​Kilstone offers a Brew Experience

One of the main goals of professionals in the beverage industry is to provide our customers with not only products but ultimately, an experience. The Wigen brothers, Brock and Grant, have been offering up Kilstone Brew Experiences to companies, clubs and office groups in the local area since opening their North Fargo brewery in early 2015.

When, as manager at the Bottle Barn in West Fargo, I found myself with a freshly dumped whiskey barrel, I knew just who to offer the challenge to. With the goal of creating a full, robust beer that would be able to withstand whiskey-barrel aging, I sat down with Brock and Grant and settled on a recipe we hoped would produce a strong porter with heavy chocolate and roasted malt flavors.

Their software program made the experience easy and it was fun to watch the program’s image of the beer get darker and darker as we changed, added or subtracted different grains, malts, hops, or yeast.

Having tried their “A Bitter Morning” collaboration with the 107.9 morning show crew, and their corn beer collaboration with the ND Corn Growers Association, “Go Shuck Yourself”, I felt confident in their ability to bring my vision of the beer to life and so we took the next step of setting a date.

When you show up on that date, the over 170 pounds of grains are already milled and ready to dump in the tank. But first, the hoses. Most of actual work done in your brew experience is sanitizing and hooking up hoses and tightening or removing clamps, but their clear concise instructions make it easy. Soon, it’s time to start the mash by dumping the grains into the mash tank and stirring with a paddle, to remove any clumping and soak the grain completely.

Then the really fun part begins. While you wait for an hour or more on the mash, the folks at Kilstone take you through their current tap lineup and offer education on the styles of beer, ingredients in the beer, processes involved going forward; and answer any questions you may have.

It is then time to set up the “sparge” which circulates the water through the grains and showers them from above with scalding hot water, to extract sugars which will create alcohol. The liquid that will become the beer (now known as wort) is then transferred to a tank to be boiled for an hour or more, depending on recipe. The boil will sanitize the wort as well as concentrate the sugars. It is during the boil that you add hops, which will add bitterness to temper the very sweet wort.

After the boil, the liquid is transferred to the fermentor through a heat exchanger, which cools it down, and an oxygen stone, which adds oxygen for the yeast to use to consume sugars and transform them into alcohol.

Once the transfer is complete, yeast is added and the beer will ferment for up to a week before another transfer to the bright tank, where it gets carbonated over the course of a couple of days, before it is ready for release to the public.

Your work at the brewery is done for the day and you can begin planning a release party where you invite up to 20 people who get a free pint of the brew you created, limit 1 per person. In the past, groups have then purchased growlers of their beer to give away as gifts or just to throw a private office party with beer YOU brewed.

Kilstone will also keep your beer on tap until it is gone and if it’s a big big hit, like the 107.9 co-brew, you may see it return to their tap lineup from time to time. Our release party for what we are calling “Carry the Load” Porter was last Wednesday, and I can attest that there is nothing like welcoming friends to the brewery and giving them a ticket for a free pint of a delicious beer you had a hand in creating.

For this particular Brew Experience we are adding a few extra steps and making it a whole new experience for Kilstone, also. This will be the first barrel-aged beer they have attempted and as this beer sits in the oak whiskey barrel over the next couple of months, we hope for the existing dark chocolate and roasted flavors to become enhanced by dark cherry, caramel and vanilla, as well as an even more rounded body from the interaction of the oak.

Stay tuned for info on a barrel aged “Carry the Load” release party to come right in the depths of winter when dark, higher-alcohol beers will be just what we need. Since this was a collaboration beer with the Bottle Barn, look for the base beer to arrive soon at the growler station in their West Fargo location or try and grab a pint from Kilstone’s taproom off 7th avenue north and 34th street. Contact Kilstone at (701)893-5224 to plan your Kilstone Brew Experience today.