[4/6 Update: Mark your calendars – April 30th is the official release date for Odonata Saison, in bottles and on draft! We’re planning a few parties in the region for the days that follow. More details to follow soon.]
(Sacramento, CA) – Odonata Beer Company (OH-DOE-NAH-TA) will release its first flagship beer in bottles next month: Odonata Saison. There’s been much written about the startup brewery, named after the order that encompasses all dragonflies and damselflies, hence the logo. It is headed up by Rick Sellers of Pacific Brew News and formerly the Draft Magazine Beer Editor and Peter Hoey, former Brewmaster of Sacramento Brewing (now closed). For more background on them and the brewery, I’ll turn you to the links at the bottom of the post rather than rehash the history here.
According to K.M. Weaver from HopPress, Odonata Saison “will be based on Peter’s GABF gold-medal-winning recipe, with the first batch being aged in stainless steel (due to the difficulty in acquiring enough white wine barrels at this time of year), while the subsequent batches will enjoy some relaxing time inside of some barrels.”
Some additional Saison notes off of the brewery’s blog can be found here.
I asked Sellers a few additional questions about what is new as the brewery gets ready for the release of Saison:
1) What’s the size of the brewhouse? Or are you brewing these at another facility?
a. We’re currently partnering with several breweries. Our full production beers (Saison) are brewed on a 50bbl system. We’re hoping to have an official “Alternating Premise” license in the weeks to come, which allows us to pour at festivals and do more in the way of marketing. As is, we work with breweries and take over the brewdeck when they have an open fermentor. To be sure though, it’s Peter that makes every drop of beer we have. It is our goal to have our own facility in Sacramento by the end of 2010, we’re currently putting a plan together to make that happen. Ideally, that would be a 30bbl brew house.
2) How will your beers be packaged?
a. Being that we want to focus on Belgian-style beers, we’re primarily going to be bottled to allow for bottle conditioning. We will have a handful of kegs at any given time for accounts that we want to promote the brand. Also, we’ll have small batches of one-off beers that will find their way into kegs around NorCal – we’ve already done this with Water Witch (Belgian Dark Strong) and our sour ales (Beersel & Rosa). Still, the vast majority of what we want is bottle conditioned beers. Our Saison will be in 22-ounce bottles and our Reserve Series beers will be in 750ml cork-and-cage packages.
3) Where will these beers be available?
a. We want to focus on being a local brewery first and foremost. We may send the occasional palate to another market, but we really want our focus to be on our own back yard with accounts we can visit, shake hands with and have a lasting relationship with. We’re just two guys and we really believe in face-to-face support, if we can drive there in a few hours we’d love to sell you a beer.
4) Water Witch: when do you plan to release this one in bottles?
a. We’re hoping this will be ready for an Autumn release. It’s a 9.5% beer, which makes it a more challenging beer in the hot summers we have in Sacramento. We think this will be our second Reserve Series beer (Rories Ale was our first) – putting it in a 750ml cork-and-cage bottle.
5) Anything else newsworthy that I can mention?
a. We are a sister company to Odonata Wines, which is headed up by Peter’s brother Denis Hoey. His wines are fantastic and get pretty amazing reviews. It’s our long-term goal to age as many beers as possible in Denis’ wine barrels, to really blur the lines of beer and wine and to really celebrate our love of both beverages.
b. Most of our beer names will have significance – if you’re well read on Odonata (the dragonfly) you may know that in old Europe dragonflies were commonly referred to as Water Witches. We’ve also got some fun names for beers in the works – they’re not just catchy. I personally love things like that.
c. Our labels too – they tell a story. If you take a look at our Saison label you’ll find a lot of homage paid to the tradition of the beer and the world-class brewers of the style. In fact, there isn’t anything on that label on accident. Many beer geeks have picked up on a few items, but we hope our labels tell the story of the beer – not just the name. Oh, the labels rock, by the way! Thanks to Damian Fagan for that – the man is a genius when it comes to labels and I’m proud that Odonata is his first commercial label. If you can check out the labels he’s done for his homebrews, you’ll see why we wanted him to help us out with our labels. An amazing and talented artist with a real passion for beer.
d. Can I mention our glassware? Yeah, we thought about that as well. Our Water Witch glass was chosen because the shape really enhances the aromas of the beer – no, we’re not unique in this. However, when you see our Saison glass… I hope a deeper story comes out. You see, we see Saison as a working-class beer, perfect for a refreshment after a day outside under the sun. The beer is sturdy, functional and elegant. We wanted a glass that was all these things as well. It’s a heavy glass, for starters, a solid piece of glass when held in the hand – a burly glass if you will. Yet, it has some elegance to it as well, just like our beer. We’re not the only company that has this particular glass, but we certainly chose it deliberately to further tell the story of our beer.
e. We’re geeks.
f. We appreciate all the support we’ve received from beer enthusiasts from everywhere – it’s truly a blessing to work in an industry like this with fans that are polite and entertaining. Seriously, the people make all this a truly amazing ride.
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Further learning:
New Brewery Spotlight by K.M. Weaver
Brewmaster, Peter Hoey, on Basic Brewing Radio (direct audio link)