Brewing with Friends - Vertere

Brewing with Friends - Vertere As the march towards our 10year anniversary draws ever closer (details forthcoming), we took a brief respite from brewing in Kyoto and travelled to Okutama, Tokyo, to brew with our new friends at Vertere Brewing. Four days later, Vertere came to Kyoto to brew with us.

Amongst all our collabs over the past 12 months, Vertere is the brewery we actually had the least direct communication with but it’s a brewery that we’ve respected for a long time and so were thrilled to finally do a joint collab brew together.

Last month marked 9 years since Vertere started brewing. Standing in their relatively new 2nd brewery (their first brew there was just over a year ago), it’s crazy to see just how far they’ve come.

Speaking to Suzuki-san, co-owner and business head of Vertere, when they were looking to expand beyond the confines of their first brewery (located immediately across from Okutama station), JR offered to help mitigate a large cost of the construction for their building by folding it into a long term rental contract. JR usually only reserves such plans for companies that are usually within a short walking vicinity of their stations and railroads; however, Vertere’s economic impact to the town has been exceptional and so JR wanted to help make sure they could continue to call Okutama home.

Rewinding the clock, Vertere originally started brewing on a 160 litre system. The man behind the brews was other co-owner Tsujino Kokage-san (herein Kokage-san). Kokage-san and Suzuki-san were buddies since high school days and when looking for a place to call their brewery, they came across a beautiful old property that overlooked a river located at the bottom of a tall ravine. Half the property was given over to a garden and huge patio. The other half was for their brewing and taproom operations. On the weekends, as backpackers from all over would descend on the town, Vertere would open their doors and people would pile in and drink them dry.

What it meant is that they could essentially brew a wide variety of styles and not have to worry about their beer finding an audience. To this day, despite their beer being sold further and further away from Okutama, they continue to brew a wide variety of styles and so when it came time to talking about what to brew together, they asked if we wanted to take on one of their souring methods they use when making hoppy beers. And then on their side, they were keen to do a similar beer for compare and contrast purposes but asked what we thought about switching house yeasts.

For souring, we would essentially inoculate the wort with bacteria - specifically, Lactobacillus Brevis. In the past, we’ve used a different strain of lacto to sour beer on the hot side (ie. we sour the wort and then kill off the bacteria by boiling the beer and then adding hops). However, Vertere-style is done 100% on the cold side (ie. post boil).

In the past, this would’ve been a ‘sorry - no’ answer. The reason being that if the bacteria adheres to any surface as it makes its way to getting packaged in a can or keg, it can possibly infect other beers getting similarly packaged. As KBC brews more beer and that beer finds its way to many different types of customers, the chance for our beer to not being refrigerated at all times increases. In higher temp beer, the lacto bacteria can quickly reproduce and not only create off-flavours but also produce CO2 in the can, leading to cans potentially exploding. Thankfully, with the recent buildout of our lab, we can now properly analyse our beers and confirm if they are indeed ‘critter free’.

With that ace up our sleeve, we decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a go. Instead of relying on heat to kill the bacteria, we would use hops to quell them. The great thing about Lacto Brevis is that the souring character is fruit-like and compliments beers fermented with Belgian yeast for their esters and bold American and New Zealand hops.

With this in mind, Vertere and KBC focused on the dual impact punch of tropical citrus Citra and passionfruit 'citrussy' of Eggers Riwaka. As a differentiator, both sides then looked into our respective US Indie Hops (a small, independent hop company that produces some unique hops) goodie bag. KBC settled on Luminosa for its peach-mango lemonade profile and Vertere went with Lorien and its tangy fresh-fruit character. Lastly, KBC snuck in some simcoe for further citrus layering to meld with the lactobacillus fruit acidic flavours.

We’re really happy with how the this sour beer turned out. It slightly sour but it also has enough hops in there to satisfy hop heads alike.

Furthermore, hanging out with the Vertere crew (especially Vertere merch model Emile and Kokage-san) was a real treat and we really hope that our paths cross more often in the future.