This was the first B&B project to make it to the big time, and we made it without a single pilot batch. We had made a few other fruited sours for the tap room and occasionally for bottled releases, but with this one we started by filling 280 oak barrels.. Go big or go home. Raspberry Sour starts out with a big, complex malt bill designed to make it dark red. The primary fermentation uses the Westmalle yeast strain that we know so well from Reverend and Salvation, mainly because it ferments quickly and flocculates out with very little effort. Once the primary fermentation is finished and we get as much of the yeast out as possible, we shoot in a fresh pitchable of our house Brett strain, several oak barrels of actively fermenting sour beer from a previous batch, and over 20 pounds of raspberry puree per bbl. We let the secondary fermentation start up in the tank for a day or two so that it mixes well, and then we we fill neutral barrels. The stars of the show here should be the raspberry, lactic acid, and maybe a little Brett funk, not the barrels. With our consistent house pediococcus the lactic acid consisitently maxes out between 8 and 12 weeks, so we usually end up aging this beer for 16 weeks to make sure everything is finished. Then we blend the barrels back into a tank, pasteurize, and package away.