Robin Shepard
So who drives nearly four hours, to stand in line for another hour, only to buy a beer they don’t expect to drink for two to three years? “Apparently it’s me and some of my friends,” replies Dan Gregorie, who drove from Racine to be among the first to get a bottle of Glory In The Morning. It’s the newest beer from Madison’s Funk Factory Geuzeria and it was released last Saturday. “It’s all part of the hobby, I’ve met a lot of my friends doing this,” says Gregorie.
What makes this beer so special? For one, wild fermented beers have unique musty and sour flavors, and their most ardent enthusiasts can be obsessive about finding new releases. This particular beer is a combination of one, two and three year old lambics, and fans see it as having the potential to become even more special with age. Gregorie doesn’t expect to uncork his for several years. “I’m glad I was able to get two bottles so I can lay one down and still enjoy one sooner.”
What is it? Glory In The Morning from Funk Factory Geuzeria.
Style: Lambic beers are made with spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts like Brettaqnomyces and bacteria. The process often results in beer tasting musty, tart, sour, and sometimes coarse and earthy. Lambics arose in a particular area of Belgium, the Senne River Valley, near Brussels. Brewers in that region don’t like anything not produced in Belgium being called a lambic in part because they feel passionately that wild fermentation from their local environment imparts distinctive flavor and aroma in the beer, similar to what’s called terroir in wine. That’s why you may see US brewers give a nod of respect in labeling their beer as lambic-style or American-lambic.
Belgian lambics are often made with fruit and go by names like framboise (raspberry), kriek (cherry), and peche (peach). However, Funk Factory’s Glory In The Morning is not made with fruit, instead it is a blend of vintages from one to three years in age. Lambics commonly fall between 4.0 and 5.5 percent ABV.
Background: Glory In The Morning is the first installment in Funk Factory’s new Barn Quilt series of beers. Barn quilts resemble quilt patterns and can be found throughout rural Wisconsin. Each new beer in the series will be named after a different Wisconsin barn quilt, and display it on the label. “Glory in the Morning” is a quilt pattern on a barn belonging to Peter and Margo Holzman near Poynette in Columbia County. That county has more than 60 barn quilts and promotes a driving tour to see them.
Funk Factory Owner Levi Funk says the process to make this beer involves quilting together several vintages from the geuzeria’s overall barrel stock. Future beers in the series are difficult to predict because they’re based on what barrels Funk feels are ready and which will work together for unique flavor. Each beer in the series will be blended by taste and the preferences of Funk and his staff. He envisions future releases to not just stick with a single lambic style and instead include combinations and different vintages of saisons, meerts or even beers from his Cervino line. “As we find something interesting in a barrel we’ll do another one, but we won’t force it,” says Funk. “As with everything with us it will happen when it happens,” he adds.
Such unpredictability is at the heart of wild fermentation and even more so as to the timing for when the Geuzeria releases a beer. All that adds to the allure of random limited releases of Barn Quilt beers but also the other beers as well from the Funk Factory. That merely drives even more funky, sour and tart beer fans to sign up for beers on-line and/or stand in long lines just to be among a few hundred drinkers to secure a bottle of Funk’s latest creation. In the case of Glory In The Morning, the brewery only released about 130 bottles. A few bottles were held back for special events and for unannounced appearances in the taproom that only further stoke the passion for rare beers, especially if you’re one of those who missed out last weekend.
Glory In The Morning is packaged in 750 mL (corked and caged) bottles for $35/each. It finishes at 6 percent ABV. Funk hints that he’ll be bottling another Barn Quilt release later this summer, however, don’t look for it until some lengthy bottle conditioning. That means it likely will not be available until next winter, at the earliest.
Tasting notes:
Aroma: Light earthy, cellar-like mustiness.
Appearance: Hazy, orange-golden body. A modest bubbly, tan head that eventually become marbled and long lasting.
Texture: Light, bubbly/effervescent. There is crispness that accentuated by the tartness.
Taste: There is a mild tartness (not so much sour) with hints of lemon, apricot and peach – most likely from the young side of the blended lambic. The older, more mature lambic flavors of coarse-earthy-mustiness lie in the background.
Finish/Aftertaste: Bubbly and with some lingering earthy, barnyard funk. That light fruity-tartness also lingers and becomes dry almost like a fuzzy unripe peach.
Glassware: The Willi Becher or a wine glass with an inward flare to focus all those musty and earthy aromas under the nose.
Pairs well with: slightly sweet meats like duck or lamb, even chicken with a mild sweet cherry or cranberry sauce. Glory In The Morning is intended to be sipped and appreciated for its funk (notes of musty, earthy, barnyard and sometimes sharp light tartness) so look for a compliment to those qualities.
The Verdict: When asked what should one expect with Glory In The Morning? “Like licking a cellar wall,” says Funk. Fans of non-fruited lambics and wild fermented beers will salivate at that description; and, my bottle did meet favorable expectations.
There is solid funk in this beer with earthy and musty tones. They seem to lie in the background leaving me to conclude that the younger side of the blend emerges more right now. There is tartness, with a hint of tart fruity citrus that comes to the forefront. I liked that crispness, so I’m glad I opened a bottle now. For those aging Glory In The Morning you may lose some of that tartness the longer you wait to drink it. More of the earthy and musty qualities are likely to emerge over time.
So just how long should it be cellared? That’s up to what you want to taste. There is likely to be a point where aging just makes it all old funk, and that fresh, tart-edge of the young lambic is eventually lost. Based on conversations with Levi Funk and my new friends I met while standing in line – the best advice is to watch social media descriptions as bottle owners begin cracking them open over the next couple of years. If Funk is right, and he knows his stuff on these kinds of beers, even more intense cellar wall and spider web flavors are about three years away!
