We are delighted to announce the release of Wunderkammer Volume 8 | Traditional Headdress + Tasting & Brewer Bottle Signing Event Saturday, December 16th, from 10a-12p!

Personalized bottles by local Vermont makers are a great gift, or are a wonderful thing to personally enjoy.

Pop over, meet Vasili, sample some of his latest fine brew, and pick up a bottle or two!

From Brewer Vasili:

Volume eight, traditional headdress, is being released and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and impressions about it in hopes that you can learn from it some of what my intention was and share with our customers a bit about the beer.

This beer uses Golden Rod, which is an extremely common plant around here. It grows in every pasture. Most typically, it grows a single stalk about 3 feet tall, with thin, spear-like leaves radiating all up and down the stalk. The top is crowned with bright, almost fluffy yellow flowers. You have to look really close to see pedals. It’s another plant that can be used for tea and lends an anise like character. I harvested it in my backyard mostly, some from around the brewery. Spelt and honey are two other components in the beer. There is also hops at boil. As usual, this beer is fermented in an oak barrel with mixed culture.

Appearance
pale straw color with a fluffy bone white head

Aroma
beautiful lemon/lime, anise, heady esters, Belgian type spice/fruit mix

Flavor
candied lemon peel and more anise up front, resolves to an subtle and soft dough character

overall
a light tart spelt beer with a balance of citrus and bright spice.

The label:
so while I was preparing the Goldenrod for this beer, I found this strange wad of plastic drinking straws and masking tape that one of my children had used for a school project. I had no clue what it was suppose to be. As I was stripping the leaves and flowers off of the stalks, I started putting the stripped stalks into the the straws. As I was getting through the stack of Goldenrod, it started to look like a type of headdress. Atlas, having known and worked with Bread and Puppet Theater for many years, which has a fair share of nature deity worship, and seen many a wreath made of plants, my mind naturally went there. This picture I painted with watercolors is a more or less accurate illustration of the stripped Goldenrod stalks sticking out or this drinking straw sculpture, which I learned was an attempt at a log cabin.