323: Vermont’s Wunderkammer Tells Mixed Culture Stories Beyond the Barnyard
Oct 2, 2023
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Vasili Gletsos, a brewer with a decade-and-a-half of experience, talks about his focus on making mixed culture beers that tell stories. He discusses differentiating Wunderkammer from Hill Farmstead's program, choosing Brettanomyces strains, brewing on a wood-fired brewhouse, blending stainless fermentation and wood puncheon aging, using foraged ingredients, and more.
Vasili Gletsos focuses on making mixed culture beers that go beyond the traditional barnyard flavors.
Wunderkammer uses a simple wood-fired brewing system, forages for ingredients like yarrow, and ages beer in oak barrels.
The brewery experiments with locally produced malted grains and foraged herbs, using different methods to achieve desired flavors and aromas.
Deep dives
The Wonderkammer Story
Vasili Glesos from Wunderkammer Beer shares his brewing journey, starting from his early days of learning beer making techniques during his time at Bread and Puppet Theater in rural Vermont. He experimented with malting grains and gradually taught himself all-grain brewing. Vasili's interest in nature and foraging influenced his brewing style, leading him to create beers with native berries, herbs, and fruits. After gaining experience as a homebrewer, he made the transition to professional brewing in Portland, Oregon, where he embraced the dynamic and creative brewing community. Eventually, Vasili started his brewery, Wunderkammer, which focuses on blended mixed-culture beers and foraged ingredients, connecting art, nature, and the brewing process.
The Brewing Process at Wunderkammer
Vasili describes the unique and simple brewing process at Wunderkammer. He uses a basic brewing setup, including a copper kettle and a mash tun made from a dairy tank. Vasili's brewing system utilizes direct fire heating and relies on natural spring water collected on-site. He mashes in, boils the wort, and transfers it to a coolship for natural cooling. After fermentation in stainless steel, the beer is transferred to oak barrels in a man-made cave for aging. The beers harmonize over time, with some spending months in oak to develop complex flavors. Vasili also explains how he cleans the barrels using simple techniques and maintains a balance between yeast activity and fermentation temperature, taking advantage of his cave's consistent temperature range.
Incorporating Foraged Ingredients and Botanicals
One of the defining characteristics of Wunderkammer's beers is the use of foraged ingredients and botanicals. Vasili emphasizes the importance of using a broad spectrum of plants and the potential they bring to beer flavors. He draws inspiration from ancient brewing practices and combines foraged ingredients with mixed cultures to create truly unique and evocative flavors. Vasili's aim is to transport beer drinkers to different environments and memories by using herbs, fruits, and other botanicals. He explores the flavor profiles of various native plants and experiments with different combinations to achieve a range of earthy, herbal, and aromatic flavor experiences. Vasili's brewing process often involves incorporating these ingredients on both the hot and cold side, creating a multi-dimensional drinking experience.
Using Local Ingredients and Foraged Herbs
The brewer at Wonder Camera focuses on using locally produced malted grains and foraged herbs in their beers. They experiment with ingredients like Yarrow, Goldenrod, and spruce tips, often using different methods like cold steeping and mass aerations to achieve desired flavors and aromas. The brewer takes notes and tests to find the right balance and level of intensity for each ingredient before blending them back into larger batches.
Exploring and Connecting through Beer
The brewer's goal is to continuously explore and discover through their brewing process. They aim to create a connection with people by sharing their beers in meaningful experiences. While they acknowledge that they can't control how people view their project, they hope that their beers connect with individuals, either meeting or subverting expectations, and that the connection resonates through every bottle.
Over the course of his decade-and-a-half, bicoastal brewing career, Vasili Gletsos has brewed a wide range of beer styles on an equal wide range of brewing systems. But after launching Wunderkammer as a personal brand while serving as head brewer for Hill Farmstead, he ultimately decided to make it his focus, building out a simple brewery with an old dairy tank mash tun and a wood-fired copper kettle to make mixed culture beers that tell stories.
Through foraging and engaging with the landscape around him, he continues to make beer that feels not just rooted and local, but thoughtfully considered and artful. He’s particular about ingredients and fermentation, searching for mixed culture expressions that don’t simply lean on clichés of the genre.
“Part of the power of mixed culture beer is that I find it very transportive,” he says. “It brings you to a time and place—but I don’t always want that time and place to be a barnyard.”
In this episode, Gletsos discusses his mixed culture process, including:
differentiating Wunderkammer from Hill Farmstead’s mixed culture program
choosing Brettanomyces strains for more favorable flavors
brewing on a very simple wood-fired brewhouse
working in layers
blending stainless fermentation and wood puncheon aging
using foraged ingredients like yarrow
cold side versus hot side additions of foraged ingredients
And more.
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