The Kosmic Mother Funk tour is coming to the Pacific Northwest.
But this tour isn’t for fans of George Clinton. No, this is for fans of big, flavorful Belgian beers fermented in Hungarian oak barrels.
For the second straight year, Samuel Adams is touring its Kosmic Mother Funk (KMF) Grand Cru Belgian-style ale around the country. The tour comes to the Puget Sound region this week, with the beer tapping at a number of alehouses and bottleshops in Seattle and Snohomish County (see box).
I tried the beer earlier this week and it’s a mother. It poured a dark brown with reddish hues at the corners. It was tart, complex and a little spicy, and reminded me of some of the best sour beers I’ve enjoyed from breweries like Portland, Oregon’s Cascade Brewing or Southern California’s The Lost Abbey.
The KMF Grand Cru undergoes wild fermentation, or spontaneous fermentation, which means that the ale is fermented with wild yeasts — Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus specifically in terms of the KMF. And like many ales that go through wild fermentation, the KMF has a rounded flavor profile and a subtle carbonation. The tastes of cherry and vanilla rolled around on my tongue. It was a delight.
One of the best effects of the craft beer renaissance isn’t just the vast numbers of nanobreweries giving beer drinkers more and more variety, but the pilot breweries that the larger craft breweries are operating. Out of those pilot breweries, Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada and others, are giving us amazing beers that are bringing back styles from around the world. KMF Grand Cru came out of Samuel Adams’ Barrel Room Collection.
Here’s some feedback I received from Jennifer Glanville, who is the Director of Brewery Programs at Samuel Adams.
When was the Samuel Adams Barrel Room started?
Glanville: We have been barrel aging for more than 20 years, so I guess you could say we were one of the pioneers in experimenting with barrel aged beers and first released Triple Bock in 1994.
Since then we have experimented with different styles and released three Belgian style beers as part of our Barrel Room Collection in 2009 – New World Tripel, American Kriek and Stony Brook Red. We experimented by blending two beers together, a unique Belgian-style ale which has been aged in oak tuns called Kosmic Mother Funk (KMF), and a traditional beer style, like a tripel, Kriek or Flanders red ale. While we had been brewing small batches of barrel aged and blended beers for years, they were only available at beer festivals or to a few lucky visitors to the Boston Brewery. Eventually, we decided we were ready to introduce drinkers to this collection of unique and delicious beers, which now includes Tetravis – a Belgian Quad, and Thirteenth Hour Stout, in addition to the three brews mentioned above. Our Kosmic Mother Funk is the backbone and heart and soul of all of these beers.
How much freedom do the brewers have to create what they want in the Barrel Room?
The beauty of being a brewer is that you can brew anything you can imagine. We have total freedom when it comes to experimentation and innovation. Jim Koch, Sam Adams Brewer and Founder encourages us to come up with new recipes, new brewing techniques and work with new and interesting ingredients. In our Boston Brewery, we also have a nanobrewery – a 10-gallon brewery system—where we constantly challenge ourselves to brew experimental, small batch beers using diverse recipes and ingredients as well as new brewing techniques.
Aaron Swaney: 425-339-3430; aswaney@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @swaney_aaron79. Follow the Hops and Sips blog at www.heraldnet.com/hopsandsips.
Kosmic Mother Funk Grand Cru
6.4 percent, 9.4 IBU
Comes in 750-milliliter cork-finished bottles
Places that will tapping Kosmic Mother Funk this week:
- Brave Horse Tavern, 310 Terry Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
- Capitol Cider, 818 E Pike St, Seattle
- Collective on Tap (Camano Island), 848 N Sunrise Blvd, Camano Island, WA 98282
- Freds Rivertown Alehouse, 1114 1st St, Snohomish
- Red House Beer &Wine Shoppe, 410 Burnett Ave S, Renton
- Special Brews, 14608 WA-99, Lynnwood
- Tavern Hall, 505 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue
- Thirsty Hop, 13102 NE 70th Pl, Kirkland
- Tornado, 1205 NE 65th St, Seattle
- Whole Foods Market (South Lake Union), 2210 Westlake Ave, Seattle
- World of Beer (Renton), 822 N 10th Pl, Renton
Here’s notes from the Brewers on the KMF: This one-of-a-kind Belgian ale is fermented with multiple microorganisms including Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and other wild critters found in the environment of our 150-year old Boston brewery
The unique yeasts impart layers of spicy, fruity, &bright tart notes to the beer. Aged in our Hungarian oak tuns, the porous character of the wood allows air to slowly seep in during aging creating micro-oxidation that smoothes any harsh flavors
Grand Cru often denotes a vintage of the highest quality or ‘the best of the best’. This release has been aging in our Barrel Room for just over a year.
Kosmic Mother Funk is the soul of our Barrel Room Collection, blended to varying degrees in each of our five Belgian brews creating a distinct and complex character.
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