Beer Spotlight!
Wolves & People Instinctive Travels
$20.99 for the four-pack 16oz cans
Oak-Fermented Saison Style Ale Fermented with Brettanomyces
When founder and head brewer Christian DeBenedetti opened his Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery in Newburg, OR, in 2016, one of the first beers he offered was the Instinctive Travels. Makes sense. Wolves & People is a farm brewery; stands to reason they should have a Farmhouse Ale. So he set out to make a dry-hopped Saison with fruit and met with inconsistent results. "We had versions that knocked our socks off and versions that fell short." Finally, after two years of iterations with 18 different hops and fruit from all over the world, DeBenedetti gave his instincts a break from their travels. “It had become more rote than renewal, perhaps,” he said in reflection.
However, in 2019, he and his new brewer reimagined the Instinctive Travels as a dry-hopped, mixed fermentation, Saison fermented in oak and made entirely with Oregon malted Oregon grain.
For Instinctive Travels, Mark II, Wolves & People uses malt from Mecca Grade Estate craft malters. Turns out, most of the malt used by American brewers comes from only a handful of U.S. and Canadian malt houses. Pulling grain from all over, they produce a homogenized malt product. What we’re starting to see is brewers sourcing from craft malters, like our own Murphy & Rude and Mecca Grade — people who supply higher quality malt that even has a sense of place. Coming from eight generations of Oregon famers, the family behind Mecca Grade not only grows their own 2-row barley but also uses a proprietary process that produces more evenly kilned and, thus, richer malt.
Wolves & People uses Mecca’s Pelton malt, a good Pilsner malt, fermenting it with Saison yeast and Brettanomyces yeast, in Anne Amie Vineyards’ Pinot Blanc oak puncheons. Wolves & People bitters the beer-to-be with Nugget and Citra hops before dry-hopping it with Citra and Galaxy hops.
As you can see, a lot goes into the latest version of the Instinctive Travels. If the ends do indeed justify the means, then it was all worth it. The resultant beer is lovely. The Brett adds more spice than funk to the brew but still delivers a flat sourness that lingers even after the finish fades.
Who knows how long this form of the Instinctive Travels will last, but we’re fine stopping over here for a while.
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