On this episode of the Brewer to Brewer podcast Yvan De Baets of Brasserie de la Senne interviews Jennings Carney of Pen Druid Fermentation, calling him “one of the most interesting American brewers of the last decade.”
In their conversation the two discuss spontaneous brewing, and embracing nature and a brewery’s souroudings to create beer with soul and a sense of place.
“It’s very refreshing approach that goes beyond the brewing books,” De Baets says of Pen Druid. ” You have a type of creativity that I would that would call noble creativity. You’re not trying to put any crap into a beer and call yourself innovative. No, you somehow go back to the roots of what our ancestors did, using the natural ways of making beer with almost a philosophical approach that I really, really appreciate. And I also of course, appreciate your your beers.”
Listen to the whole conversation where you download podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and Overcast.
About Jennings Carney
Jennings Carney grew up in the foothills of Virginia at the base of the Shenandoah National Park in Rappahannock County, Virginia. For twenty years Jennings toured in the psyche rock band Pontiak with whom his brothers Lain and Van formed in Baltimore in 2004.
Jennings began brewing in late 2010 and quickly found his calling when, on tour, he drank a glass of gueuze. Jennings and his brothers founded Pen Druid Brewing in the summer of 2015. The brewery focuses on traditional method spontaneous and native yeast beers. Since January of 2016, the brothers have used a native saccharomyces caught in the wild for the only yeast source the brewery pitches in their beers, aside from their spontaneous. The yeast is not plated out or banked in a lab, it never has and never will be. It is propagated by brewing batches of beer.
Pen Druid uses a wood-fired brew house outside. Jennings brews in all weather, only stopping when there is lightening. The system is a 10bbls brew house with a coolship. All the native yeast beers are carbonated with a Pet-Nat approach, using the native yeast’s ability to eat all the sugar in the beers to create the tiniest of bubbles.
This episode is sponsored by:
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