Half Barrel Beer Project / Orlando, FL

 

Crazy Kettle Sours

Novelty never goes out of style in the beer world. Brewers are continually looking for ways to differentiate themselves and keep customers coming back for the next new flavor.

Chad Kast, head brewer at Half Barrel Beer Project in Orlando, Florida, hit a winning flavor combination with Gravy Train, a heavily-fruited sour featuring The Perfect Purée Green Apple. Gravy Train’s bright green color and fresh apple aroma helped Chad win the Brewers Choice Award and The People’s Choice Award at the 2023 Central Florida Brewery Conference. He mellows the intense sweet-tart flavor with a few surprising ingredients: “I used 13 pounds of Green Apple purée in 15 gallons of beer. So, lots of Green Apple but balanced right with rosemary, pecan and marshmallow,” Chad says.

Gravy Train gets its name from the food Half Barrel served it with at the conference — turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce on Hawaiian sweet rolls. “That paired very well with the green apple, rosemary and pecan,” Chad says.

When brewing his signature “crazy kettle sours,” Chad adds purée and solids on the cold side after fermentation to maximize the fruit flavor. “I let it sit on the ingredients for five days, mixing it up and sampling it till it’s where I want it,” he says.

Creative Crossover

Small breweries are diversifying their beverage menus to get beer lovers and non-beer drinkers alike in the door. The Perfect Purée positions them for craft beverage crossover. Chad brews crowd pleasers like Tropical Beach Freeze Sour featuring Strawberry, Kiwi, and Banana purées, watermelon and toasted marshmallow in a 15-gallon batch. Kiwi Banana Splash is a flavor bomb of a kettle sour brewed with an impressive 42 pounds of Kiwi and Banana purées added to secondary fermentation.

Half Barrel also makes fruited seltzers and serves wine from Orlando’s Quantum Leap Winery.

Customer Collaboration

Chad is originally from Michigan and began brewing shortly before his brother, Scott Kast, opened Half Barrel in 2018 as a craft beer bar, self-serve bottle shop and brew pub. Half Barrel is named for the pilot half barrel system that lets the brewery make small batches and change its menu frequently.

Along with its own beers, it offers a unique combination of carefully selected craft beers from Florida and other states. The brew staff welcomes customer collaboration. “Half Barrel encourages local home brewers and the community to brew with us and voice what you want to drink,” its website reads.

Chad came across The Perfect Purée in an online search and easily found a local distributor. Since then, he’s flavored beers with Pomegranate, White Peach, Banana, Kiwi, Lychee, Papaya, Pear and Carmelized Pineapple.

“We are in the process of expanding our facility and upping our brew system to produce more product. Having such good purée is the key to making great craft beer,” he says.