Preserves Online: Craft Brewing

Thursday, 19 July 2012

Craft Brewing

Ron Extract, managing partner and self-styled “artisan of ales” at Jester King Craft Brewery, discovered beer in college, visiting breweries and reading as much as he could about brews. For him, it’s not just about the product but about embracing the culture and sense of place, or terroir, behind the product. He left his philosophy program in graduate school to study brewing at Chicago’s Siebel Institute of Technology and worked for Shelton Brothers Importers before starting Jester King.

Located among the farmlands outside of Austin, Extract’s beers at Jester King reflect that farmhouse sensibility, featuring an alternating mix of year-round and seasonal brews. Extract believes yeast is the most underrated ingredient in beer, and uses apple skins to acquire wild yeast or lets yeast sit to dry out the sugars. And because of the limitation on fermentation—they have only five brewing tanks—Extract can only brew one to three times a week.