fentao2020-3-1.jpg

分 桃 (Fēn Táo) Recipe

Happy National Beer Day! In honor of this holiday, we’re sharing the recipe for Jester King 分 桃 (Fēn Táo) — Barrel-Aged Wild Ale refermented with Texas Hill Country peaches. We've been making this beer for around 7 years and it's one of our favorites. We love the character of Texas Hill Country peaches expressed through wild fermentation. It's a relatively simple recipe and process too. Good ingredients and patience combine to create a delicious beer with this recipe. Enjoy!

Specs

  • 5 gallon batch
  • OG 1.043
  • FG 1.003
  • ABV 5.3% (before fruit refermentation)
  • IBU 16
  • Brewhouse efficiency 75%
  • 60 min. boil

Water

We like to show off the terroir of our own Trinity Aquifer well water at Jester King. We recommend going with your own unique water profile, even if it's municipal water. Carbon filtration for municipal water is recommended, but we'd recommend rolling with the mineral profile "as is".

Grain

  • 7# pilsner malt (we use Llano Pilsner from Texmalt)
  • 1# malted wheat (we use Denton County Wheat Malt from TexMalt)
  • 0.5# flaked oats

Hops

  • 1.0 oz. of Goldings (4.5% AA) at 60 minutes

Yeast

Our mixed culture was created by blending saison strains with yeast cultivated from the land and air around the brewery. We recommend co-pitching Wyeast 3711 French Saison and White Labs WLP565 Belgian Saison I with either yeast cultivated from flora or the air around your location, bottle dregs from a favorite funky beer, and/or Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale Blend.

Fruit

  • 20# of peaches

  • We get ours from Vogel Orchard in Stonewall, TX. We encourage you to experiment with your own local peaches if you can.

Process

  • Primary ferment the wort at 72F until fully attenuated

  • Rack to secondary and allow the beer to mature for 8-12 weeks. Taste regularly to see how the funk and acidity is developing. You can add a few grams of oak cubes if desired.

  • De-pit the peaches and macerate them. We just put on rubber gloves and squish them with our hands. Add the peaches to two five gallon carboys. Rack the beer onto the peaches. Allow refermentation to occur over 3-4 weeks. The beer should be totally dry with a gravity around 1.003.

  • Rack the beer off of the peaches, preferable through a mesh filter to remove any fruit solids.

  • Bottle condition to 3.0 volumes.

We’d love to see photos and videos of your progress and final product. Share with us by tagging #JesterKingFenTao on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Cheers! Questions? Email beer@jesterkingbrewery.com.

Photo by Granger Coats.