The Spectacular Commodity – Box Set

A Masumoto Peach Experiment

The Spectacular Commodity is a very special collaboration with Chris Quiroga from Woodshop Beer Co and David “Mas” Masumoto from Masumoto Family Farms. On top of throwing some of the best craft beer events in Southern California, Chris is responsible for bringing together craft brewers and Masumoto fruit. For the last 10 years he has mostly personally delivered boxes of peaches and nectarines to dozens of the best breweries in California (and a few out of state). I met Chris at a Woodshop event when I was still a homebrewer. A few months after that he offered me a couple boxes of peaches to put into my beer, and the rest is history.

In a few weeks I’ll be going to the Masumoto Family Farm, just outside of Frenso, to pick our adopted Le Grand Nectarine tree for the fourth year in a row. It’s been one of the highlights of my brewing career to get to know Mas, Marcy, Nikiko, Korio and the rest of the Masumoto family and team. They are truly the nicest and most passionate people. I consider Mas to be one of those true rare artists that takes his craft extremely seriously. His standards for quality and his commitment doing things in a traditional and hands-on way has had a huge influence on how I operate my business. He has the quality of a modern artist, which I strive for myself. I see this in Mas and his love for his old heirloom stone fruit trees. And I see it in the film director Paul Thomas Anderson and his commitment to the dying medium of physical film. It’s an unrelenting dedication to the purity of one’s vision, and craft, and process, and ideals. So many businesses exist and operate in ways that solely maximize profits, and chase trends. But there is something true and pure about the Masumoto fruit, and it would be the highest honor if anyone thought that about the beers that we make. Anyway, I’ll get off the soap box for now.

To make this beer we took a few of our best tasting barrels, blended them together, split that blend back into two barrels which had 0.8 pounds per gallon and 8 pounds per gallon respectively of Masumoto Spring Lady peaches. So you have the exact same base beer but with a fucking order of magnitude difference in how much fruit we added. 8 pounds per gallon is by far the most fruit we’ve ever used in a single beer. Part of the impetus for this was to ask the question, “can you put too much fruit into a beer?” And while the heavily fruited version tastes god damn amazing and is probably the most fruit character possible in an alcoholic liquid, for me the takeaway is just how badass the lightly fruited version is. Chris and I have speculated before that you probably don’t get much more fruit flavor in a beer over 2 or 3 pounds per gallon. And we’ve also agreed over the years that we tend to like beers more that are on the less fruity side, closer to 1 pound per gallon. We recommend tasting these together and forming your own opinions, which we very much hope you’ll share with us. We also recommend doing some of your own blending experiments with these bottles. Blend them together to find what you think is the perfect balance of fruit. Or even try blending in some un-fruited beer like Famille.

This was a very fun experiment to make. I can’t say enough how much I truly appreciate and have love for every single person that has supported us over the years. I’ve made some fucking wacky and bizarre stuff that you all spend money on (mostly without being able to taste it before buying) and I hope you haven’t ever been let down by the flavors. Your support particularly in the last few months during the shutdown has kept this business alive. I was pretty bummed not to be able to throw a big event around the release of this beer and have you all here to celebrate, but that day will be here eventually. Stay safe out there. Cheers.

6.5%abv

Limit 4 Sets

2 – 375 ml bottle box set

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