Our Top 5 Brews From Newly Opened Bruery Terreux

Last month, Bruery Terreux opened to the public. What we recalled roughly four years ago as their barrelhouse evolved into a stand-alone space for the aging, fermentation and bottling of their “wildly traditional” sour beers. We dropped by for an informative tour (free if you sign up ahead of  time) with Josh. Afterwards, we started on a flight in their tasting room, catching up with Experimental Brewer Andrew Bell. When we asked Bell for more backstory on his recommendations, here's what he told us.

1. Random Summer
A pilot beer brewed by one of our brewers, Stefan Webber. It's a barrel fermented tart saison with brett. It has a lot of spelt in the recipe. It's loosely in the style of the tart saisons being made by breweries like Sante Adairius, Hill Farmstead, Tired Hands Side Project, Monkish, etc.

2. Fuzzy BBLs
It was a small, one-off that Jeremy, our Terreux Production Supervisor, made. It's a blend of Tart of Darkness, Black Tuesday and So Happens It's Tuesday— three Bourbon Barrel Aged (BBA) Stouts, one of which is a sour stout. BBLs is a term of measurement in brewing, representing 31 gallons. But it also pays homage to a beer we made called Blue BBLs, which is a blend of Black Tuesday and Tart of Darkness with Blueberries. The Fuzzy part of the name pays homage to another beer we made a while back called Kevin's Fuzzy Peaches, which was a sour blonde with lactose, vanilla and peaches; think peaches and cream.

3. Tart of Darkness Cherries and Vanilla
We've been brewing Tart of Darkness since 2011. It was originally designed to age in our bourbon barrels after they'd been used to age clean beer (Black Tuesday and White Oak, for example. We only use bourbon barrels one time for our clean barrel program.). We first made Tart of Darkness with Cherries and Vanilla in 2014. It sort of reminds me of a cherry cola, rounding out the roast character.

4. Frambulous (a Society exclusive)
We used to frequently make a draft-only raspberry sour beer known as Berazzled. For that, we would take raspberries and a bit of cherry and add it to our sour blonde in the brite tank right before kegging (thus not allowing the fruit to referment). We couldn't bottle that beer, as the residual sugar in the unfermented raspberries would cause carbonation issues. Frambulous was definitely inspired by Berazzled, featuring a blend of our sour blonde (a.k.a. the base for Rueuze) and Frucht with a lot of raspberries. For Frambulous, we allowed the raspberries to referment fully. It's got lots of jammy character.

5. Imperial Cabinet (ask if you don't see it)
Garret Crowell (Jester King's head brewer) and I had the opportunity to chat about our favorite cocktails during the Firestone Invitational Festival in 2013. We were both working on cocktail-inspired beers at the time: Geriatric Hipster Club for the Bruery (Old Fashioned inspired) and Coquetier at Jester King (Sazerac inspired). Ramos Gin Fizz came up in our discussion, and we decided we wanted to do a Gin Fizz-inspired sour. The beer itself is a barrel fermented sour with gin botanicals added to the whirlpool. We fermented it for nine months to a year, and about a month before packaging added vanilla beans to accent the creaminess of the beer. The cocktail is made with cream, but vanilla does a good job of adding body and richness to the beer. We also added a lot of lime, lemon and orange zest to capture the cocktail's citrus component.

Bruery Terreux is located at 1174 N Grove St, Anaheim, (714) 996-MALT (6258); www.brueryterreux.com.