oak foudres, then fermented with hefeweizen yeast and our mixed culture of native yeasts and bacteria.

This batch of Foudreweizen will be available by the glass and in bottles-to-go (750mL/$14). There are around 1,400 bottles.

POST-EVENT UPDATE -- 12/09/18

Thank you very much to everyone who came our to SPON Day yesterday! We hope you had a great time, and enjoyed good food, drink and community with friends and family.

As far as the spontaneous beer and wine we have left today, here's the list. Everything is available by the glass and to go unless otherwise noted. We're open from 12-9pm Sundays (kitchen closes at 8pm). Hope to see you!

2018 SPON Three Year Blend

2018 SPON Estate Peach

2018 SPON Still

2018 SPON Shiraz & Cabernet Sauvignon

2018 SPON Grapefruit

2018 SPON Raspberry & Cherry

2018 SPON Blueberry & Pitaya

2018 SPON Plum & Nectarine

2018 SPON Still (to go only)

2017 SPON Peach & Apricot

2017 SPON Raspberry & Cherry

2016 SPON Mourvedre & Sangiovese

Cantillon Classic Gueuze (by the glass only)

Boon Framboise

Upland Reflection

Mikkeller Spontanframboos

Mikkeller Spontansourcherry

Frederiksdaal Sur Lie orb

...and a few by the glass surprises!

FINAL UPDATE 12/07/08

We're happy to announce that our restaurant is now open on Thursday nights! Starting this Thursday, November 29th, we'll be open every Thursday from 4pm to 10pm with our kitchen closing at 9pm.

Our restaurant is located just down the hill from the brewery in an old barn. It's the space formerly occupied by Stanley's Farmhouse Pizza. There are two bars, three wood-fired ovens, a kitchen, a large beer hall, and an outdoor pasture area.

Please note that the brewery will still be closed on Thursdays. Only our restaurant will be open.

This Friday, November 23rd (Black Friday) at Noon, we'll be releasing our 2018 blends of Cerveza de Tempranillo, Bière de Blanc du Bois & Birra de Sangiovese! All three of these beers are aged in oak barrels for roughly a year, blended, then refermented with Texas-grown Tempranillo, Blanc du Bois and Sangiovese grapes respectively.

The overlap between wild beer and natural wine is something we're very intrigued by. The philosophical and procedural similarities are apparent. Mashing grains, racking to oak and seeing what happens is not unlike crushing grapes, racking to oak and seeing what happens as well. The lack of total control is the fun, intriguing and ultimately most enjoyable part. Tartness, balanced acidity, full-attenuation, interesting yeast character (a little funk), restrained oak, and effervescence are characteristics we love in both natural wine and barrel aged wild beer refermented with grapes.

For our 2019 blends, the Tempranillo and Sangiovese came from the Texas High Plains, and the Blanc du Bois came from down the road in Brenham. All three beers were packaged in late September / early October. Cerveza de Tempranillo (Blend #3) is 8.1% ABV, and we have about 2,000 bottles. Bière de Blanc du Bois (Blend #5) is also 8.1% ABV, and we have about 1,400 bottles. Finally, Birra de Sangiovese (Blend #2) is 9.0% ABV, and we have about 2,600 bottles.

We are excited to announce that we are releasing Le Petit Prince in magnum bottles today when our tasting room opens at 4pm. The magnum sized bottle is meant for sharing, and what a better time to share than on Thanksgiving!

Le Petit Prince is about as simple as a farmhouse beer can be - unfiltered well water from the Trinity aquifer, a small amount of Texas-grown barley and wheat, and a good amount of Saaz hops. We fermented with our mixed culture of indigenous yeast and bacteria in stainless steel for a few weeks, dry hop, and then bottle condition in the magnums. It’s dry, bitter, and really showcases the well water that’s used in all of our beers.

Le Petit Prince will be available as bottles-to-go only ($22/1.5 L). About 400 bottles are available. We hope you enjoy with friends and family!

This week we'll be releasing our third-ever batch of Jester King Buddha's Brew — our farmhouse ale blended and re-fermented with Buddha's Brew Kombucha tea!

What would later be called "Jester King Buddha's Brew" was one of our first-ever test batches. In 2010, we took some of our homebrew and blended it with kombucha tea from Buddha's Brew at about a 10:1 ratio. The idea was to see how the microbes in the beer would interact with the microbes in the tea. It's fair to say the plan was to inoculate the beer with the tea and see what would happen. We loved the test batch and decided to make Jester King Buddha's Brew a reality.

Batch three was brewed in July, packaged in September, and is 3.5% ABV. After primary fermentation, we added Buddha's Brew Classic Kombucha (aka the "raw buch") to the beer (about 15% by volume). After letting the microbes intermingle, we packaged the beer and allowed it to naturally referment in bottles and kegs. Unfortunately, during the refermentation the beer got a little lively and foams over the mouth of the bottle when opening. For this reason, we've decided to only serve batch 3 on draft.

We're excited to announce that our Inaugural Vineyard Tour & Wine Tasting will be Saturday, November 24th from Noon to 1:30pm at Jester King!

Jester King Wine Coordinator Traci Walker will lead guests on a private tour of our 3.5 acre vineyard, followed by a guided tasting of some of Traci's favorite natural wines!

Here are more details:

- Guests will receive a welcome pour of Jester King Terroir Project, our wine/beer hybrid made with Firestone Walker

- The tour will begin with a trip to the vineyard, then progress through Jester King's brewhouse & fermentation hall, barrel room, and coolship loft.

- After the tour, guests will join Traci in a private outdoor space (weather permitting) on Jester King's grounds for a guided wine tasting including accompaniments from the Jester King kitchen.

- The guided wine tasting will include the following wines:

Porta del Vento Voria

Minimus Grüner Veltliner

Partida Creus XL

Brendan Tracey Wah Wah

Southold Farm + Cellar Foregone Conclusions

- Tickets are $40 (plus Universe service charge)

- Space is limited to 30 people

Here's the link to purchase tickets:

We're pleased to announce that we will be releasing our latest batch of Figlet today! Figlet is a farmhouse ale refermented with Texas figs smoked by our friends at Franklin BBQ.

For this year’s Figlet, we sourced 200 pounds of figs from Little Om Farm in Elgin, Texas. Those figs were taken to Franklin BBQ where they were split in half before smoking. By doing this, more surface area was exposed, resulting in a higher concentration of smoke in the figs. We found that this resulted in what we consider to be a more balanced beer overall.

Batch 5 Figlet is 5.4% alcohol by volume and was packaged in mid September. It will be available by the glass and in bottles to go (750ml/$14) at our tasting room and restaurant.

We will be offering a pairing from our kitchen for Figlet. It is a fig leaf creme brûlée with chocolate & cranberry smoked granola!

We hope you enjoy!

We're excited to once again be hosting our tree planting day at Jester King! This Sunday, November 11th at Noon, we're looking for 100 volunteers to help us plant fruit trees at our farm. We promise an early afternoon of nature, music, beer, camaraderie, education and fun. We hope you'll join us!

We ask that all volunteers arrive at Noon on the 11th with gloves, a shovel or spade, water, and closed-toe shoes. After tree planting, music, and beer (complimentary), our farmer Peppy will lead volunteers on a tour of our farm and to visit our goats.

Here's the link to the free volunteer signup:

https://www.universe.com/events/2018-jester-king-tree-day-nature-trail-opening-tickets-austin-9T6Y7H

We're also happy to say that the 11th will be the opening of our first nature trail at Jester King! The half-mile trail starts at our vineyard, stretches through our farm, passes our goats and finishes through our nascent hopyard.

We thank you in advance for your help and look forward to seeing you on the 11th!

We're happy to release our latest batch of Colonel Toby today! Colonel Toby is our hoppy little farmhouse ale brewed in collaboration with The Kernel Brewery in London, England. We love simple, little, crisp, bitter, drinkable beers, and Colonel Toby fits this bill. Over the last few years, it has emerged as a favorite amongst our staff here at Jester King and garners excitement around the brewery when the new batch is released.

Our recent batch is 3.2% alcohol by volume and was packaged in early October. It will be available by the glass and in bottles to go (750ml/$9) at our tasting room and restaurant. We're also have a dish from our kitchen to pair with Colonel Toby this year. Chef Damien Brockway and his team have made beef tartare with Yorkshire Pudding!

We hope you enjoy Colonel Toby — our hoppy little farmhouse ale! Cheers!

We have a new goat in our herd for mating season! His name is Prince Charming, and he's a Nigerian Dwarf goat from Darla Faye's Mini-Farm near San Antonio.

We're really excited to have Prince Charming join us. His grandfather was the grand champion best Nigerian Dwarf goat in the country two-years running, and he has a lovely demeanor that exudes warmth and kindness. He'll be with us for two years, and we're hopeful he'll breed an all-star cast of goats to launch our creamery at Jester King in 2020 or 2021.

Kidding season should begin in February. We're hoping to have fifteen new babies by March, which will mean more Doom Metal Goat Yoga this spring!

We're very happy to introduce 2018 SPON — Texas Plum & Nectarine! It's a blend of one and two year old 100% spontaneously fermented beer from 2016 and 2017, refermented with Bruce sour plums from Lightsey Farms in Mexia, Texas, Morris plums from Engel Farms in Stonewall, Texas, and white nectarines from Cooper Farms in Fairfield, Texas!

Our SPON beers are 100% spontaneously fermented with airborne yeast and bacteria collected overnight as the wort rests in our coolship. The beer then slowly ferments and matures in oak barrels for somewhere between one to three years depending on the batch. For this blend, we racked one and two year old beer out of oak and added it to 450 lbs. of sour plums, 100 lbs. of plums, and 400 lbs. of nectarines for refermentation. With our SPON beers, as well as for everything we brew, our aim is to create something uniquely tied to a cross-section of time, place, and people, never to be repeated or duplicated again. This is what farmhouse brewing means to us and gives us passion for what we do.

2018 SPON — Texas Plum & Nectarine is 5.3% ABV and was packaged in June of this year. It was naturally refermented in bottles and kegs. It will be released today (October 25th, 2018) at our Funk n' Sour Fest for ticket holders (onsite and to go)! It will be available to the public by the glass and in bottles to go when our restaurant and tasting room opens tomorrow (10.27.18) at 4pm. We only have 719 bottles (375ml/$25) with a bottle limit of one per customer per day.

We’re extremely excited to announce that we’ve hired Damien Brockway to be our Executive Chef at Jester King! Damien is a very talented, thoughtful, passionate chef, who now runs the kitchen at our restaurant (formerly Stanley's Farmhouse Pizza). Over the last few months, Damien has begun creating food that mirrors the philosophy of our beer. He's been using local agriculture, fermentation, and old-world techniques to make food that's uniquely tied to a time, place, and people.

We have known Chef Damien for the last few years having worked with him when he was at Uchiko, and more recently when he was the Executive Chef at Counter 3. FIVE. VII in Austin. We were extremely impressed with his creativity, subtlety, balance, restraint, and his ability to achieve complexity without being overbearing. We felt his cooking was a wonderful match for our beer, and we couldn’t be more excited that he’s with us now.

Having joined us in August, Chef Damien has already had a major impact on our restaurant. He assembled an outstanding culinary team with an excellent pedigree, transformed how our kitchen operates, changed our ingredient sourcing to match our values, put an emphasis on fermentation and sustainable agriculture, incorporated our beer into our food, and begun creating new, thought-provoking, delicious dishes.

We're very happy to introduce Jester King Terroir Project!

Terroir Project is collaborative endeavor organized by our friends at Firestone Walker Brewing Company in Paso Robles, California. It involves stretching the limits between wine and beer by co-fermenting 51% wort with 49% native grapes.

This co-mingling of "grains and grapes" represented a fun new approach for us. We typically take mature, barrel-aged beer and referment it with grapes. In this case, we blended wort and grapes together at the outset of fermentation and let them co-ferment. This simultaneous approach yielded some really interesting and exciting results that we're very happy to share!

Our wort consisted of pilsner malt and wheat, and our grapes were native-grown Syrah from northeast Texas (Sulphur Bluff). We racked the blend of wort and grapes into oak barrels for a slow fermentation that lasted 10 months. Our Head Brewer Averie Swanson writes, "The finished beer is really nice! Very wine-like and dusty. The oak presents as vanilla and integrates nicely into the beer. It has a lovely pink color!"

In our effort to farm here at Jester King, a major challenge we face is the condition of our soil. Our soil, along with much throughout central Texas, has been either abandoned, overtilled or overgrazed. What’s left behind is often in need of much repair in order to support local agriculture. Fortunately, we have a familiar friend we can turn to for help – fermentation.

To fertilize our soil, we’ve chosen to use a technique adapted from Korean Natural Farming that involves creating “fermented plant juice” (seen in the photo above). We start by hand-harvesting a heap of fresh cut plant material. We opted for Common Ragweed, which grows throughout the several hundred-foot berm that forms the backbone of our farm. Next, we chopped it up to expose as much surface area as possible and added it to a large tote. We then added molasses and Jester King Das Wunderkind Blended Saison for yeast and bacteria. We saw active signs of fermentation after 24 hours, then let it go for about two more weeks. We then separated the fermented plant juice from the ragweed by straining it through cheese cloth. On the Fall Equinox, we applied it to our land to help grow our winter crops.

The marvel of this exercise is that it provides nutrients to heal the soil faster than the Earth can on its own. We speed up the restorative process by relying on the “magic” of fermentation.